Yes, we can hardly believe it ourselves, but Sony came a-knockin' at
our door today, and we were more than willing to answer. The PlayStation 3 Slim
is now official in-house, and it's a matte-laden beaut. Enough chitchat
-- live vicariously through our unboxing!
Update: Some details for clarification. The buttons in
the front are now physical and actually "click" in to function. The PS
logo above the disc drive does not rotate for vertical use, and yes,
the hard drive is swappable
-- as you can see from the pictures, there's a screw on the bottom,
hidden by a panel, that lets you take off part of the front for access.
We've also lined it up against our standard, fatty PS3, and we gotta say, it's noticeably lighter.
Update 2: Here's a more thorough comparison between
the slim, the original, and the Xbox 360. Some people were asking about
the texture of the matte finish, and compared to Microsoft's console,
it's just a teensy bit rougher (and on that note, about the same
weight, too). It's still just as glossy as the original on the sides,
however. We still gotta compare the noise of the slim, stay tuned!
Update 3: While our tests were far from thorough, the
initial results from our quick-and-dirty decibel ratings show some
promise. With a baseline of 49 decibels, the Slim averaged 53 to 56 db
when in use / playing a game / installing data (in this case, Metal Gear Solid 4),
compared to the 55 to 58 db of the original. Blu-ray movie playback is
where it becomes noticeable, as the slim peaked for us at 60 db when
the original was doing 70 db running the same disc.
