I’ve always had a soft spot for Sony’s revamped, slimmed-down consoles since the adorable PS one. All the Sony consoles I’ve owned were launch versions that are larger and more ridiculous looking than their eventual redesigns, which gave me massive FOMO, but I think my love affair with “slim” PlayStations has now arrived to an end with the new PlayStation 5.
If there was ever a PlayStation that needed a polish, it’s the PS5. Sony’s black and white obelisk is a gigantic console with a design with which you learn to live more than you come to love. The idea of correcting the design of the PS5 like Sony did with George Foreman’s grill style Playstation 3 It should be a success, but what we have now with the new $499.99 PlayStation 5 and the new $449.99 PlayStation 5 Digital Edition are some strange half-measures.
Design-wise, the new “slim” PS5 is actually smaller. Sony says the volume has been reduced by “more than 30 percent,” but up close and personal, I alternate between feelings of “Oh yeah, that’s a lot smaller” and “Okay, it’s smaller… But he’s still a big boy!” The pronounced curves and contours of the new PS5 may make you change your mind about its design minute by minute, depending on the angle you look at it from. It’s a byproduct of such fussy, busy (and, frankly, kind of ugly) design.
The slim model appears more refined than its larger, clunkier older brother, thanks to its shorter white covers, concave top curve, and panel lines that run across its sides and divide the glossy and matte finishes. However, the new PS5 also makes some really strange design decisions: the disc drive looks uniform further Like a strange growth protruding from the side of the console, the lack of ventilation fins on top makes its spaces look prototype or incomplete, and the cat-ear feet to hold it horizontally are a joke for a “stand.” ” including. “The console stands vertically on its own, however, if you want extra peace of mind that it won’t tip over, the vertical stand is now an additional purchase for $29.99. (The original PS5 had a convertible stand for horizontal and vertical positions ).
But the new PS5 at least has more than just Sony’s strange design choices: it now has 1TB of built-in storage (up from 825GB on the original) and two front-facing USB-C ports instead of one USB. -C and a USB-A. The only other tangible benefit is that the location of the removable drive eject button means we can finally Stop mixing up power and eject buttons that look too similar from the PS4 days.
As for the removable disk drive, I’ll give it to Sony for making it easy to remove or attach the drive without tools. (It’s even easier than adding an M.2 SSD to the PS5, which fortunately is still possible.) But I also ask myself: “Why?” Sure, someone with buyer’s remorse for their PS5 Digital Edition can simply get a disc drive and add it themselves, but they’ll end up paying more in the process since the Digital Edition now costs $449.99 and the additional drive costs $79. .99.
And setting up the disc drive requires an Internet connection, as first reported last month, even if the disc drive comes connected to your console. Setting up your console without internet? That may be unlikely for most people, but if you’re in that situation, you won’t be able to play anything until you connect at least once to Sony’s servers. You even get a warning that resetting your console to factory settings requires an Internet connection to properly unpair the disc drive, which begs the question of what happens if you sell or buy a second-hand unit that wasn’t unpaired. . (I contacted Sony with several questions about unit pairing and will update this post if I hear back.) I don’t see how this glorified DRM benefits anyone, and it can create some mess when it comes to preservation. years on the road.
The PS5 slim’s disc drive issue, combined with some of its more bizarre design decisions, makes for a somewhat confusing mid-cycle update. Aside from its smaller size, modest storage upgrade, and rearranged port selection, this update appears to be doing more for Sony than its customers by making them pay more for accessories. If you own an original PS5, there’s almost no reason to upgrade, and if you buy it today, there’s really nothing wrong with going for the “fat” PS5, at least until the thin one becomes the only option.
Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
