PSP Go, A Good Intro to the PSP

Author's Rating:

Pros: Works well with PS3, sleek look, nice memory size

Cons: Fragile, no used games available, some games expensive

The Bottom Line: 
A nice beginning for getting a PSP.  If you already own a 3000, pass on the Go.

Author's Review
A favorite game store of mine was going out of business and as I was enjoying the sales I saw they were selling their PSP Go's for the price of $200 instead of the $250.  Seeing as the PSP 3000 model is sold for that much and the Go had an internal storage of 16 GB I decided to hop on the deal.  Safe to say I was very satisfied with my purchase.  Not owning a PSP before I had no problem with the digital only games and non-backwards compatibility with UMD based PSP games.  That and the digital store had quite a good selection of games to download and quite a few are on sale or come with additional bonuses such as costumes, music, and etc for purchasing online.
The screen may be smaller than the PSP 3000 but I feel this is a benefit of the PSP Go.  The smaller screen helps make the graphics of the system look even more crisp and clean.  Holding it due to it's shape and size only felt natural and in my pocket the PSP Go felt right at home and was not at all heavy or clunky like the older PSP models.  The relatively large amount of memory was also a bonus as I knew the PSP 3000's memory cards can be quite costly up to about $40 for a memory card of 16 GB like the Go's.  The smaller buttons do not detract from playing games as they are pretty evenly spaced which leads to no accidental button presses.  Not to mention being able to switch games without needing to worry about disc care (as you can't carry the UMDs in your pocket or aren't supposed to at least) was definitely a huge plus for me. 
The size of the PSP Go can be a problem for more accident prone people however.  I only dropped the system once and it resulted in the sides looking incredibly dented and mangled and a huge crack formed next to the directional pad of the system.  I could only safely assume that well, if I had dropped it just right or dropped it a second time there probably would be no more PSP Go for me.  The battery life is also quite the annoyance as around about six hours of games and it starts dying and the awkward cord that attaches to the power output doesn't help either.  Plus the downside of not owning a physical game is the online games are only licensed to you.  This means that there will be no used games for you or selling your games for new ones, a habit that I had developed since an early age.  It also leads to being more careful with your downloads as the many on sale are the full price of a UMD (around 40 US dollars).