Sony PS Vita hands-on, first impressions

Finally received the PS Vita I earlier ordered via the Multiply Marketplace and managed to unbox and play with it before my flight to Europe earlier this week. It has been a while since I used one like this (got a PSP a couple of years ago but rarely used it) so I was a little unfamiliar how the Vita fared in terms of usability.  

The basic package I got was the US, WiFi version and, aside from the device itself and the charger, there wasn’t anything else in the box. The PS Vita is actually huge and a bit heavy, moreso if you put it side by side the older and smaller PSP.  

There are now two analog sticks or nubs laced on both sides, the usual D-Pad on the left side and the Playstation controls on the right side.  

There were more controls now than it was before and the large screen has a capacitive touch so navigation is much easier. Just didn’t like that UI and the 3D-like graphics they’ve used here (not the XrossMediaBar interface which we’re already familiar with).  

I was not really that impressed at first until I played a game (separately bought the proprietary 4GB card for Php1,650 and a Marvel vs. CapCom game for Php1,890) and that’s when the magic began and changed my mind.  

Really great graphics, nice and brilliant 5-inch OLED screen and great over-all experience. I’ll just show you the video to better appreciate what I mean here.  

Sony PS Vita ARM Cortex A9 4-core CPU Quad-Core PowerVR SGX543MP+ GPU 512MB RAM, 128MB VRAM Front & Rear Camera Built-in GPS WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR  

The rear camera isn’t that good, bordering on decent but not that big of a deal. The cameras have abilities for face detection, head detection, and head tracking. Unlike the older PSPs, the battery on the PS Vita is integrated and non-removabe. — Yugatech.com  

Disclosure by the author: We got the PS Vita using the Php5,000 voucher given to us by Multiply. Multiply is also sponsoring a contest to our readers for another Php5,000 worth of shopping money here.