High Technology Product Reviews | Trends and News

To the casual observer, there's nothing particularly slim about the new Sony PlayStation 3's ($299.99 direct) sleek black housing—it's only when you compare it with its nearly three-year-old counterpart, the previous-gen PS3, that you see how much smaller it is. The bigger news here, however, is the $100 price drop; the original PS3 retailed for $600 when it launched in 2006, and up until last week, the least-expensive PS3 you could buy was $400—and that was for a console with an 80GB hard drive. A more-reasonable $300 now buys you an incredible gaming device that's more compact, sports a roomier 120GB hard drive, and is one of the best Blu-ray players you can find. In general, the new PlayStation 3 offers a near-identical experience to the previous-generation console, which, incidentally, is still available, but for $100 less. It's also $299.99, but with the larger case and a smaller hard drive (80GB), it's hard to see why anyone would opt for it over the PS3...