Right, having had most of the day to play around with my Sony PSP, I've decided to write up a bit of a mini review of the latest piece of gaming hardware that seems to be taking the net by storm.

First off, the battery life.  It seems the longetivity will differ from person to person since everybody's usage patterns will undoubtedly be different.  On my friend's unit which he leant me/wanted me to put anime on there for him, I was personally able to clock up just over 5 hours on Ridge Racers, 10.5 hours for mp3 playback, though I've yet to test video playback properly, however I have watched over 4 hours of footage and the battery was still on 2 bars!

I won't lie and will say that I am somewhat disappointed by the build quality of the unit itself.  The Memory Stick Duo and battery door have a certain element of play, even while closed.  The right shoulder button wobbles ever so slightly while the left one is perfect.  The UMD drive door seems a bit fragile when compared to similar mechanisms in Sony own MiniDisc players.  I will also report that my PSP has one dead blue sub-pixel (a pixel being made up of a red, green, and blue sub-pixel) on the middle-right portion of the screen.  It is, however, in no way distracting and I don't have any problems with it at all.

Now with the bad news out of the way, lets move on to whats good about Sony's little marvel.  The screen is simply gorgeous.  A huge 420 x 280 pixel TFT screen made by Sharp, it simply makes any similar device pale in comparison (I have used a DS after my initial time with my friend's PSP).  Whether its games or movies, it all looks superb on the PSP I am most pleased with the outcome after reading so many accounts online.

The graphics chip is also to be applauded, something so small is able to crunch numbers to produce visuals you'd expect were coming from a PS2.  Ridge Racers looks superb and runs at a constant 60 frames per second with no detectable slow-down (at least from what I can see).

The audio is also exemplory, coming from optical based media.  No midis or polyphonic tunes here, this is the real deal.  The onboard speakers while tinny, do the job fairly well.  In more noisy environments, its best to use earphones since the speakers aren't very powerful.

The accessories with the value pack seem like a mixed bag.  The wrist strap certainly looks very nice but doesn't really match the styling of the PSP.  It also sports a metal bolt which I'm sure could scratch the PSP in time.  The neoprene case seems to do the job well, its a pretty good fit so the PSP shouldn't fall out of it.  The supplied earphones look very similar to the stock earphones supplied with Sony's MD players, the e808s if I remember correctly.  I've simply been using my own for audio purposes which sound far better.  Incidentlly, I'm now on pair number five with the EX71s, number 4 died on Thursday afternoon sometime while I was at work.  I've yet to test the remote control but it seems it'll do the job quite well.  A simple plastic affair, its no comparison for the high end, back-lit LCD remotes that come with Sony's CD Walkmans and MD players.

So there you have it, my views on the PSP.  Admitedly, I will probably use mine more for multimedia than gaming but that in itself proves its more than just a one trick pony, and it does everything well; the mp3 player interface even beats that of the iPod in my humble opinion, which I also use on a daily basis.  Some might say I paid a little too much for mine, but at least I'm safe in the knowledge that I have one now whereas the US and European launch dates are still mysteriously up in the air according to Ken Kutaragi.