The Sony Playstation 3 Slim is Sony's latest release of its star games console.

The Sony Playstation 3 Slim is Sony's latest release of its star games console.

The Slim is pretty much the same as before, but the design has gone under
a transformation.

As said above, the design has been changed from what it was. 33% smaller, 36% lighter
and 34% less power consuming that the previous version, the PS3 Slim is much more
efficient than it was.

Sony have also changed the touch-sensitive buttons to standard push-buttons, and have removed the master power switch at the back of the unit.

One of the changes that I dislike is the remove of the PS3's stylish gloss
that used to make the console look quite desirable. Also with the "Playstation 3"
writing changed to just an etching of the PS3, the Slim has turned quite,
well, dull.

Gone also is the nice silver chrome trim on the PS3 Slim. Maybe the simplifying
of the design has been Sony's attempt to make it cheaper to manufacture and sell,
following the losses they made with the sales of some of the old PS3s.

Fortunately, the two USB, HDMI, AV multi-out, ethernet and optical out ports on the
Slim remain as they were on the last version. Luckily there were no sacrifices made
there. The big power cable has been slimmed down to a two-pin cable.

There's still a BluRay drive on the Slim, which will let you play your movies in
a brilliant 1080p of quality! It can now also bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD
Master Audio to a receiver through HDMI.

Another problem with the PS3 Slim is its CD and DVD playback; the audio
jitter when you play both formats has increase massively. Luckily this
seems to be overshadowed with the DVD upscaling power the Slim has. You'll
be gaping at how amazing the DVD quality is too much to notice the slight
sound defects.

This all leads to the question; should I purchase the PS3 Slim? Priced at almost 250, it
is quite well priced in Sony standards, yet in the perspective of the Wii or 360, it may
seem a little overpriced. However, you should take into consideration the fact that the
Playstation 3 Slim does play BluRay discs, and many of the BluRay players cost more
than the Slim. If you do have the money, and are after a great console, the Slim will
be a great console for you. However, if the Slim seems quite expensive, and you already
have the "fat" PS3, there's no real justified reason why you should fork out the money
to upgrade.