I have voiced numerous criticisms of the PSP in the two and a half years I’ve owned it – there were the load times, mediocre music player, load times, short battery life, load times, compromised controls … oh, and did I mention the load times? Yet when I grabbed a single system to take on a weekend away it was the PSP, and when my boys asked which I preferred and I answered the DS Lite my wife was surprised and said “but you play the PSP much more”. So when Sony’s new ‘PSP-2000’ game system started appearing at retailers ahead of the announced release date, it is clear what happened – I made a beeline for Target and got myself the ‘Daxter Pack’ which included the new ‘PSP Slim’ as well as a copy of Daxter and a Family Guy UMD movie. Read on and get the answers to some questions that I had – how does it compare to the original PSP, is it like the change from DS Phat to DS Lite, and should you run out and get one tomorrow?

Introduction and What is in the Box

First off, let me answer the easy question before even getting to the details. If you already have a PSP and it is working well for you, just completely forget that Sony has a new model out. This is NOT the equivalent of the DS Lite for PSP gamers. You will not be drooling over it wondering how you lived with that clunky old PSP … it just won’t happen. At the same time I can answer the other obvious question – if you are looking to get a brand new* PSP, get the new PSP-2000. (*if you are not concerned about ‘brand new’ get a used one for a bargain!) You can read on for the reasons, but trust me – the new one is actually improved, if only in a mildly evolutionary sense.

Before getting into a detailed analysis of the system, what comes in the box? Not much – the Daxter Pack comes with the PSP, a 1GB memory stick, cardboard sleeves with the Daxter game and Family Guy video, the AC adapter and various manuals. Of course, given that the current $170 ‘PSP Core’ comes with ‘PSP System, Battery, AC Adapter’ that is quite a bonus … but compared to the package I bought over 2.5 years ago which contained a carrying case, hand strap, headphones with remote control, 32MB Memory Stick Duo, UMD demo disk and UMD Spiderman 2 movie … it feels lacking. It is still a pretty decent value – you pay ~$40 more for a base PSP than a DS, and $30 more gets you some pack-ins and enough storage for all game saves you will ever need as well as a decent amount of music and video and photo storage. As an interesting reference – I copied all of my saves from my old memory stick to the new one and despite having played over 100 PSP games (~90 GamerDad reviews alone) my save game folder was well under 50MB!

The PSP-2000 System – Hardware

So let’s take a look at the system itself – when you take the system out of the box, the first thing you are likely to notice is that it feels different in several ways. The first thing you will notice is that before you add the battery it is almost weightless. Even with the battery added in the feel is very similar to the DS Lite in terms of weight. This is due to several factors including a lighter battery, overall thinner design with less solid plastic wrapped around the system, and the replacement of the solid aluminum bezel with plastic. The lighter weight and more obvious plastic build makes you immediately concerned that the system is more fragile, but that wasn’t borne out on a basic ‘flex test’ and I wasn’t willing to try a ‘drop test’ to see which one could withstand more abuse. Suffice it to say that the light weight belies solid construction.

The next thing you will likely notice is the ‘look & feel’ – it feels really cheap at first touch. Since I got the silver model, it was already shinier and more glittery than the original black PSP, but there is more. This is somewhat difficult to describe and pretty subjective, but the system is more tightly molded around the internals, which is one of the things that helps make the system slimmer than the original. But that molding also makes the surface uneven in many spots, particularly right around the screen. Whereas the original PSP appeared to have a thin solid layer over the entire top surface making it all feel like a wonderfully formed uni-surface, the new system looks and feels like a plastic cover snapped on around a screen much like so many of the toys my kids play with.

Despite some cheap appearances, one touch of the system will quickly dispel those thoughts – the fit and finish of the system is superlative. The basic layout of buttons and interface elements on the new system is pretty much identical to the original PSP, with some minor and major differences. Apparently the location of the speakers on the original systemresulted in their being covered by thumbs, so they have been moved to the top of the face, above the D-pad and ‘shape buttons’. The D-pad has been changed to raise the surface and give it a better tactile feel. Some have criticized it as being slippery, but I don’t get that – it feels pretty much the same as my original. The ‘shape’ buttons are also raised slightly higher, but the analog stick is lower and tighter to the system. The feel of the analog stick is perhaps my favorite thing about the new system – I always worried about the amount of wobble and tilt in the old system, so having this one feel rock solid from the start and giving a great amount of feedback when moving is very satisfying. I have not put it through enough challenging paces yet to know if it will improve all of those crappy handling situations I’ve moaned about for two and a half years, but I can always hope!

The WLAN switch was moved to the top of the system (perhaps people were inadvertently switching it off?) and the memory stick cover was integrated in the bezel. The cover for the memory stick is flimsy compared to the original, but I think Sony estimated that most owners seldom remove their memory sticks from the system so having such a robust (and large) cover made no sense. The AC adapter input is in the same spot and uses exactly the same AC adapter as the original – which is great news for those of us with more than one charger (and a relief for those of use who got burned with the charger change for the DS Lite). There is one switch less than on the original – the door for UMD disks no longer has a release switch, instead it is magnetically help and requires a light lift to open.

