Words cannot describe the graphical capability of this beastie. Take something in between PS1 and PS2, squash it into a portable and it looks incredible. The UMD discs hold a whopping 1.8GB, which is amazing for their physical size and a fair old whack bigger than the similar Minidiscs - which were way ahead of their time when they came out 10+ years ago.
I bought a Japanese import model which is in ceramic white as opposed to the usual black. Have a piccy!
They've had a few improvements over the originals, such as a square button that doesn't stick, and the ceramic white doesn't show fingerprints up anywhere near as badly. It also runs firmware version 2.0 which introduces the best portable web browser I've seen.
Indeed, they can do web browsing in a lot of places, as the PSP comes equipped with WiFi (802.11g) wireless network access. This works in all of the various wireless hotspots that are springing up everywhere - even my little town has a few public ones - as well as in your home or office wireless network. When even a 12" Powerbook is too bulky to carry around, one of these is great when you want a bit of wireless internet access.
They also come with a slot for reading Memory Stick Duo cards, onto which you can put photos, music, videos and Sony-authorised demos. Really it's worth it for the movie capability alone, as not only can you get UMD videos - basically portable DVDs - but you can also play most movie formats off Memory Stick so you can transfer your favourite anime or whatever and watch it anywhere.
The ability to run games from Memory Stick was wide open in firmware version 1.5, where people were happily running homebrew games, emulators, useful applications (awesome in conjunction with WiFi support) etc. This also allowed pirate games, so Sony plugged the hole in version 2.0. Personally I really like the ability to run homebrews and emulators etc - on the other hand, the "open" version 1.5 doesn't support video UMDs and doesn't have the web browser, making it a difficult choice. It'd be nice if there was a compromise.
The build quality seems excellent, although it's called into question by issues like the dead pixels that the screens commonly suffer from. Older (and higher quality) LCDs didn't seem to have this problem, even though the manufacturers say it's natural and unavoidable. It was also called into question by the fact that my first one failed to recognise UMDs after a few days and the battery was faulty - thankfully Scan were a *lot* more helpful with the replacement than their courier Initial Shittylink (sic) who were massively unhelpful about delivering to an alternative address because of fraud issues (surely it's my risk to take?)
I've managed to cram the full version of the subtitled Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children movie onto a 256MB card and it's watchable, which is nice, but low quality of course as you'd expect from cramming almost 2 hours into 256MB! I'll look forward to the English dub on UMD.
So far I have Burnout Legends on the gaming side of things, which is highly addictive and basically a squished down version of Burnout 3 for the PS2. Tis good!
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