Gadgetory

looking for gaming in your pocket that's like playing a console at home i'm brian tom from cnet.com and today we've got the light shining on the latest sony playstation portable the PSP slim is the lighter slimmer and sleeker update of the original PSP that's packed with features galore let's check out the design it's 19% thinner than the original and one-third lighter owners of the older PSP will feel the difference immediately but what's the first thing you notice it's got a huge 4.3 inch screen that dominates the device and everyone familiar with the playstation control layout will feel right at home the PSP also has the best graphics for a gaming portable hands-down it's really like having a playstation 2 in your hands there are plenty of killer titles like Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core and the innovative pot upon's but the PSP tends to cater to a more hardcore gamer this is a gaming machine but what makes it unique is all the other stuff it can do there's a ton so we'll try to get through most of it the PSP is a solid music player it supports dm3 mp3s wma WAV AAC and 8-track 3 files and album art too it also can display JPEG gifs and tips for photo viewing there's no surprise that the PSP supports video playback you can purchase UMD video discs but that never caught on because they're only for the PSP and selection is limited you can convert your own video onto the memory stick duo card or even use the TiVo to go software to convert recorded shows for viewing on the PSP you can also stream live TV using Sony's location free TV device it's like their take on the Slingbox now how about some Internet features that take advantage of the PSP's Wi-Fi there's the Remote Play feature that allows the PSP to turn your ps3 on or off remotely and stream its media content there's a built-in web browser that's decent and it's at least better than most cell phone browsers you have the ability to make Skype calls and you have access to over 22,000 internet radio stations now Sony continues to release firmware updates and each one is brought even more features so I don't see that changing and it's a constantly improving device so what do we still want to see improved on the hardware side the screen is great but it's still a plastic surface and it scratches pretty easily - scratch a few days after throwing it into my bag so you guys got to protect yours there's also video output on the latest PSP through the new AV jack on the bottom here and it's a great feature and video content can support the full DVD level resolution but games only output at the PS PS locked in native 480 by 272 res I'm hoping a firmware update will fix that in the future now game load times could be better and they've improved and I know it's the nature of the UMD format but I wish they were faster battery life could be better - sure it's a big screen but I got about 4 hours of gameplay before I have to go for recharge I probably noticed it a lot more because the crazy battery life on the DS Lite and a personal wish I wish it had 2 analog controllers instead of just one if they want us to play first-person shooter the right way that's the way to do it it could also really open up some new types of gameplay I'm Brian Tom for cnet.com and the sony playstation portable is not only a great gaming portable but it's a multimedia machine with features that take it beyond gaming