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 - Worthy upgrade to the PSP-1000Although the new Slim looks very similar to the PSP-1000, the slight differences makes the Slim a worthy upgrade. You can feel the weight difference the first time you pick it up; it feels like a feather compare to the bulky PSP-1000. Here are the pros of the new slim: -Faster load times for the UMD -Sharper and bright screen compare to fat -Love the new directional pad, you can actually do some half circles and quarter circles -White is very classy and no fingerprints! I love the new PSP and would largely recommend it as a second PSP or a first time user. Rating:  - Sony Star Wars PSP PackEvery other PSP package includes the Sony memory stick required to save games. The Star Wars package does not. To me it's a major slap in the face to customers and I am returning mine and I will continue to use my old PSP. Rating:  - Some Things Others May Not Have Mentioned YetOk, I've read most of the reviews here on the "new" PSP Slim and I just want to chime in with a few observations of my own others may not have mentioned yet and also some of the things I desperately wanted to find out before I made my own purchase. Note: I've owned the original PSP for nearly 2 yrs now so I have a lot of experience with both models now. First of all, I know a lot of people knock the PSP in geneal, I used to always hear Gamestop employees dissing it compared to the DS all the time, but I'm so glad I didn't listen to them. I simply love my PSP!!! As time goes by I have only learned to appreciate it more and more. I must admit I am a pretty diehard Sony Playstation apologist at this point, I might as well be on their payroll, but what can I say? They had me hooked with the PS1. By now everyone has pretty much stated the following unanimously about this new model: Yes, it i super lite compared to the original. Yes it does seem more cheaply made and fragile. Yes the new UMD door is more flimsy, Yes the new card slot cover is odd and delicate. And all of these comments I read before making my purchase made me slightly apprehensive, but now that I've owned my new slim one for a while now let me say this: At first the super lightness throws you off, but after a week or so you totally adjust and you can't imagine it being lighter again. If you try to go back to your old PSP later, it feels like your going back to your original Gameboy or some cell phone from the late 90's. The old PSP seems like a brick after you get adjusted to the slim. The new UMD door is kinda flimsy, but if you treat it kindly it is cetainly aduquate. Same goes for the memory stick slot cover, but just be gentle and you should have no problem. That being said, these two fragile parts are the primary reason I would not ever recommend the slim PSP for a child who is too young to take care of precison equipment yet. This is the 1 and only major reason I think the DS has any sort of advantage over the PSP, this and the game selection for the kiddies. But if you're a more serious gamer and somewhat of a gear head, the PSP is totally the portable choice for you (more on this later). Now, as far as the new upgrades: I haven't played all of my old games yet, but I could swear while playing a game, the UMD has to get accessed a lot less now. Depending on the game I can be playing for several minutes now w/o the disk ever spinning. Although the old PSP had those 2 little speaker holes near the bottom on the front, they were actually faux! The sound actually emanated from the 2 little holes on the bottom on the silver trim. This practically made no sense so now that the speakers are truly positioned in the front, this makes the sound somewhat louder and more direct, however the max volume setting is still somewhat lower than you might like unless you are in an utterly quiet location. One thing that I was really, really hoping they would remedy when they came out with a new PSP was a second analog stick on the right side. This is sadly the 1 last feature I feel the PSP is still sorely lacking. Too many games, esp. of the 1st or 3rd person shooter type suffer greatly by having to improvise with watered down control schemes which hampers 2 of my favorite PSP games: SOCOM and this new SW:Battleground which came with my Slim (more about Battleground later). Seriously, how hard would it have been to add another stick? Now the ability to connect to a TV: This to me was the primary selling-point for me to upgrade my PSP going in. In some ways it's the ability I always wanted for my portable systems going back to my first Gameboy, but again sadly, Sony fell somewhat short of the mark. This was a bittersweet upgrade, let me explain further: Ok, you should know by now that they sell composite (5 plug) cables to hook up your PSP to your TV and more traditional RCA (3 plug) types. This is a mixed back of confusion b/c if you buy the RCA's you can project everything from your PSP to your television (pics, music, video from your memory stick) BUT... (BIG But) You can't play your PSP games or UMD movies on your TV using ONLY the RCA cables. Now, on the other hand, with the composite cables you can view and do all, but alas things are still not quite "perfect". Viewing the cross media bar (XMB) and videos comes out just fine. (Surprisingly the UMD movies blown up actually look about 90 - 95% as good as an annomorphic DVD played with on a