PS3 Slim Review

It seems hard to believe that it’s been 3 years since I purchased my first PS3. I still remember camping outside for 3 days at Best Buy in the cold (yeah I am a geek), having pizza delivered, playing Monopoly, and then being dead tired when I get home. Thankfully this time around, I didn’t have to do that.

With the announcement of the PS3 Slim, I told myself it was time for an upgrade and I headed out to track one down. Being familiar with the store budgets of the Best Buy’s in my area, I headed out to one of the one’s with the smallest budget (less traffic) to pick one up. I headed back to the media department and was greeted with a nice display of PS3 Slim’s. I grabbed one and immediately noticed the difference in weight. I asked about stand’s and they didn’t even have the SKU in their system yet. That gave me the needed motivation to reorganize my AV rack which was long overdue anyway.

So I setup a spot in the living room prior to installation to open and categorize everything.

Quite a small box in comparison to the original. I didn’t notice until the review I left my VMware VCP books in the background, sorry about that A standard set of accessories were included: A DualShock 3, Composite Cable, Power Cable, USB Charging Cable, Instruction Manuals, Quick Start Guide, and PS3 Blu-Ray welcome disc.

After hearing so many varying reports about the aesthetics of the new system, after removing the styrofoam covering, my fears were to put to rest. While the look of the console is different, it still has some style to it. Silver trim near the buttons, glossy finish on the left and right sides of the console, and I dig the return of the PS3 logo on top. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the physical eject and power  buttons, but I think actually like them better than the pressure sensitive ones. In my opinion, the PS3 is easily the most aesthetically pleasing of all the consoles of the current generation.

I tried to include a few pictures that capture what I mean. I definitely won’t miss having to worry about the fingerprints

I included my VGN-FS890 VAIO laptop for scale as well. It has a 15.4 inch screen and you can how the PS3 measures up. Every so often I need to take my PS3 on the road and now it fits perfectly in my laptop bag

One of the things that stuck out to me in the accessories was an included Blu-Ray disc entitled “Welcome to the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Network” I hadn’t heard anything about this disc in anything I had read thus far so I was curious to find out exactly what was on it.

After moving a few things around on the AV stand, and doing some long overdue color coding of wiring, I put the PS3 in it’s new home. I call it “Sony Row” right next to the 5200ES and the PS2.

AV setup was simple and I was greeted with the new login screen.  My Netgear GS108 showed a solid green gigabit link, IP was acquired via DHCP (static assignment will be made on the WRT54G running Tomato later) and it’s off the the races.

I popped in that Blu-ray disc, and the XMB identified it as the “PS3 Experience”.

When it started I was quite surprised. Sony really put a lot of thought and effort into this disc and it reflects their new product focus. The layout is excellent, and smooth transitional screens are present in the background spotlighting games like MAG, Mini Ninjas, and Killzone 2 to name a few. I recorded a brief video below:

The disc is presented in 1080P, and broken up into several categories:

• Welcome to the World of PlayStation
• Welcome to the PlayStation Network
• Sports and Action Games
• Driving and Family Games
• Blu-ray movies
• PS3 Tutorials

Once you start up a category, your greeted with a very cool CGI animation You witness the X, O’s, Triangle’s and Square’s fly across the screen in 2D, 3D, and then form a PS logo. Not a requirement by any means, but an extremely nice touch:

Sony went all out with trailers on this disc. First your greeted with an awesome intro, and then 1080P trailers for all their top tier games, as well as few new ones like God of War III, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Batman: Arkham Asylum. For someone new to the PS3 everything in the product line is covered. The PSP is spotlighted quite nicely with signature titles being showcased like DISSIDIA Final Fantasy.

Blu-ray was a big focus on the disc, and Sony really went with diversity in showcasing a broad range of titles. Everything from Hancock, to Men in Black, to Monsters INC. to Casino Royale is spotlighted. What really surprised me was the inclusion of Sky Crawlers which is one of the best Anime titles I have ever seen. No matter what genre your interested in, it’s covered by one of the trailers on the disc, I truly only mentioned a handful of what’s there.

The most impressive thing on this disc is the PS3 Tutorials section. In my opinion, this is where the disc shines, and it show’s Sony’s commitment to reaching out to a whole new segment of consumers. The level of detail here is something that isn’t provided by any other consoles of this generation (and i own all 3). Everything you could possibly need to know as a new user is presented in a step by step manner. Here is a complete list

• Creating a New User Account
• Setting up a Wired Network Connection
• Sign up for the PlayStation Network
• Downloading a Game
• Playing a Blu-ray Movie
• Selecting a Theme
• Importing and Saving Photos
• Creating and Viewing a Photo Slide Show
• Importing a CD
• Creating a Music Playlist
• Using the Visualizer
• Setting up Remote Play
• Creating a Message
• Surfing the Web
• Starting a Video Chat

The nice thing about these tutorials is that they are all in one place, and extremely easy to navigate through. I listened for technical jargon, inferences and none were present. Sony explains things so that if your a beginner or advanced user you can learn exactly what you need to know and starting using what you learned in that module with a degree of competency.

All in all I was extremely pleased with my decision to get a PS3 Slim. Over time I am sure I will dig deeper into more of the additions added with Firmware 3.0, but for the time being test and setup was nothing but fun. I will need to do another calibration with Digital Video Essentials, setup the media server (more on that later) since I changed subnets, and do some tweaking but that’s what makes tech fun.

PS3 Slim: Highly Recommended.