Sony PSP Review

Posted on 2005-04-30 01:19:48 by LSDsmurf

Somewhat regarded as the next Walkman, the Sony Playstation Portable gives a new face to mobile electronic devices. The PSP comes with a superb 4.3-inch LCD that is amazingly clear. I can assure you that the cost of this little device is less than what it costs Sony to manufacture them. Compare the PSP with any handheld device and you'll see what I mean. Pitted against a Pocket PC with roughly the same functionality and a 333MHz processor could easily cost double the ticket price for the Sony PSP. This strategy is common among consoles, when the Xbox was first released Microsoft realized a loss on every unit sold. But these losses are all made up on the back end by revenue from games and movies.

At this time of launch, the PSP only had a handful of game and movie titles available. Of which I've only tried Ridge Runner and Untold Legends. One being a first person track racing game and other a role playing type fantasy game. The graphics are spectacular and you can definitely tell the evolution in technology with all the options of what can be done in these newer games in comparison to the old game boy advance and other portable gaming devices. No longer are the portable games stripped down, they are all full featured games that are the equivalent of those on full sized consoles and PC's.

UMD media is the format used for movies and games on the PSP. Its like a miniature DVD, capable of holding a full game or a movie. UMD's have a storage capacity of 1.8 gigabytes, which is a pretty sizable amount considering CD's only hold 650-700 megabytes. But a full sized DVD can pack in 4.6 gigabytes of data, so this means they have to compress the movies down to fit on 1.8 gigs. Obviously on a 4.3 inch screen you wont notice a loss in picture quality. The other removable storage available is the Memory Stick PRO DUO. I have read of some people buying the adapter meant for a Cellular phone, plugging it into the MemoryStick port on the PSP and getting it to read other formats of MemorySticks!

Built into the PSP is full capability of connecting to a Wireless Access Point. You can assign static IP address or have it pull one down from your Wireless 802.11b/g router. I did notice that it isnt able to connect using WPA-PSK, only WEP (wired equivalent privacy) or WAP's configured in permiscuous mode with no security. Aside from that, anyone in the same range as your WAP can join in with their PSP playing the same game or you can join over the internet. Another thing that is unknown to many is that the PSP is capable of browsing the web! Its sort of a hidden feature of one of the games and you sort of got to do some hacking to get it to work but it is possible. Meaning that eventually they could probably release some kind of mainstream browsing software for the PSP. This opens up all kinds of possibilities, especially if it is able to support JAVA. Customized applications, business apps, or whatever you can be hit over the internet.

With the built in USB port, the possibility of having a mouse and keyboard along with unlimited options on external devices exist. The only thing that I don't see is external video output. Maybe one of the ports is capable of transfering what is displayed on the built in screen, but if one exists I'm not aware of it. I would love to be incorrect on this. From the looks of it, the PSP has a ton of room for expansion accessories. This little gem packs in a lot of value, definitely worth every nickel!



Link: Sony PSP



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