Review of the Play Station Portable

I brought home the PSP last week. I knew I only had it for a week, so I intended to come in and play with it before the rest of my family took it away. Every member of my family crowded around as I set it up. (The dog left when she realized that it was not food.) I proceeded to load in the Spiderman 2 game, and right away, I noticed some major improvements from my current handheld, the GameBoy SP. The first major difference is the screen. This is the first handheld game system that I have used with graphics as sharp as a console game.

Things I liked about the system:

• The picture clarity
• Screen size
• Easy to use controls
• Sound
• My son volunteering to clean house so he could try it

After using it for an hour or so, I found that my hands were aching a little. The upper buttons in the right and left hand corners were a little awkward to work with.

Then I passed on the game to other family members, and got the following feedback:

From my twelve-year-old son, Matthew:

Good points:

• Great Graphics!
• The analog joystick - better than the direction pads on the older systems
• 4 levels of backlight
• Built in memory
• Built in MP3 player
• Able to play against other people without cords
• Watching movies on it
• Fast to charge
• If you leave a game, you come right back to the same spot.

Dislikes:

• Cost - can't afford one on a whole years allowance
• Grip - hard to hold while playing for a long time
• It should have a hard cover to protect the screen

My husband's viewpoints:

Likes:

• Most exciting new gadget since my Axim handheld
• The disks are in a protective cover
• The battery life was impressive for what it does, I got about 6 hours of video play
• Like the new analog button/joystick
• If it also had PDA capabilities I could see replacing my handheld computer
• If I took a train to work, I would love to have this to watch movies and play games.
• Recharge time is very quick
• The graphics are better than on my laptop
• The menu screens are clear and easy to work with
• All sorts of power saving features
• When you plug it into your computer with a USB cable, transferring music over is seamless
• The memory card will work with the current Sony computers

Dislikes:

• I am afraid of dropping it, it is incredibly expensive and doesn't feel well as well protected as my sp
• It is a fingerprint magnet
• It is to expensive to hand to a 12 year old as a toy
• I wish it came with a USB cable (It did work with the one for my digital camera.)
• It seems like it would be easy to break the door to put the games into
• The hand strap seems pointless, I would be unlikely to use it, this is to expensive to just dangle off your wrist
• I would prefer to see it come with a hard case instead of a soft one
• I would like to see it accept songs in the wmf format

At this point, my husband would like to buy one, but I want to wait for the price to come down. For me to be really interested, I would want to see a greater acceptance of the disks as a standard movie format before I buy it. I do not like to buy DVDs; I prefer to rent them. By the end of the year, my husband will probably own one, but it is very unlikely that my children will. (Though Matt is talking about trying to find a job this summer to buy one for himself.) Overall, it is the most exciting new handheld system I have seen.