A welcome addition, to be sure, but we can’t help but wish the XMB was still more accessible mid-game, à la the PS3 system. Only one save can be had at a time, and once you try to open a new game, the old state is removed. Most notable is the “Pause Game” feature selectable from the Home menu, which saves the state of your game and lets you go back into the XMB to navigate.

The firmware for the PSP Go is the same as with the older models and will be updated as such, but that said, it seems from the onset to have a couple of extra tricks. If you can look past all the other details, it’s hard not to love what’s been done here. In many ways we prefer the Go over past models - it’s sturdy, it’s light, it doesn’t skimp on screen clarity and the controls are more or less just as easy to get to and logically placed. Overall, though, we’re impressed with what Sony’s done here. It’s now adopted Bluetooth for syncing with headsets, and more importantly, 16GB of internal flash memory expandable with a Memory Stick Micro (M2) card. On that note, we haven’t done any rigorous battery life tests, but in our time the charge has managed to last about a day and a half doing some light gaming, about as long as our PSP-2000 would last.

The battery’s no longer removable, meaning no chance to bring a replacement for longer trips. One thing we did clearly discern was what seemed like sharper colors, ones that didn’t have the same overly-red hues as the PSP-3000. The 3.8-inch screen is just a tinge smaller, but it honestly wasn’t anything we really noticed until we put it directly next to a PSP-2000. Its finish is a glossy black, and with it comes an insatiable appetite for remembering fingerprints, pretty much as bad as the black iPhone 3G. The depth and height are only negligibly smaller than the PSP-2000, but as you can see from the image above, the width has been shrunk considerably, with the controls now tucked away via a new sliding mechanism that feels remarkably sturdy - we gave it some slight prodding and it held up well to the coerced wear and tear. One of the most noticeable changes when you first pick up the Go is the size reduction - no doubt helped by the complete removal of the UMD drive.

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