progressive scan DVD player on a HD monitor). Also somewhat surprising to me was that you have screen setup options for your tv ratio (4:3 or 16:9) plus progressive or interlaced mode. (BTW, if you set it to 4:3 mode it will display everything in letterbox on your more "square" TV screen.) BUT again all is not well. When you surf the web, which is actually pretty cool on your TV, You get a small black border all the way around your viewing field, which is manageable, I guess, because it doesn't take away too much. But... when you play a game, I still don't quite get the faux pas miscalculation found here. For some odd ridiculous reason, not only does the machine automatically give you a lame black border around the screen area, but, and this nearly unforgivable, it distorts the screen ratio. Everything is sort of stretched and squashed. This applies whether you have your screen settings set to 4:3 or 16:9. This absolutely makes no sense especially if you have a modern 16:9 widescreen television; they should have just left the ratio the same. And even if your TV is like mine and you can alter the stretchiness of your viewing ratio, the PSP displays the screen (while playing games only) in such a way that no matter what your picture will be distorted. Either too wide or too skinny. I mean, I guess many of you out there would care less about this at your home, because it doesn't really hinder playing your games in any way, but these sorts of issues can simply make me lose my mind. This is the primary reason I have to rate the new slim at a 4 vs. a 5. I am praying that one day in the near future they will release a network update that will somehow solve this screen ratio problem. And yes, blown up, the graphics appear nearly, but not quite as good as PS2, but certainly better than the old PS1. And still, I feel sorry for those of you who don't have composite connections on your TV b/c you're S.O.L. if you want to play your games on TV. Also, what if I want to share my pictures with someone at their place and they don't have an extra composite connection or high-def TV? Do I have to go out and purchase and carry around with me a second cable just to have the much more common RCA configuration? Now the game that comes with this white edition, and BTW, don't forget to get a 1GB (or larger) Memory Stick Duo because your going to need one. Star Wars Battlefront Rogue Squadron is one of the best infrastructure multiplayer online games for the PSP. Only SOCOM can rival it if you're into shooters, but I must confess I haven't played all of the PSP online shooters out there so there could be others. SW: Battlefront II for the PSP plain out sucked because of its lack of online and campaign modes, but this edition is more of the real deal. A couple of nitpicks by me though are: I am used to playing shooters like Warhawk on my PS3 now and these super tiny claustrophobic levels in Battlefront:RS somewhat take away from the fun. Combine this with the very simplistic level design and you start to have a lot less strategy options when battling others. You just basically run around and face people up face-2-face and whoever shoots faster or has a more powerful gun will win. The ability to lock on to targets is fine, but this control scheme is much more finely tuned in a game like SOCOM for the PSP. The lack of the ability to lock on to your enemies in SW:BFII for the PSP made the experience utterly dreadful when trying to shoot your targets. Also, in a game like Warhawk I am spoiled with the fluid spot-on controls of your avatar. In Rouge Squadron this is something to be desired. Moving your character around the playing field is a somewhat jerky affair and the turning around to do a 180 to look behind you seems to take entirely too long and is hardly smooth. But hey, for the PSP I still think it's a more than worthy attempts at multi online play. 1 last thing, let me reiterate for those of you who have never owned a PSP to date. Even though I have a computer for the web, and a PS3, and an iPod, I still use the heck out of my PSP for pics, games, and music on the go. Also as a very convenient podcast catcher/RSS feed handler, if you're into that kind of thing. I never knew I'd be using my PSP so much in this way before I got one. This is one thing my iPod can't do and something I rather not clutter around with on my computer if I don't have to. And although I haven't quite found the ideal way to capitalize on this function yet, you can pair up or marry your PSP with your PS3 and you can actually view everything saved up on your PS3 at home on your PSP anywhere you can get a broadband connection!!! Although you can't play your PS3 games by this method or watch you DVD's or Blu-rays yet, I still think they will make better use of this ability in the future.I really hope all of this info in my review helps you all out there because it's the review I wish I could have read before I made up my mind to buy the new slim PSP. Rating: - How to lose a few pounds and look fabulousWell, it seems that the PSP has gotten itself a tan and became a bulimic, because this new model looks sleek and slim. Yes, it wouldn't be a "PSP slim" review w/o saying all the compliments that forces some girls to be anorexic. It does, indeed, feel a bit lighter and it's definitely thin and proportional on all corners. It's also quite glossy as both sides of the "PSP slim" are coated with the