PS4 Slim Review - Rerez

I'm a big fan of taking really large video game systems and making them a lot smaller and more compact. And one of the best companies that has been doing this over the past years has been Sony. You see Sony has taken they're much larger video game systems and turned them into more compact devices that were slimmer and easier designs on the eye. Stuff that took really good design techniques to take all those really big components and to kind of squish them into the smaller devices. And well Sony is back at it again with the PlayStation 4 slim. They sent one into us just for us to review and guys it's a PlayStation 4. Shock! They really didn't do much more other than the exterior of the system has now become a lot smaller and compact and it's got a couple of upgrades and features here and there but some stuff you may not have known about.

So first off I've got a sound bar for my TV and that sound bar plugs up directly through optical audio. My first PlayStation 4 has an optical audio out that I use all the time for PlayStation games and movies and stuff like that and the new PlayStation 4 slim lost the optical jack. So now you can't use optical audio and it actually makes that optical audio bar that I have completely useless which is unfortunate. There's a way for me to actually take the system sound coming out of the HDMI port, throw it up on the TV and then looping it through the bar but I really like the direct connection straight from the optical audio jack itself. And losing that kind of irritated me a bit. But see I understand why they took it out while making it smaller they had to remove something and that was the one thing they removed and I assume most people out there don't actually use optical audio. If losing the optical audio jack is kind of important for you and you really did need that optical audio jack then just get an older PlayStation 4 because they're pretty much the exact same thing. The exterior on it now is a little bit more rounded off and honestly I kind of like the design of this one a little bit more than the original PlayStation 4 and I know a lot of other people out there probably don't agree with me but I like softer, rounded edges. Things that are harder set with sharp edges don't really impress me from a design standpoint. Plus the new slim model has physical buttons which I'm a really big fan of. And it also has a new kind of controller design where the light source from the back kind of shines through on the front of the controller. This way if the controller color changes you can actually see it now and I know a couple people out there were upset because they said it would be really distracting where you'd be playing a game in the darkness and you keep seeing the light. But after I've played about two or three hours of Uncharted 4 I didn't notice the light source anymore. So for people out there that might be worried about this being this really gigantic light source you don't have to worry about that.

One thing I will say though is that you might be on the fence at home right now thinking about buying a PlayStation 4 slim but you already own a PlayStation 4. Well don't get one. There's really no reason to upgrade. The systems are essentially identical. This PlayStation 4 slim is seriously for people out there that want to get a new system, somebody that just hasn't owned a PlayStation 4 in the past, and this is a great way to get into it. In fact I would recommend getting this system over the original simply because it's just a little bit more compact. But I will say this the PlayStation 4 slim could have been something that a lot of us would have wanted to upgrade to if it had a larger hard drive. Now for most people out there that have a PlayStation 4 you know that the actual hard drive in it is very easy to replace. And the PlayStation 4 slim that's no different you can replace the hard drive on that as well too. But for me I kind of like having a larger hard drive bundled in with the system because if you're putting that money into buying the console I'd rather the hard drive just be bigger. And there are people out there that probably would assume this isn't a big deal if you're getting games on discs but it kind of is because every game you get on disc you still need to install so it does take up quite a bit of space. For me personally I just prefer much larger hard drives, as big as you can make them, and as long as Sony is releasing 500 gigabyte hard drives on their systems well it kind of doesn't become something I want to recommend people upgrade to. Especially if they already own a PlayStation 4. So to round everything off the PlayStation 4 slim is a pretty awesome video game system. It does everything the original PlayStation 4 does except for optical audio but it does all of that in a much smaller package which is awesome. Because really that's something that Sony has always been damn good at and I'm really happy to see them coming back and making much smaller systems again.

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