iFixit Reveals The PS4 Is Beautiful, Inside And Out

The PS4 is a lovely gaming kit. It’s sleek. Monolithic. And relatively small in comparison to the Xbox One. Sony did its 4th generation console right. iFixit found in its teardown that the gaming system is nearly as beautiful on the inside as it is on the out. But that shouldn’t be a big surprise. It’s a Sony product and Sony knows how to build things. However, iFixit did find something somewhat shocking: The latest PlayStation is very user serviceable.

On iFixit’s scale of 1 to 10, the PS4 scored an 8 meaning most users can expect to rip the system open and tinker away. Most importantly, the hard drive is very easy to access, giving owners options to upgrade to a larger or faster option. The hardest thing to service, per iFixit, is apparently the fan which is buried deep the system’s innards.

iFixit and others have yet to teardown the upcoming Xbox One. That should be in the coming days. Hopefully Microsoft designed it with the same thought as the Xbox 360E, the last model of its generation. That model was simple to open up. In fact, all of Microsoft’s gaming systems from the start have been trivial to crack open and tinker around. The original Xbox’s modability was a significant factor in its widespread adoption. Let’s hope Microsoft hasn’t forgotten that.

With the gaming world entering the 7th generation, there is hope that hardware makers, namely Sony and Microsoft, have learned from past mistakes and gamers shouldn’t have to fear a red or yellow light of death caused by shoddy hardware design.