After not being able to get a PS5 in 2020 due to buying a (at the time) $1,700 dollar PC gaming rig. The way my friends spoke about it was basically saying that the PS5 was a pipe dream. So I finally got one in the beginning of May to play God of War Ragnarok, Spiderman Miles Morales, Gran Turismo and Spiderman 2. After installing and setting it up it is 100% worth the hype and praise for a 500 dollar console. It runs beautifully at 60fps on all of my games I purchased, and even on games like NBA 2K and Madden having those frames and performance boosts can make or break your competitive games.

What I also love the most about it is 2 things, one is having a optional security passcode for each time you turn on your PS5 and logging in. Even though I use it only in my house it helps when uninvited guests come over and try to play your console without permission. And the 2nd thing is that the gameplay capture system on board has been greatly improved from the PS4. You can now on the fly record or snap clips from up to a 1 hour ago, and now you can snap as little as 10 seconds, to 15, 30, 1 minute, 5, and then 10 minutes and beyond. The footage is also crystal clear surprisingly at 1080P 60FPS with your choice of upping to 1440P or 4K. Huge step up from the PS4 as a content creator, YouTuber, or Streamer.

I also love the new PS5 controller! It is such a step up from the PS4 controller that I loved and they made improvements. Firstly the battery lasts 3 to 4 times longer than the PS4 controller battery, has an onboard mic in the controller and toggle mute button that I didn't even find out until a couple nights ago. And it also features an almost engraved Playstation button pattern for the controller shell, and has adaptive triggers that will enhance gameplay and adjust depending on the game you're playing.

I've also purchased 3 PS5 Dualsense Edge Pro controllers for my games I play competitively on console and each controller I can set up to my exact liking and have up to 4 profiles on each. Just simply plug in run the software update and you're good to go. Will come in handy when I have friends over and we fire up fighting games or sports games. And the best part, is how it captures the PS3 era with specific games playing a theme to it on the home screen when you hover over your game.

Overall, it is a great console and makes me wish I could've gotten it sooner before I switched to PC gaming. I always been a PlayStation kid since the original Sony PlayStation, all the way up to the PlayStation 5. And each console has not let me down. I genuinely feel like a kid again unboxing my new PlayStation for the first time. And I'm already loving the exclusives that PlayStation has to offer along with recommended modern titles like God of War and Need For Speed. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to save New York from Rhino and Sandman with Peter Parker and Miles Morales!

I was forced to upgrade after the HDD up my Playstation 4 died. Other things seemed to be going wrong with the PS4, too, like the disc drive wasn't able to read game discs sometimes.

Maybe Sony just puts cheap blu-ray drives into these things, because right out of the box, the PS5 is already struggling to read discs, too. I think they want people to buy all-digital games nowadays, which is more convenient, but there's a whole host of ownership and consumer rights legal problems with that I'm not comfortable with.

Even if you want digital games, the hard drive on this thing is pitiful. I'd filled it all the way up to max in barely three days. You can plug external HDDs in, but good luck finding space or power for that, and that's going to be another $50-$100 on top of this $500 console.

By default, the console is also always recording video of your gameplay. Whatever internal storage is in this device is going to get worn out quickly -- this is what killed my Playstation 4, afterall, and with this being an SSD, it might die of old age even faster than the PS4 did. I'm sure Sony loves the idea of planned obsolescence though.

Menus on the device are better in some ways and worse in others. One step back is that the Playstation 5 no longer lets you sort games into folders. You just have to scroll through a giant list of whatever's available until you find what you want to play.

It's nice you get PS5 versions of a lot of PS4 games but the system to handle that is frustrating. Not all PS5 games can see PS4 save data, so there are a few games where loading up the enhanced PS5 version makes me start over from the beginning of the game. Other games are weird about it -- Spider-man 1 made me upload my PS4 save file to the cloud and then download it in the PS5 version, and Sonic Frontiers PS5 could load my PS4 save just fine but it didn't carry over any of my unlock progress.

Also the device is just ugly as heck. It's shaped weirdly, sticks out like a sort thumb, and doesn't really serve any purpose besides being an eyesore.

But the games look nice and load very quickly, so at least there's that. At $70 per game, they'd better.

Shame about Sony, they missed the opportunity here, and released a "new" and "slim" console with the same hardware, meaning, all the annoying bits from the original PS5 are still present.

Some of the issues I had with the original PS5, like, inconsistent WiFi, and a generally slow network card, I have a 1000/1000 network, and this is the only device which barely hits 10mbps on upload (wired or wifi), while Xbox SX and any other device at home can easily take full advantage of bandwidth. Another issue that's still present, is a whining noise in-game menus, why is this console so loud in-game menus? I guess it's something to do with frame rate rendering, they probably don't limit their FPS in menus causing that stupid overprocessing, the same games on Xbox SX don't have those issues, so it's purely Sony's problem. Vibrations- disc drive is so poorly dampened, I have a hard floor in my living room and this console resonates like crazy, I can't watch a movie unless I put something under it, no such issue with Xbox or original PS5. And those are just a few issues that come to mind. Overall, I feel like Sony is just trying to cash in on "new" things rather than making efforts to improve it. And keeping the same price, I bet hardware cost them less now, yet they kept the same retail price, shame on you Sony!

Re.CEX pricing- while not always competitive, trading in other stuff and paying the difference isn't as bad as the shelf price, and having 24 24-month warranty on a used item is handy, it's actually more than you'd get from most new item sellers.

I don't have as interesting a story to tell about my second PlayStation 5 as I did my first but I don't want to wait outside a Best Buy for another 30 hours and make more new friends. So now that we have passed the “how easy it is to get one of these now” part of the story let's talk about the system. The 1st one I bought 2 years ago is the original size one. This one is slim, it is sleeker and smaller but not so much you can tell, maybe 35% smaller. It is easier to lay flat with little feet that you place in the middle underneath, instead of this awkward disc pedestal that came with the original. I also bought extended SSD drives for both of my PS5s and they were the exact same process, not much different from the original to this one. There was an extra boot up screen because the disk drive can now be sold separately for those who want to buy a PS5 without and then get a drive for disc later. However, only aesthetic differences can one see between the original and the slim PS5. On the original the front ports are 1 USB-B and 1 USB-C and 2 USB-B on the back. On this slim, there are 2 USB-C on the front (one labeled SSD for external memory, if you don't go with the internal extended memory) but still works to charge controllers, and 2 USB-B on the back. Performance is the same beauty is the same, everything about it is just awesome. I may have to keep this one and give the other one to the children. Be sure to get some extended memory, external or internal. For internal most stores sell them for or with PS5 in mind for saving and downloading. Install videos for the internal are all over YouTube.