What is my best option for repair of my PSP?

October 19, 2006 9:08 AM

What is my best option for repair of my PSP?

I have broken my Playstation Portable (PSP) recently. It fell off of a filing cabinet.

It appears, from the symptoms, to be something broken in the power switch and that general section. I would like to get it repaired and Sony said they can do a replacement for about $80.

That seems to be a good price to me, but I wanted to find out what other PSP owners have done and their results.

Symptoms:
Power switch flips freely with no resistance as it used to have.
No power comes on.
Connecting the remote cable does not turn on the power like it used to do for MP3 playback.
No cracks in the case or screen and none of the other switches or buttons appear to be broken.

posted by slavlin to technology (5 comments total)

This might be something you can easily fix yourself. If you're comfortable with it that is. Open up your PSP, there are numerous tutorials on how to do this out there, and check to see if it is just a matter of the power switch being knocked out of place or if something is actually broken.

If something is actually broken and needs to be replaced, then send it to Sony. There too many horror stories about bad iPod, PSP, etc repair places on the net to bother risking it over a few bucks.
posted by ChazB at 9:13 AM on October 19, 2006

Be careful when pulling the PSP apart. Some of the screws that need to be removed to fully open it are covered by tamper proof tape, if you remove that your warranty is void and Sony probably won't even work on it.

It's also really really really easy to damage the screen if you go poking around near it. The screen, the back light, and their connection ribbons are very fragile and don't stand up well to stress.

I second the quick recon inside to check the switch then let Sony do anything beyond that.
posted by Science! at 9:18 AM on October 19, 2006

I don't really want to open it up. Though I am fairly tech savvy and work on my PC all the time, I don't have good tools for this and I am a clutz as well.
posted by slavlin at 9:34 AM on October 19, 2006

Send it to Sony! $80 for a replacement is a great deal.
posted by spankbot at 4:18 PM on October 19, 2006

Indeed. You won't be able to fix it yourself without opening it up, and opening it up will almost certainly void your warranty, which means bye bye to your $80 replacement option. Send it to Sony, get it replaced.
posted by antifuse at 3:50 AM on October 20, 2006