Sony seems to have tried hard. The brand new PS5 “Slim” can be dismantled and repaired relatively easily, to the delight of its owners and the planet.
After a first teardown which already taught us quite a bit about the new PS5 Slim, it’s iFixit’s turn to get its hands on the new Sony console. The specialist in dismantling and repairing electronic devices went to dissect the beast from side to side and noticed, with joy, that this new model of PS5 was far from being hostile to Sunday tinkerers. .
Disassembly that requires few tools
The plates that protect the interior of the console can actually be removed without any tools and are even marked with small logos (a cross, a circle, a triangle, and a square of course), to ensure that each piece is properly installed in the correct place during reassembly. Once the plastic is removed, the disk drive can be removed without the need for tools and the arrows on the interior shell and on the disk drive should serve as clues during reassembly.
Installing a memory expansion or repairing the fan requires nothing more than a little patience and a few screwdrivers (Phillips and Torx). Speaking of screws, each screw that holds the console’s interior shell comes with a dot-based marking. A single point means that the location is made for a short screw, two points that it is a long screw. Practical so as not to put screws back in the wrong place and risk damaging the console.
To finally access the motherboard, simply remove the screws and unclip the metal heat sink attached to it. Again, few tools are needed to access the console’s innards. The ports on the edge of the console are integrated into a second printed circuit and can therefore be replaced relatively easily.
Everything is not completely rosy
Compared to the Xbox Series This bias pushes iFixit to describe the console as “great example of hardware engineers and designers taking repairability seriously“.
All is not rosy however, the PS5 disc drive must be “activated” via an Internet connection, leaving the risk of obsolescence if one day Sony decides to disconnect its servers dedicated to component validation . Some connectors are also soldered to the motherboard, making possible replacement complicated. And if instructions help with disassembly and reassembly, a proper manual would not have been too much trouble.
Overall, that said, the PS5 Slim is a console that can be repaired without too much hassle and we hope that the video game industry, and more generally the electronics industry as a whole, will take inspiration from it.
Source : iFixit
5