I got Slim last night and put it through the paces comparing it to CECHK (65nm CPU / 90nm GPU) 80GB. I mostly focused on measuring game and movie loading speeds (because that Engadget measuring test got me worried), and fan noise output.
- But to start with, the looks, because its what surprised me the most. Looking at those official promo shots, I couldn't escape the feeling that Slim was made cheap, very cheap in fact. Rough plastic, cheap looking light gray plastic buttons for eject and power, etc. The feeling I know a lot of people shared. Well, someone in Sony should have a serious talk with person making those promo shots, because they couldn't possibly be more deceiving. Not only are those power/eject buttons not made of cheap gray plastic, but they are made of a nice brushed metal, with soft white glow coming through the etched symbols, and the buttons are situated on a great looking dimmed mirror metallic reflective surface, with small, unobtrusive LEDs shining next to them. What I thought was by far the ugliest detail on the new console, turned out to be the 'beauty spot' piece, where obviously money was spent, and made sure that it looked really good. Much better in fact compared to the same area on the older PS3s. This combined with the more slender look, makes for a really nice looking console - and even the rough plastic on the top cover is nor bad or cheap looking looking at all. Situated vertically, and under a small angle so that you can see the portion with buttons, while at the same hiding the lining where the USB slots are located, makes for a really great looking piece of electronics.
- Onto the noise. After having both consoles running Folding for about 2 hours, I'm happy to report that Slim is significantly more silent than even the 80GB, which was already so much more silent than the launch 60GB that it was like a night and day. I can still hear the fan whirring in a perfect silence, but there's no question about it, it's much more silent. Crappy decibel measurer on Iphone showed about 40-45db when measured with mic almost touching the 80GB unit, and 30-35db when measuring from the same distance on Slim - at the time when both were at their max noise output. I don't knowhow much to trust these numbers as it would never settle on a number - it was constantly jumping, but it was consistently less on Slim, and considering that db meaure is logarithmic, the actual perceived noise is much less than what the numbers would suggest (I think 3-4db differencetranslates to about 2x more noise, and I'd say 3x more noise is what I'd say I heard in this comparison). Slim also took longer to reach its max noise, but not much longer. It is also worth noting that 120GB Toshiba HDD that comes with slim is virtualy silent, while my 250GB WD Scorpio in 80GB model made clearly audible HDD noise whenever it worked. BD drive makes pretty much the same amount of noise as 80GB while seeking, while practically inaudible when just spinning and reading sequential data like movies. I do think 60GB did indeed made a bit less seeking noise, but I couldn't care about that when the fan sounded like a jet engine most of the time. The only time I can say for sure Slim makes more disc noise than 80GB, is when ejecting the disc. Again, pretty similar click noise, but a bit louder. It's kinda loud on 80GB already, so no big loss there.
- Measuring disc loading speeds, I tried Nighmare before Christmas first, as that was the biggest offender on Engadget, and while it did load slower on Slim, I could never get to have the same large difference like Engadget found. Testing other BD movies, I confirmed that Slim consistently loaded them about 10% slower. Then, of course, I tried some games, and to my surprise, every single one of them loaded faster on Slim, by about 10%! This of course being much more important than movie load times, which only matter on that initial bootup, while games load stuff constantly. I intentionally picked games that don't install anything, have no patches (because those translate to main files being loaded from HDD too) and have larger load times from BR disc. Only game I tested that creates an install file was HL2 in Orange Box, and there I measured load time for the first level in the game, which seems to load everything from the disc. For all other games, I measured the time from pressing the X button in XMB to start it, to showing the first company logo, or title screen. I measured everything 2 or 3 times, and averaged results:
80GB / 120GB Slim - Games
Dead Space, to first EA logo: 16s / 13s
Dead Space, to Title Screen: 29.5s / 27s
Lego Indiana Jones: 35s / 32s
Half Life 2: 22s / 20s
80GB / 120GB Slim - BD Movies
Nightmare Before Christmas: 34.5s / 39s
The Dark Knight: 23.5s / 24/5s
Total Recall: 19s / 21s (I picked this movie as an example of non-java BD, they are getting rare nowadays, but the load time difference is similar anyways)
Why is there an advantage in game load times and disadvantage in movies, I don't know, but as I said, I measured all these a few times, and results were always pretty much the same, +- 0.5s.
- Another interesting thing worth noting is that while there is an official support for Bravia TV remote feature, I'm happy that it worked just as well with Panasonic Viera Link feature, even on my 2-3 generation old TV. I was able to control PS3 just fine using both the TVs original remote, and Harmony programmed to control that TV. I could navigate XMB, watch videos from the HDD, go into the PS Store etc. all using the remote. Goodbye to stupid hacks or buying an extra remote for
:-?
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ich glaub ich stell sie mir aufgeschraubt in die Bude 
