Just tried out my brother's friend's PSP. I played Twisted Metal and Need For Speed.
The system is too wide. When playing it my wrists were bent and it felt uncomfortable. But the shoulder buttons were surprisingly comfortable. Square button felt just as good as the others, just not as soft. But the square button is close enough to the screen that pressing it has my finger covering a bit of the screen. It feels solid, but it can creek like old wood. The DS feels more solid here.
The screen is looks great because it is big, but the response isn't. There is significantly more blur in the PSP than the DS. The viewing angles and contrast are better than the DS. No dead pixels on this screen as far as I could tell. However, as far as I could tell, it looks to display a progressive image unlike the DS. The PSP also sports a much cleaner picture than the DS due to it's dot pitch and progressive scan.
Don't scratch the screen. scratching the screen can be worse than a dead pixel, or a bunch of dead pixels. If you scratch the screen (this PSP had a scratch on it) the line will magnify and blur colors, meaning the scratch will kinda look like a rainbow and if you move it, the colors will move sort of like aliasing. Not cool. I know many of you must have a scratch on your CRT with that effect, like I do on mine.
The graphics are nice. Detailed textures and models, the filtering isn't too bad. But I experienced many instances of slow down that annoyed me. Smoke looks nice though and doesn't seem to take a hit in performance. Poly and texture aliasing wasn't annoying to look at.
Loading times didn't bother me.
I still think the biggest issues here are battery time and more importantly - Price. For 250 bucks. That's crazy. And all these crappy extra (I couldn't give a crap about) value stuff. Like those headphones. They hurt my ears, why would I want them. And even more importantly, the price for a decent memory stick. All this money collectively is much too much.
If they focused the PSP as a just portable gaming machine, it would have been better off battery and price wise. But this is no portable gaming machine, it is a mini-multimedia device. Maybe they should've released two versions.
Update: 6/25/05 My bro just got a PSP and there were no dead pixels on it, but there were many small screen defects. On the actual glass that covers the LCD. These tiny defects blur the colors into a rainbow effect. They were very small for me to care little about at the moment. But there were many spread around on the screen and who knows if there will be a situation where it will bother me.
I also watched the sampler disc which contained previews of movies that are in theaters right now. I was very surprised to see ghosting on it. There were many situations where ghosting was apparent and annoying while watching the movies. This isn't cool. Depending on the situation. The contrast between two objects and how fast they move. For instance. Deuce Bigelow: European Gigalow: He made a movement with his face where his nostrils showed ghosting against his nose. That's not cool. I believe this to be a new issue to list among battery life and overcharging(look below).
The enclosure that comes with the PSP bundle for the psp is pretty decent, it has some padding, it's not just a cloth enclosure. But you can still press some buttons through it. It seems like it is to protect from light and heavier scratching, but nothing more. Still a decent enclosure. I haven't tried the headphones. I wanted to try and put them in my ear, but after a few seconds I gave up and tossed them aside. The sampler sucked obviously and then there is the memory stick, not bad. I guess a 32MB memory stick can be kept aside to have all your game data while the other bigger memory stick can be used for... stuff. And finally the wrist wrap, hooks up to your psp so if you accidentally let it drop, it won't fall far from your wrist. As far as the value pack goes, I think that the enclosure, the wrist wrap and the memory stick are worth it, ooh, and the wipy to wipe your psp to perfection. The other items are just crap, which is only two items the headphones and the sampler. Obviously the japanese price of 185 dollars is a bit to cheap. They are overcharging the crap out of us.
The system is too wide. When playing it my wrists were bent and it felt uncomfortable. But the shoulder buttons were surprisingly comfortable. Square button felt just as good as the others, just not as soft. But the square button is close enough to the screen that pressing it has my finger covering a bit of the screen. It feels solid, but it can creek like old wood. The DS feels more solid here.
The screen is looks great because it is big, but the response isn't. There is significantly more blur in the PSP than the DS. The viewing angles and contrast are better than the DS. No dead pixels on this screen as far as I could tell. However, as far as I could tell, it looks to display a progressive image unlike the DS. The PSP also sports a much cleaner picture than the DS due to it's dot pitch and progressive scan.
Don't scratch the screen. scratching the screen can be worse than a dead pixel, or a bunch of dead pixels. If you scratch the screen (this PSP had a scratch on it) the line will magnify and blur colors, meaning the scratch will kinda look like a rainbow and if you move it, the colors will move sort of like aliasing. Not cool. I know many of you must have a scratch on your CRT with that effect, like I do on mine.
The graphics are nice. Detailed textures and models, the filtering isn't too bad. But I experienced many instances of slow down that annoyed me. Smoke looks nice though and doesn't seem to take a hit in performance. Poly and texture aliasing wasn't annoying to look at.
Loading times didn't bother me.
I still think the biggest issues here are battery time and more importantly - Price. For 250 bucks. That's crazy. And all these crappy extra (I couldn't give a crap about) value stuff. Like those headphones. They hurt my ears, why would I want them. And even more importantly, the price for a decent memory stick. All this money collectively is much too much.
If they focused the PSP as a just portable gaming machine, it would have been better off battery and price wise. But this is no portable gaming machine, it is a mini-multimedia device. Maybe they should've released two versions.
Update: 6/25/05 My bro just got a PSP and there were no dead pixels on it, but there were many small screen defects. On the actual glass that covers the LCD. These tiny defects blur the colors into a rainbow effect. They were very small for me to care little about at the moment. But there were many spread around on the screen and who knows if there will be a situation where it will bother me.
I also watched the sampler disc which contained previews of movies that are in theaters right now. I was very surprised to see ghosting on it. There were many situations where ghosting was apparent and annoying while watching the movies. This isn't cool. Depending on the situation. The contrast between two objects and how fast they move. For instance. Deuce Bigelow: European Gigalow: He made a movement with his face where his nostrils showed ghosting against his nose. That's not cool. I believe this to be a new issue to list among battery life and overcharging(look below).
The enclosure that comes with the PSP bundle for the psp is pretty decent, it has some padding, it's not just a cloth enclosure. But you can still press some buttons through it. It seems like it is to protect from light and heavier scratching, but nothing more. Still a decent enclosure. I haven't tried the headphones. I wanted to try and put them in my ear, but after a few seconds I gave up and tossed them aside. The sampler sucked obviously and then there is the memory stick, not bad. I guess a 32MB memory stick can be kept aside to have all your game data while the other bigger memory stick can be used for... stuff. And finally the wrist wrap, hooks up to your psp so if you accidentally let it drop, it won't fall far from your wrist. As far as the value pack goes, I think that the enclosure, the wrist wrap and the memory stick are worth it, ooh, and the wipy to wipe your psp to perfection. The other items are just crap, which is only two items the headphones and the sampler. Obviously the japanese price of 185 dollars is a bit to cheap. They are overcharging the crap out of us.
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