Gripes about the screen
But the screen isn’t perfect, and I have a bit of a beef over this one, not just with Sony and the PSP but with TFT manufacturers as well, and it’s the issue of dead pixels. There’s long been an issue of how many dead pixels are acceptable on a TFT, and my personal point of view is that there shouldn’t be any. After all, would you accept a new car if the paintwork was scratched? Or if the trim didn’t fit? Or if the CD player kept skipping? None of those faults affect the actual use of the car do they? It still trucks along the roads quite nicely. But you’d expect a new car to be a near perfect as possible, wouldn’t you?The PSP I have has no less than four permanently lit pixels. I suppose I’m lucky in that they’re lit and not dark as they only show when the screen is displaying black. Only one of them is really noticeable when I’m playing anything on the screen, but I find it annoying to know that it and it’s three buddies are there. Sony’s official stance is that they’ll judge each complaint of dead pixels on their merits and take appropriate action as needed, but given the price of a PSP, that’s tad woolly for me. These things aren’t cheap by anyone’s standards and to not have a clear policy on screen quality is not acceptable as far as I’m concerned. Now, everyone has a different idea of what is ok and what isn’t, but if this was my PSP I’d be back asking for it to be sorted, but that’s just me.
Other issues that had been reported with early models of the PSP, such as the sticking action button or the UMD case popping open haven’t shown any sign of occurring on this unit. Sony have acknowledged those as faults and have rectified them for anyone who does have those problems, so credit to them there!
A UMD and Mini Disc side by side for comparison