same material used on the iPod, which means that my OCD self is gonna have the pleasure of cleaning off the fingerprints and dirt that can be easily appeared on the PSP from any light source, every time that I finish playing it; those complaints and pluses are quite similar to the "DS Lite", which may be the reason Sony is releasing this new model. The potential hand-markings are one of the reasons that I bought this specific package, the Ceramic White; the color makes any marks barely visible. Granted, I'm not to hangin' on the Darth Vader display on the battery cover, but hopefully in the future some shop will sell white battery cover replacements for the Slim w/o Hayden Christensen's dark side. Packaging-wise, not only does it include the system but the new "Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron" game. I haven't actually play the game, and I don't plan to. Personally, I hardly think Star Wars games are any fun (besides the Lego ones), so why should I test the new system on a game that isn't to my taste where I have other games in my roster to try? It would've been nice if it included a 1 gig memory stick like in the "Daxter" pack, but I guess a new game like this would justify the equal 200-dollar price, I suppose. Despite a few adjustments on the PSP's ergonomics (the speakers moved up and you can just pop open the UMD slot instead of sliding the open lock), I was pretty much in familiar territory with this new portable system. While the second analog nub is still nonexistent, the button layouts are still pretty comfortable to deal with. The people say that the D-Pad is slightly-more responsive and the colors on the LCD are slightly-more vibrant than the older model, but those are just that: slight. Those differences, to me, aren't all that noticeable. The menu-system hasn't changed much as expected, but there are a few things to notice. There's an option to recharge the battery by USB. Recharging the battery by USB may seem like a good idea if it wasn't for two things: one, I have to go under "USB Connection" mode in order for the PSP to charge, which means I can't do anything with the PSP while it's charging; two, I can just use the USB recharging cable (which connect from the PSP's DC slot) to charge it and not deal with these limitations. There's a connection display mode, which is a new option to display the PSP onto the TV from a slot that also works as a headphone slot; I don't have the PSP component cable to try this new option, so I can't say anything about it. There's also another option that I'm most intrigued about: UMD Cache. With the option, in simple terms, it makes the games load faster up to 30%...so they say. I tried this option on an imported Korean game, "DJ Max Portable 2" because I remember how long the game takes to go from the menu to the gameplay. It took 13 seconds to get to the gameplay on my old PSP, and when I tried the game on my PSP slim...it took only 12 seconds. WOW, A ONE-SECOND DIFFERENCE! THE RESULTS ARE AMAZING! In all seriousness, there may be some PSP games that load quickly on the PSP Slim, but from a few games that I tried, the load-time differences aren't all that dramatic. But maybe those games are before the technology made for the Slim, so maybe the UMD Cache will be useful for future games like "God of War: Chains of Olympus". That's about as hands-on as I can get for the PSP Slim. Should you get it? If you hadn't already own the old PSP, go right ahead. For the old-model PSP owners are concerned, the PSP slim has some minor interesting changes and additions, but the problems still remain; the battery still runs low, and as said before, this really needs a second analog stick; having UMD cache is a nice addition, but for the rest, I don't think the improvements aren't as big or essential as its other portable competitor. As far as these people are concerned, they don't need to upgrade for the Slim model. Hey, I didn't want to get the Slim in the first place. I was quite fine with my old, white model, but an unfortunate circumstance has occurred. My old PSP had a damaged memory stick slot, so I can't insert the Mem Stick Pro properly to save or load my games. Since I didn't have the knowledge to repair this kind of damage, and being that my PSP is imported my warranty was already shot on the first day, I had to beg my parents to get the new Slim that matches the color of my now-disposed portable system. So I got the new model out of chance. At least it's a good replacement, and by having this new hardware I can face any potential uses this Slim model can and will provide. Rating: - great star wars slim redesinged PSPI bought my new PSP at the store. I opened it and I saw the PSP not that different but it was wight. Then when I held it in my hand I saw that it was 33% lighter than the old one, and 19% thinner. Sony weren't lying. The star wars video game that it comes with is 5 out of 5 game. I loved the every part of the game. If you like star wars you should get this but if you don't have any money you should get the core black one or if you don't like star wars you can get the silver one which comes with the silver PSP , daxter , cables to charge, family guy movie, 1 GB psp mem stick. There is one thing you need to know if you want music or pics, video you will need a $17 software to use it that is the bad part.
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