Whew, it's a meaty beast!
Oh my God this thing is heavy. No really, this is a weighty bit of kit. Picking up the PS3 in its box for the first time makes everyone look like one of those mime artists pretending their suitcase is glued to the floor... it really is far weightier than you’d expect. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For me, a bit of meaty weight is what I want from something that has just cost me roughly a quarter of the average UK monthly income... I want to feel as if I’ve actually got something worthy of the asking price. The PS3 certainly feels like it’s packed full of expensive technology... either that or Sony are lining them with lead.
Sony have hit a good one with the styling too. Sure, the bottom half of the PlayStation 3, especially ‘round the back, looks like a version one PS2 with all those cooling vents etc, but from the front and top, you’ve got a sleek, modern styled casing that’s ever so slightly translucent, giving you a hint of the mechanics underneath (but only if you look really closely).
Click for larger imageCompared to the Xbox 360, and I’ll be doing that a lot in this review, the PlayStation 3’s styling makes Microsoft’s console look a bit dated, a bit like when the first coloured and styled PC cases came out, making all those beige boxes look dull and boring. Yep, even though the Xbox 360 is only a year old, it’s been out-glammed in the looks department by the PlayStation 3.
Click for larger imageSo, what have we got in this sleek, modern case with its silver highlights? Starting at the top left there’s a flap for all the memory card slots, where you can plug in a range of cards, including Sony’s proprietary MemoryStick™. Under this there’s four USB ports for plugging in er, USB stuff, and over on the right there’s the slot for loading discs, fronted by touch sensitive on/off and eject buttons. Round the back is the socket for hooking up the power, which uses a standard ‘kettle’ plug just like your PC. Unlike the Xbox 360, there’s no external transformer which, to my mind, is a far neater solutions than Microsoft’s grey brick.
Click for larger imageNow the Xbox 360 was notable for the removable hard-drive, letting you hook up a new drive or buy an Xbox 360 without a drive and add one later. The PlayStation 3’s drive is tucked away inside the machine, but it too is removable. Just pop open the flap on the side, undo a couple of screws and slide out the drive, which is a standard laptop drive format. I haven’t checked yet, (as I’ve been too busy playing) but it would appear that any laptop drive can be fitted in here, which would make replacing/upgrading easy and cheap.
Click for larger imageSpeaking of drives, you of course know that the PlayStation 3 comes with a Blu-ray drive as standard. This is very likely a large factor in the consoles price as these things aren’t cheap to manufacture. In fact, looking at the price of Blu-ray drives, the PlayStation 3 is the cheapest way to get Blu-ray in your home... and you can play games on it too. Of course, the HD content Blu-ray can deliver will only be of interest to those with a panel that can display a 1080 output. So you’ve got to feel sorry for those poor buggers who rushed off and bought an ‘HD ready’ panel for the World Cup and are now wondering why 576 lines isn’t a supported HD standard... never trust a bloody sticker is what I say... Especially when the PlayStation 3 sports an HDMI connection...
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