The UMD door … this has *got* to be a space-saving design that allowed them to make the device thinner, because there is no other excuse I can think of for what has got to be one of the most ridiculous design elements on the new system. Perhaps this is the parent in my talking, but this thing has ‘disaster city’ written all over it. I had hoped that the pictures we saw were misrepresenting the way things would really work, but no – this thing has all of the grace and accuracy of a 10 year old put clothes away in an empty dresser drawer. If you want confirmation that Sony has no intention of chasing the under-13 crowd, look no further than the UMD drawer. In my years of being a Scout leader, CCD teacher, Destination Imagination manager, school volunteer and so on, I have watched kids of all ages mangle all manner of device because they were paying attention to everything but the task at hand. In the past year or so I have watched PSP’s start to filter into my kids’ friends’ hands, and my boys have been enjoying many games on mine as well. Note to Sony – kids will try to put a GBA or DS cartridge into the system upside down while not looking until their brother/sister/friend calls them stupid and smacks them upside the head. We have already seen examples of professional adults bending the new mechanism putting a UMD in backwards. This is a bad design, plain and simple.

The final new bit of hardware that has changed is that instead of having a dual output on the bottom left for audio and remote control, the outputs are now for audio and video output. As you might have noticed from the description of the contents, the cable for doing this isn’t included with any of the North American packages or the new PSP (rumor has it that EU versions will include the component cable).  So to take advantage of this functionality you need to buy the cable separately – I have found them at Amazon.com for ~$15 each.  Connect the Sony AV cables (component or standard video out) to your TV, hold down the Video button on your PSP for a bit and you will switch to external video mode. The system screen takes up your entire TV, as do movies and pictures, but games play on a much smaller subset of the screen. The quality is good, but not as good as a DVD in a standard DVD player. The thing that struck me was just the overall quality of the video produced from the system – the game output, despite being framed, is amazing and is miles beyond what was done with the old ‘GBA Player’ for the GameCube.

One thing you won’t see is that the amount of system memory has been doubled, which is supposed to help with load-times, web browser memory and some other issues. This is a change that

The PSP-2000 System – Software & Performance

Although I know that the PSP-2000 uses very much the same hardware as the original PSP, my initial impression was that the new system felt a bit more responsive and snappier than the original. I attribute that to the crispness of the buttons and general new feeling rather than anything concrete.

The new PSP comes with system software version 3.60 which has already been updated to 3.70 and will probably see 3.71 by the time I finish typing this sentence (note – 3.71 became available on Sept. 13th). This version is also available for the original PSP, but the hardware of the new version allows special features such as video out and … um … video out. It is possible that at some point the firmware will have further optimizations to make use of the additional RAM, but for now there is no difference in basic operations of the two systems.

In terms of basic functionality, the PSP has come a pretty long way in two and a half years. It has a fully functional web browser, much improved music and video playback functionality, the ability to play PSOne games from the PlayStation Store, the ability to ramp the processor to run games more efficiently, and now the ability to customize the display themes and to have music playing while viewing pictures.

But when it comes to the primary function – playing games – the system is unchanged. This core feature has drawn criticism because of long load-times as well as control and camera issues. Neither of those could be handled in what was known to be an update that wouldn’t alter the layout of controls, but the addition of system memory brought hope of improved load times for starting games and levels. Unfortunately, at least in terms of existing games there is just no difference. I was able to try out a few games I have two copies of, such as D&D Tactics, Dungeon Siege Throne of Agony, and Call of Duty Roads to Victory. D&D Tactics took the same time to load on both systems, and the minute-long loads for new adventure areas were the same. It still took about forty-five seconds to use the teleports in Dungeon Siege, and waking up in Call of Duty still takes about thirty seconds to wake up from sleep mode.

That is the biggest describable disappointment. If you poll gamers about ‘what is wrong with the PSP’, you will hear about the games – too many ports, not enough originals, no ‘killer app’; but mostly what you’ll hear is that the performance is sub-par for a handheld. I had detailed in a review that I once had five minutes to play a game while I was warming up my car and spent more than four of those watching loading screens. My biggest hope was that the additional memory would be used in partnership with some system-level device drivers to cut load times. I had also heard that the new UMD drive was much faster and that would also speed loading. Unfortunately neither of those things are true. We can now just hope that new games will be able to creatively use the additional memory to more efficiently stream content from disk more quickly. We have heard and seen an early video indicating that the much-anticipated Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core loads much more quickly on the new system, but even then we will have to do another side-by-side with a new multiplayer game to tell if the performance boost comes from efficiency alone or using the recently unlocked 333MHz mode – which is available for single-player mode only and has a considerable battery life cost. And what level of optimization was required to get that load-time performance? Is it something available to most companies or something requiring a massive effort that will mean that most games will simply show little decrease in load-times? Unfortunately, for all the buzz the new information provides it opens up even more questions.

The PSP-2000 System – Pros and Cons

+ Thinner
+ Lighter
+ More RAM means better web browser performance.
+ More RAM should mean shorter load times – and new games mightbe able to take advantage of this.
+ Screen looks brighter and crisper.
+ Video out.
– System feels cheaper and less sturdy.
– The UMD slot is an awful design.
– Web browser still not compatible with modern sites and still gives memory errors.
– Unable to see load-time differences on current games.
– Lousy value for a full-price upgrade if you already own a PSP.

Conclusions

The bottom line is this – the PSP-2000 might better have been called the ‘PSP Thin and Light’, because those are the only material changes. This is nothing like the massive improvements made from the original Nintendo DS to the DS Lite, but is much more like the shift from the original GameBoy to the GameBoy Pocket – same thing, smaller and lighter. My buying advice is clear – if you are in the market for a new PSP, get the PSP-2000. If you want to save a bit of money, you will soon be able to get first generation PSP’s much cheaper and not really be missing out on anything. And if the original PSP didn’t have anything of interest for you, the new one won’t sway you either.

Tags: Misc