PS4 Is STILL WORTH IT In 2023

So here’s the PS4 Slim and believe it or not, you can still buy this brand new directly from Sony today. But please don’t get this brand new for Sony is still charging a ridiculous price for it. Only get this second-hand for they are going for just about $200 nowadays and at that price, believe it or not, the PS4 or PS4 Slim is still a pretty fantastic gaming console in 2023, 10 years later.

The History

The PS4 launched back in November of 2013 and it was just plain amazing. When Mark Cerny revealed that the PS4 was basically built on a PC architecture, not only were gamers ecstatic, but even more so for developers because it became that much easier to develop for the console.

So we’re talking about a custom AMD APU that features 8 Jaguar CPU Cores and a Radeon based GPU with 18 Compute Units that can put out 1.84 TFLOPS of gaming performance. In comparison to the Xbox One that was just capable of about 1.3 TFLOPS, it was quite the leap in performance. That is also backed by 8GB of GDDR5 RAM on a 256 bit-bus and a 500GB HDD.

Pretty amazing specs, especially for 2013.

But now it’s almost a decade later and things have changed so much since then. We had the PS4 Pro in 2016 and then we have the PS5 in 2020. If we’re talking about the PC side of things, well, NVIDIA and AMD are now on the roll with extremely large and power hungry GPUs with their latest RTX 40-series and RX 7000-series.

Sony Still Sells It?

But yet here’s the PS4 Slim, that is still equipped with basically the exact same processor back in 2013. And you can actually still buy it, brand new, from Sony. They are still selling the PS4 Slim alongside the PS5. Directly from Sony, it’ll cost you US$299.99 or S$449.

We’re going to say this again. Do not buy from Sony.

Instead, you should be looking at the second-hand market instead where you can pretty much easily get a PS4 or PS4 Slim for just about $150 to $200 bucks depending on where you are.

But even for second-hand market prices, is it worth getting one and is the gaming experience still enjoyable?

So we bought a few of our favourite games, both physical and digital copies and just played on the PS4 Slim as if it were the only gaming machine in the household. And here are some things that we quickly noticed.

The Experience in 2023

The PS4 Slim holds up surprisingly well. Personally I was shocked at how well it could still game and that’s coming from myself who personally games on my PC with an RTX 3080. Of course, you’re not going to expect 120 frames per second, let alone 60 frames per second in almost any title and of course it’s not going to offer anything higher than 1080p.

For the most part, this is going to be a 1080p 30 frames per second experience.

But yet, it was surprisingly enjoyable and depending on the game that you play, it also goes to show how much effort the developer actually put into optimising the game for the base PS4 system.

For example in God of War, you’re getting 1080p 30 frames per second here and you’ll definitely notice it right from the get go. But just after about 10 minutes of playing, we were just fully immersed into the game. Part of that is simply because of the art direction and storytelling but a huge part of that is also the fact that you’re getting good and consistent frame times even though it’s just 30 frames per second and 1080p is still plenty sharp at a distance. All the important graphical elements are still kept as well which doesn’t make it any less of an experience overall.

Or we could talk about Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Again, you’re only getting a 1080p 30 frames per second experience here but it’s still a very beautiful game and Square Enix has done a phenomenal job in making it a great experience on the base PS4. It’s a combination of many things such as the visual fidelity, the consistent frame times, the fluidity of motion in combination with motion blur and much more but overall, the game just feels great to play, even though it’s just 1080p 30.

We can say that we pretty much got the same great experience with other first party titles such as Gravity Rush 2 or The Last of Us Part 2 which still, to this day, has incredible graphics in our opinion.

But even if we’re not talking about first party titles or exclusives, even if we’re talking about a really recent game like Modern Warfare 2, the PS4 Slim holds up really well.

We might not have the game with us here but Digital Foundry has shown and proven that it’ll still run a dynamic resolution of up to 1080p and can actually provide you a near 60 frames per second experience no matter the game mode. Certain graphical settings are toned down for sure but you’re still getting a really great experience especially in the heat of battle.

And again, we’re talking about hardware that’s almost a decade old at this point. It’s mighty impressive.

Used Is Worth

If you’re looking to get into the PlayStation ecosystem and especially if you’re looking to play PlayStation exclusive games, getting the PS4 Slim and the base PS4 from the second-hand market is honestly a worthwhile option to seriously consider. For just about $200, you can play and enjoy games that you wouldn’t be able to on a similarly priced PC. We don’t even think you can get a game like God of War to even run on the same settings as a PS4 for that price. You’ll be hard pressed to even run 10 Google Chrome tabs.

Not to mention, you can just buy physical copies of games second-hand for dirt cheap, you’re also getting a multimedia device where you can stream YouTube and more. And if you’re getting the PS4 Slim, it’s an extremely power efficient machine for what it’s capable of. It runs less than a 100W while playing a game. It’s basically laptop-level efficiency. If you can get the original PS4 for much cheaper though, just go for it. There isn't much difference really.

But perhaps the best part? You can upgrade to a PS5 down the road and you can still make use of your existing PS4 collection and enjoy them on the PS5, be it physical or digital and most of them get a visual and performance upgrade.

So while the PS4 might almost be a decade old at this point, if you’re able to snag it for cheap, it might actually be very well worth it. The PS4 and PS4 Slim, still great in 2023, 10 years later.