PS4 Slim leaks online, looks legit

Updated, September 8: Sony has confirmed the release of the PS4 Slim and that it will replace the older model entirely. Aside from the removal of the optical output and a thinner design, the new PS4 is largely the same as the old one. Check out our full review of the new PS4 for more.

Original Story

Sony will have not one, but two consoles on show at its upcoming PlayStation Meeting event on September 7—and the first appears to have leaked online. A thinner, rounder PlayStation 4 Slim was spotted for sale on classified listings site Gumtree (now removed) via local retailer, which claimed it was due for release in three weeks. Twitter user shortman82 has since purchased the unit, unboxed it, and slapped a load of photos online.

Updated, August 22: Gaming site Eurogamer has since paid a visit to the person who bought the unreleased console from the Gumtree listing and filmed a quick video showing the system working and booting into the PlayStation OS. It's extremely likely that this PS4 Slim system is indeed the real deal. The video has since been removed from YouTube, further adding credence to the claims that this is a real PS4 Slim.

Update, August 23: Some eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the leaked PS4 Slim appears to come with a slightly redesigned Dual Shock 4 controller. The buttons all seem to be in the same place, but the touchpad looks like it has been rejigged so that it has a transparent strip across the top. The result? Yes, the light bar on the back of the gamepad shines through the transparent strip.

The purported PS4 Slim looks considerably thinner than the original PS4, which was already a small console. The same cleaved-parallelepiped aesthetic remains, but the corners have been rounded off, while the glossy plastic section that covered the hard drive on the original PS4 has been removed entirely. While that's good for fans of fingerprint-free gadgets, it does raise questions as to whether the hard drive will be replaceable in the PS4 Slim, particularly as the listed model (CUH-2016A) only sports 500GB of storage.

Sony has typically removed features from its consoles to make them cheaper to manufacture and thus cheaper to sell to consumers (remember all the media card slots on the original PlayStation 3?), so such a move wouldn't be unprecedented.

Elsewhere, it appears the capacitive power and eject buttons have been replaced with physical ones, while Sony has also removed the dedicated optical audio output on the rear. Ethernet and HDMI remain, along with the lesser-used camera port from the original PS4.

While there's a slim chance (pun very much intended) that the pictures of the new PS4 are fake, the leak ties up with a recent report from the Wall Street Journal. The publication says sources "familiar with the matter" claim Sony will introduce two consoles at its PlayStation Meeting event in September: the PS4 Slim and the highly anticipated PlayStation "4K" Neo. Sony confirmed the existence of the PS4 Neo in June, but has yet to detail its specifications. Several sources claim that it has a faster CPU, GPU, and memory, which will allow it to play certain games in 4K resolution.

The PS4 Slim follows in the footsteps of Microsoft's Xbox One S, a dramatic redesign of the Xbox One console. As well as shrinking the overall size of the console down, Microsoft integrated the power supply, added a 4K Blu-ray drive, and enabled HDR rendering in certain games.