Digital Trends

Sony PSP

March 27th, 2005 | by Brandon King

We were struck by the PSP's remarkable similarity to the Sony HMP-A1 portable video player in terms of design. The PSP uses the same high gloss, smudge-prone case featuring a black and silver color scheme. The unit itself is slightly too big for the average pants pocket, but fits nicely in a suit coat's inner pocket. The PSP uses Sony's proprietary media format called the Universal Media Disc (UMD), which are inserted into a spring loaded compartment in the back of the unit. This might be annoying for case makers who want users to be able to play while in their case, while still being able to swap out games. The left side hides a Memory Stick Duo Pro slot, and a switch for turning the WLAN on or off manually. The Memory Stick Duo slot will accept the older MemoryStick Duos in addition to the new Pros, and it should be noted that any Duo can be converted into a regular Memory Stick by using an available Sony adapter. The top edge of the PSP has a USB mini port for PC connectivity. The power button is along the lower right side, and can be set to a ‘Hold' position to deactivate the buttons when watching movies or listening to music. The in-line remote on the headphones will still function if the PSP is in Hold mode. The interesting thing is that all buttons on the surrounding edge are solely hardware focused.

The Sony PSP Value Pack

All system and universal buttons are along the bottom front edge. This includes Volume +/-, Home, Brightness, Sound, Select and Start. Home returns you to the PSP dashboard during game play or while watching movies. The brightness button toggles between 4 levels of brightness for the backlight. Holding down the Brightness button turns off the backlight, which is also turned off by inactivity after a user defined amount of time. The Sound button toggles between 5 equalizer modes — Heavy, Pops, Jazz, Unique, and Off. The equalizer is disabled during game play, and only is active when using headphones. Holding the Sound button down mutes the PSP during all modes.

The front of the unit sports a full PS2 style controller, including upper left and right triggers, and an analog thumb pad. The main attraction of the PSP is the large, beautiful display. This display is easily the best quality we have seen on almost any portable device, gaming or otherwise. It offers bright, vibrant colors, with no smearing of ghosting during game or action sequences. Situated on the bottom left and right are the stereo speakers, which are surprisingly clear for their size. Indicators for MemoryStick access, WLAN activity, Power status and Hold status are situated at the bottom left and right edges.

Sony USA is only selling the Value Pack, which contains a neoprene slip case, 32MB Memory Stick, power adapter, Spiderman 2 movie UMD, and cleaning cloth. The case is nearly useless for anything other than protecting the casing from scratches when it is thrown in another bag. There's no room for any of the included peripherals or UMDs.

The bundled headphones with inline remote plug into the bottom left. The ear buds actually produce some very good sound. They're a little harsh on the highs, but overall not bad at all for bundled gear. The cord is short, and intended to be used with the in-line remote

The PSP also comes with a wrist strap, which like the bundled headphones, is white for some reason no one really understands. All we could think was that it was a desperate attempt to piggy back on the fame of the iconic iPod headphones. But there is certain brilliance in that reasoning. The white cord is very noticeable, and we could easily see strangers striking up a conversation, one with an iPod, the other a PSP. “What's on your iPod?” “Actually it's a PSP.” Voila! Client driven marketing to the exact same segment Sony is targeting.