Ok Guys, sam9s is back with another review, My next one is on Sony PSP(not the slim, slim hasn’t even launched in India yet, though I am not sure about the grey market.) Before buying the PSP, as usual there was a thorough market research for similar kind of products, the only one in India was Nintendo DS. A general survey suggested that PSP is the thing to look for. The main few reasons for me to actually go for the gadget were.
- PSP is not only a good Gaming platform, but is a complete PMP(Portable media player),
with of course few inconsistencies. 2. The God of hackers have hacked and ripped apart the PSP hardware to its extreme limits. There is almost nothing we can’t do with a PSP with ease and cost effectively. So Finally I bought it from official Sony Dealer. Was it worth.go on keep on reading.First impression.
Absolutely amazing piece of hardware. The only color I had as an option was black. I
couldn’t take my eyes off for full 2 minutes when I first saw this gizmo, the shear built
quality takes your breath away. Screen is HUGE, no matter how many images you have seen
online but when you see the actual stuff, you seriously drop a jaw. It looks high tech,
complicated, and beautiful. Screen specs.is a 4.3-inch widescreen TFT LCD that displays 16.77 million colors at a resolution of 480-by-272. The thing to note is 16.77 million colors and wide screen, makes movie viewing a pleasure, and when I say pleasure, it MEANS pleasure. It’s absolute DOT clear, the colors pop, and black is very black. The first time you see one of these in action you will be impressed with it, no question about it(of course you needs to know how to get the conversion done to PSP format, as quality seriously depends on that.more regarding conversion later). PSP includes two built in stereo speakers which in my opinion are poor, they are toooo mild and meek. You can only do casual gaming with them, for proper gaming or movies/music plug in the headphones(not bundled in the India Pack). Listening with headphones changes the entire dimension. especially for games. It’s loud and sharp and you thoroughly enjoy your gaming with them. As far as the storage goes, no inbuilt HDD, the only thing you have is the Sony/ScanDisk Mem Stick, on which u store all you movies/Games/songs/Snaps and Save data. So it’s got to be huge. 2 GB does the trick but I still say atleast 4 GB(No mem stick is included in the India Bundle, original is hard to afford, get a fake one but you got to have your PSP with you to try out coz 1 out of every 3 does not work. I got the 1GB for 1100 but only the third one worked).
Sony decided to go with their own proprietary optical media called UMD(Universal Media Disk)
and when it was launched UMD was the only way for games but as I said hackers have hacked every bit of PSP hardware so now you can actually rip games from an UMD on to your HDD and convert it to an image ISO or CSO format on your Memory Stick and enjoy the game(ofcourse you have to upgrade from the standard default firmware to the custom one. How to do…. is something you need to surf and learn.Loads of tutorials available online). Now coming to the actual gaming.
The face has four buttons on the right hand side, a digital pad on the left, and two
shoulder buttons, just like the actual PS2 controller. They even added a nice little
joystick(its not exactly a stick but serves the same purpose) on the lower left hand side,
which works and feels good. The moment you pop up a game you actually realize the power of
PSP, graphics for games like Burnout Denominator and legend, NFS Carbon, GTA and Rigid
Racer are nothing less than stunning for an handheld device. For a moment you forget its a
handheld you are holding!. When playing Burnout Denominator the screen comes alive with
sunsets, detailed backgrounds and crashes. This level of gaming I've never seen on a
handheld, and there's almost no compromises made in terms of quality to fit them onto the
PSP. It's even better that it's in a wide screen aspect ratio — it barely looks like a
screen, more like you're looking out a window into the game world. It's awesome experience.
Coming to movies, as I already mentioned, movies are a pleasure to watch but u need to know
how to encode. The format for PSP here is .mp4, and the only codec supported is H.264 which
anyhow is far better than Xvid or DivX. Lots of applications available for encoding like
iPSP(Windows and Mac OS X), PSP Video 9(Windows), and PSP Ware(Mac OS X), but for me the
best turned out to be XviD4PSP. You get an amazing quality under a 500MB file(again you can find tutorials online).
Rest is MP3 and pictures. MP3 sounds as good as it can be if not better than iPod, but you
only have 4 preset EQs, which was a major draw back for me plus you can not listen to music and watch snaps at the same time.( Probably some plugin available for that but I havent come across one yet.) Any how still the PSP sounded very decent with acceptable results. Snaps viewing is also absolutely clear with zooming and panning. But as the screen has 16:9 aspect ratio, standard snaps does not cover the full screen you have to zoom it to view it full screen or convert them to PSPs native resolution.
Last but not the least, The PSP offers built-in 802.11b(Wi-Fi). You can play against
another PSP over a wireless LAN or the Internet. Up to 16 PSPs can also be connected to one
another directly in ad hoc mode for head-to-head contests. You can also browse internet on
the inbuilt Browser if an access point is available. There are n number of things you can do
with this wi-fi, just keep looking for those. tutorials;-)
Finally coming to the battry life. I read on the net that people were pretty skeptical about
the battry life PSP offeres but if you ask me, I was pretty satisfied.(probably because of
the pathetic battery life iPod offeres when playing a movie.) On an average I was easily
getting 4-5hrs at a stretch. With couple of breakups. 7-10 Hrs is easily possible(which is
far far far better than the pathetic 1.5-2 hrs of iPod battry life you get while watching
video.) One more thing good in PSP is that the battery pack is removable, so you can always
buy an extra pack incase you need one.
Putting the final thought. PSP is a must own gadget specially when you can have
loads of content for it for free, and there are other things you can do like customizing
your PSP with themes and wallpapers just like your desktop.
Last but not least is just how great the thing looks, you can'nt play with it without
getting the ooohs and aaaahs from the people around you. It looks like something from the
future, and you definately feel proud of it.
The price.I got it for 9000 INR Official sony price.(includes just the PSP and the charger)
