There's little doubt that the PS3 Slim is an enticing prospect. Significantly smaller than the original, with an enlarged 120GB hard drive, trendy new matt cabinet finish and more digestible price tag, it puts Sony squarely back in the game.

But just how good is it as a Blu-ray player? Does it offer a step-up in AV performance over the original, and should existing PS3 owners rush to part-exchange their old consoles for this year's svelte model?

Listen up

First up, noise. The original PS3 was significantly quieter than its Microsoft rival when it came to operational clicks and whirrs – while the Xbox 360 sounded like a hyperactive vacuum cleaner, the PS3 maintained a dignified hum. This model, at least initially, is quieter still, although heat builds up quickly during use and the fan noise accelerates accordingly.

Midway through X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I noted that the console was disgorging a lot of heat through its rear vents, and at that point, in terms of fan noise it didn't strike me as a significant improvement on what's gone before.

In terms of absolute performance, it's also not as assured as the original. While the console can spin CDs, it's no replacement for a CD player. The original was surprisingly good in this regard, delivering only 137.9ps of measured audio jitter – it was let down mainly by issues relating to the cabinet and its rigidity. But with this iteration there's a notable increase in audio jitter, which is up to 461.7ps.

As a DVD player it's relatively poor, with a measured high frequency response of -6.14dB (@ 5.8MHz). This is worse than the original, but is mitigated by the scaler, which is actually really rather good.

However, the Slim has a more significant tech ace up its sleeve. Unlike the original PS3, which decoded hi-res soundtracks to linear PCM, you can now bitstream out Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a waiting receiver over HDMI. It's a welcome refinement and one that puts the console on par with current standalone players.

BD picture quality is very good. and Java loading speed is phenomenally fast. Crank 2: High Voltage, which has more than its fair share of creative code, bedded-in faster on the PS3 Slim than it did on a high-end Sony BDP-S5000ES. However, this speed is ruined by average disc-loading speeds – the slot mechanism on this model is inferior to that of the first-gen model.

Overall, the PS3 Slim is a worthwhile update for the Sony games console. Commercially it hits all the right buttons, but in pure AV terms, only the ability to bitstream out lossless audio is advantageous over the original. That said, it remains a seductive proposition.

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