Ps3 Fat vs. Ps3 Slim: Problems with The Ps3 Slim?

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I have to admit this generation I jumped on board the Microsoft bandwagon upon the release of the Elite and I’ve loved it, when I heard about the loss of exclusivity for FFX13 I was completely overjoyed and it was a HUGE blow to them (Sony). I never liked the high price of the PS3 and the only games I really wanted for it was FFX13, MGS4 and MAG but now that they lost that exclusive, it made my decision to buy a 360 all the more sound. There was more games that I wanted on the 360 like Mass Effect, Gears of War, Dead Rising, etc. that at the time were not (and still not) available on any other console.

 Now with the recent price drop the PS3 became quite affordable and I could finally get MGS4 (picked up Limited Edition for $20 at local Wal-Mart J), well I have to say WOW. I really love the system, it’s super quite, heat is not an issue  and I can get in on all three systems now, if I had any one complaint that would be PSN being EXTREMELY SLOW. I have a 5mbit connection and I have tried both wired and wireless and same thing, something that my computer or even the 360 would download in less than 10mins takes 30 on PS3 or there about. Now this is and has been a constant complaint, but I guess when something is free you get exactly what you pay for which is not always a lot. Although an exception I guess is LIVE is still faster you just can’t play online without their Gold membership which is a whopping $4.61/month if you buy the 13 month subscription for $59.99 (or if you watch they occasionally go down to $49.99 or you get it in one of their bundles). I’ve had some minor random disconnects from online games but that also has to do with how the developers coded it too. Moving on.

The PS3 slim has been out for about a month now and ever since its release I was hearing about problems with the machine. One co-worker was adamant that the slim was one of Sony’s worst products and they changed the BD drive to a lower quality one over the original and of course this is what he had heard. I told him I was looking into it before I bought mine and his response was “Well it’s only been out for a short time so there’s nothing really on it yet” but yet he was able to determine that the drive was of lower quality? Go figure.

 Now I’m not here to discuss cosmetic problems, this article is meant to articulate any potential hardware issues that have arisen with this version of the PS3 so far. Now I would think that even after a month at least some problems would crop up here or there but nothing really so far.

 Well I’ve done some research on this and as of October 4th this is a few things I have found:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/27/playstation-3-slim-review/

 This is a review of the PS3 Slim and overall it’s a fairly positive review and comes recommended.

“Looking past any potential aversion to matte, anyone picking up a PlayStation 3 Slim is getting a significantly better product than an early or even mid adopter”

 The problem with the slim seems to come with the BD drive being a “touch” slower at loading movies (according to this review), some being as low as 2 seconds and as much as 10 seconds for the few that they tested. For me that is not a deal breaker, I’ll take the improvement gains over the minor loss in speed! As someone else had put it, it’s like watching a car go by at 100kph and another one go by at 96kph yeah there’s a difference but not that noticeable.

Blu-ray playback

The difference in power consumption is one big gain over the previous models as you can see below:

Noise, heat, and power consumption

The noise level is supposed to have decreased over the older models but as you can see bellow it’s not a real difference to make it really matter much except maybe when watching a movie. I have to agree that it is significantly quieter than my 360 is, I used to hate watching movies on it because it was so noisy. To be honest the first time I turned on my slim I wasn’t entirely sure if it was on, I had pushed the PS button and didn’t really hear it power up or anything (other than the beep), it wasn’t till I looked at the machine that I noticed the lights were on.

 “Also reduced is the noise of the machine, and in repeat tests, we stand by our initial results: it’s about 2 to 3 decibels quieter on average during gameplay, and up to 10 decibels quieter while watching Blu-ray movies — nothing to write home about while running missions in Infamous, but during the quieter, more suspenseful moments of Watchmen, there wasn’t any loud whirring noises this time to ruin the mood. And regardless, any iteration of the PS3 is gonna be remarkably quieter than the Xbox 360.”

 One thing that was also supposed to be an improvement was the slim was supposed to run cooler but according to this they did not have much luck with that as they both ran roughly equal in temperature. Although I’m sure this would vary from what you were doing and how hard the machine had to work too!

“The actual temperature hasn’t seemed to fluctuate, at least in our experiences: when placed side-by-side on the same shelf under near-identical situations, both consoles hovered at around 106 degrees Fahrenheit when running Folding@Home or playing a Blu-ray disc. Kind of a bummer, but with our electricity bill now marginally lower, guess we can’t complain too much here.”

http://www.homecinemachoice.com/reviews/new_reviews/ps3+slim+hands+review+why+new+console+both+better+and+worse+original+28+08+09

This review has some other points to make about the audio quality for CD player and DVD player part:

“We submitted the unit to our Tech labs, and in their opinion it measures worse than the original machine. While the console can spin CDs, it’s no replacement for a CD player. The original was actually surprisingly good in this regard, delivering only 137.9ps of measured audio jitter; it was let down mainly by issues relating to the cabinet and its rigidity.
But with this iteration there’s a notable increase in audio jitter, which is up to 461.7ps. And as a DVD player it’s poor, with a measured high frequency response of -6.14dB (@ 5.8MHz). ‘This is where the wheels fall off – a dreadful figure,’ bemoans the Lab report. But does anyone really care about DVD playback on the PS3 Slim? I doubt it”

 Conclusion
While there are (undeniably pedantic) caveats regarding the unit, I think there’s little doubt that the PS3 Slim is destined to re-energize Sony’s PlayStation brand. It’s priced right, looks great and performs well. In this regard, Sony has got its game groove back.

 I just finished watching a DVD and the audio sounded fine to me, so I’m guessing that machines will see the difference but we won’t. There was no complaints from me or my kids on this at all.

 This video targets the slim as being the issue for the game Uncharted, as you can read from the comments this problem is NOT related to the slim in particular it seems more that the Firmware would be the problem. This user has even mentioned that the game worked fine on his old system but again this could be related to firmware. There have been problems with V3.00 firmware apparently causing this game (along with others)to freeze occasionally. My friend has a regular PS3 and he was commenting just the other day that the game had frozen on him.

This may have been fixed with the 3.01 update as my friend has since updated his system and hasn’t complained about the game freezing on him.

  There are plenty of “reviews” out there comparing the old to the new and this is but a taste of anything that is considered to be a problem with this machine. You are always going to get defective models here and there, that is what the stores return policy is for or the manufacturers warranty. Now obviously I know I have not covered everything as I’m sure more will pop up over the next few months, but if you find some other site that shows a problem feel free post in the comment’s and if I collect enough data to warrant it, I will write a follow up article to this one at a later time.