A revised model of the PlayStation 5 recently appeared in Australia, and a preliminary teardown of the hardware shows some big changes. The main takeaways are that Sony has made the guts of the machine more efficient and possibly reduced the power consumption of the system by almost 10 per cent. But while the new version is likely cheaper for Sony to manufacture, it comes at a time when the company has taken the unusual step of raising the price of the PS5 for most of the globe.
The new 1200-model PS5 was originally spotted at the end of August, and now YouTuber Austin Evans has gotten his hands on a Digital Edition to take a look at what’s changed and see how things stack up against previous models. While the outside shell of the console remains unchanged, the total weight of the components inside is about a pound less than the original launch PS5.
Most of this is due to a smaller heatsink and a massive rework of the motherboard layout. Some other internals have been altered as well, including the SSD enclosure and the placement of the battery. Evans says the heat and noise output remains mostly unchanged despite these differences.
Last year, during a teardown of the revised 1100-model, Evans set an internet firestorm in motion when he recorded higher external temperatures due after changes were made to the heatsink. Some viewers took this to mean that Sony was using inferior parts in the face of supply shortages, but that turned out not to be the case.
This time around, however, his testing has revealed something else: a potentially big decrease in how much power the 1200-model PS5 consumes. While running Astro’s Playroom, the new PS5 model drew up to 30 watts less than the 1100-model PS5.
TL;DW – The PS5 1200 model is over 1 pound lighter than the launch model, pulls 20-30W less and delivers roughly the same noise/heat output.
Sony shrank almost everything including motherboard and the internal packaging to make it lighter and almost certainly cheaper (for them)
— Austin Evans (@austinnotduncan) September 7, 2022
If those results hold on average for other games, it could mean using up to 10 per cent less electricity to play games on the console. That’s especially significant in a year of rising energy bill costs and at a time when the threat of global warming is already leading to historic floods, droughts, and wildfires.
Evans notes that the rest of the changes in the 1200-model PS5 are likely aimed at helping Sony to produce them more cheaply. If there are cost savings there in manufacturing and shipping, however, they’re certainly not showing up in the price tag on store shelves. This new model, which still appears to only be available in Australia at the moment, comes alongside an announcement last month that Sony was raising the price of the PS5 in every country but the U.S.
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