There’s been a lot of talk online about whether or not the new lighter PS5 console is worse than the original launch model. If you’ve missed it, Sony quietly released a new PS5 console revision in July under model number 1100. This new PS5 model came with a new screw for the stand and was 300 grams lighter than the original 1000 launch PS5.
YouTuber Austin Evans got his hands on the new lighter PS5 model and claimed the console actually runs significantly hotter than the original console. He claimed that the new model has trimmed off a lot of the heatsink making it lighter but also affecting the heat dispersion in the console. However, it actually seems that Evans wasn’t as accurate as he hoped. The PS5 model 1100 and PS5 1000 model are actually identical when it comes to heat dispersion and performance.
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The most important thing to keep in mind here is that if you’re shopping around for a PS5, you shouldn’t go searching for the 1000 model because the new revised, lighter console is just as good. If not the same. Both Gamers Nexus and Digital Foundry spent a good 30+ minutes tearing down the two consoles while testing every single aspect of the cooling system. So much so that they even compared the fans, liquid cooling, clock speed and ran games at the same time across both consoles in the same environments to see if the consoles offered any sort of difference at all.
The short of it, both PS5 models came out exactly the same. Digital Foundry focused on game testing while Gamers Nexus worked on the internals of the console and how hardware makes it tick.
Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus says that pursuing a specific console model when looking to buy a PS5 will be a waste of time. He focused on the hardware tests specifically.
“We overall haven’t seen any major downsides to either heatsink. It seems to be the fans make a decent difference, but not enough of one where you should pursue purchasing a specific fan.
We also wouldn’t really recommend pursuing a specific console The 1100 versus the 1000 series they’re not, in our testing, that different. There are a lot of ways to test these things. Maybe there’s a scenario we haven’t found yet. But we’re not seeing a huge difference. At least, not one that should make you go crazy on eBay trying to find a specific unit. And don’t overpay for one, either, at least if you can avoid it.”
Digital Foundry, on the other hand, testing out a lot of the software side of things and also came to the same conclusion. In short, the new PS5 1100 model has been simplified. It seems that Sony may have overcompensated the original launch console’s heatsink size in order to see whether or not a heatsink that big would be necessary.
So ultimately, I hope that this testing puts the matter of the new PlayStation 5 to bed once and for all, and the bottom line is that I can confidently stand by my initial test results. Yes, the cooler design in the new PlayStation 5 has been simplified in some respects and yes, the internal temperature results suggest that while cooler in some cases, the machine can run hotter in others. The core question of whether the new PS5 is better or worse than the launch model can be answered by saying that they’re mostly much the same, certainly in terms of the end user experience. I’ve had a few people ask whether they should be actively looking to acquire an older console but ultimately, the new machine is fine, and that’s good news bearing in mind how difficult it is to acquire any PS5 at all – let alone a launch model that has likely reached the end of its production run.
You can watch both videos down below
