eViews - Playstation Portable (PSP)

Wrentham

Norfolk

Plainville

March 2006 - Arts & Entertainment

Joe Saia

Manufacturer: Sony
Price: $250
Launch: March, 2005

The Good: Stylish form factor, unbelievably gorgeous screen, fantastic graphics, impressive multimedia capabilities. One of the sleekest handheld gaming systems yet.

The Bad: Buttons can seem unresponsive and are too close to the screen, screen is extremely scratch-prone, horrid battery life, expensive memory cards

The PSP, or the Playstation Portable, has been one of the most highly anticipated pieces of gaming hardware. Sony struck gaming gold with its Playstation line of home gaming consoles, so when the company announced plans to make a handheld Playstation system, the industry was understandably excited. Aimed at trying to slice away a piece of the handheld gaming pie away from Nintendo’s successful Game Boy line, Sony has promised that its PSP will revolutionize gaming on the go. Despite suffering several delays, the PSP has finally begun to establish itself as a major player in the handheld videogame market. The PSP’s impressive design, powerful innards, and array of and multimedia features establish the system as one of the slickest and most impressive electronic devices ever released.

The first things you will notice when you pick up a PSP are its glossy finish and sleek design. Make no mistake; the PSP is one of the sexiest pieces of consumer electronic equipment available. The iPod established a market for trendy, stylish entertainment handhelds, but the PSP kicks it up another notch; its smooth curves, shiny black finish, and surprisingly compact form factor truly set it apart from the droves of boring, gray, and boxy appliances that have been flooding store shelves for years.

Despite the inherent impressiveness of the system’s overall design, perhaps the most striking part of the PSP is its incredible screen. Measuring 4.3 inches diagonally and featuring a 16:9, widescreen aspect ratio, the PSP’s little LCD wonder is truly a sight to behold. The screen is bright, sharp, and colorful, and its massive size is truly accommodating for gaming; the screen itself takes up about 75 percent of the PSP’s face. It is, hands down, the most gorgeous display to ever grace a handheld device, easily eclipsing those found on cell phones and Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. In fact, the PSP’s large, beautiful screen makes the Game Boy Advance’s look downright archaic by comparison.

Despite the initial appeal of the PSP’s shiny casing, there are some design flaws that detract from the unit’s functionality. The screen, while beautiful, is almost too out-there for its own good; it is scarily prone to scratches and attracts smudges and nicks constantly. In addition, because the screen takes up almost three-fourths of the unit’s face, there is little room for the system’s controls.

While the buttons are familiar and are laid out in the classic Playstation square-triangle-circle-x arrangement, they are placed way to close to the screen; I often inadvertently touch the screen with my fingers while mashing on the system’s buttons. Also, the buttons don’t seem nearly as responsive as other handheld systems. While this doesn’t detract too much from the overall gameplay experience, it does get annoying when trying to play more twitch based games that require faster button input.

Nevertheless, the PSP is absolutely loaded with features; it is one of the first true all-in-one handheld electronic devices that can handle almost any kind of entertainment, from music and movies to videogames. The system’s gaming capabilities are obviously the main attraction, and the PSP does not disappoint in this area. The amount of power packed into the PSP’s small shell is absolutely mind-blowing; the graphics are near Playstation 2-quality, and easily blow the Game Boy Advance’s aging 2D graphics out of the water. It is truly like having a home console in the palm of your hand. On top of its impressive graphical capabilities, the PSP boasts MP3 and video playback features. Users must buy Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Duo memory cards, which range in size from 32 MB to 2 GB, and can transfer and store music and movies from their computer via the PSP’s USB port. These extra multimedia features are slickly integrated and effective, and it is a joy to watch movies on the PSP’s bright screen.

While these media capabilities work well and are an excellent addition to the PSP’s long list of amazing features, they are limited by two factors; the expensive memory cards and the short battery life. Sony’s Memory Stick Duo format is grossly over-priced; a 512 MB card, the absolute minimum amount of space a user would need for any kind of substantial multimedia storage, costs nearly $100. The price steadily escalates as you beef up the storage capacity, with the 2GB cards costing more than $200! The prohibitive expense of the PSP’s storage format hamstrings the potential of the system’s multimedia offerings; the user has to pay an incredibly high price to utilize the system’s music and video playback features to their fullest. potential. On top of that, the PSP’s battery is one of the most short-lived power sources of any device on the market. For a system that features such impressive capabilities, the battery sure doesn’t hold up very long for the user to enjoy them; it usually provides about only 2 or 3 hours of continuous power. Anyone who wants to play the PSP on a long flight is sorely out of luck.

While the Playstation Portable may seem lacking in many key areas, it still is one of the slickest and most impressive pieces of consumer electronics ever released. The sheer breadth of the PSP’s feature list alone justifies the $250 dollar price tag; no other device on the market will offer you the kind of functionality the PSP will. While the battery life certainly is lacking and the storage media is expensive, both issues will be solved in time as Sony hammers out a better battery and lowers the price of its memory cards. The screen is beautiful, the graphics are amazing, and the design is incredibly slick. Anyone looking for a shiny new piece of technology to impress their friends should definitely pick up a PSP.

eView Rating: A-


Developed by Brad Hutchinson