Winners and Losers: PS5 price cut impresses, while Samsung goes iterative with minor updates

OPINION: It’s been a busy week over at Trusted Towers, with some big events taking place both at home and further afield, but what has stuck out the most for us?

The week has been dominated by two things: Samsung’s annual summer product reveal and Sony’s surprise PS5 sale.

Oh, and Twitter was renamed to X – but it felt far too easy giving our Loser of the Week nod to another of Twitter’s odd decisions – there will probably be another one to highlight next week after all.

Winner: Sony drops PS5 price for the Summer

After what seemed like an endless search for stock, Sony’s PS5 console became far easier to grab earlier this year, and now, nearly three years after its launch, we’re getting our first hefty price for the excellent console. Yes, there have been a couple of standout deals over the past few months but nothing quite like this.

From July 28 until August 10, multiple UK retailers, including Sony’s own online store, are slicing around £75 off the cost of the disc-based console. You can find one for £399, the lowest price we’ve seen yet for the PS5 and a pretty tasty deal.

With Microsoft raising the price of the Xbox Series X in the UK, this sale comes at a great time for Sony and will surely tempt those who have so far decided against upgrading to finally take the plunge.

The cynic in us does see this as a way for retailers to try and get rid of as much stock of the disc-based edition as possible before the rumoured PS5 Slim arrives, possibly even later this year. This promotion is the ideal way of doing that and could be another hint there might be a mid-cycle upgrade on the way sooner rather than later.

Still, the PS5 remains the console to beat this generation and this is a fantastic deal if you aren’t one of the 40 million people to already have the chunky box nestled under their TVs.

Thanks to you, PS5 has surpassed 40 million units sold since its launch in November 2020. More details: https://t.co/npSoEt0nJG pic.twitter.com/CqQFlQJBxZ

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) July 27, 2023

Loser: Samsung keeps it simple with new phone, watch and tablet updates

Samsung loves a summer product reveal and this week saw the latest in its line of Unpacked launches. Like most Samsung events, it was jammed to the rafters with new tech: two phones, two wearables and three tablets. There was certainly a lot to pick through. Just like the S23 launch earlier this year however, all the updates here are on the minor side.

The Z Fold 5 – the brand’s flagship foldable – got rid of the pesky screen gap that always felt out of place, while the Z Flip 5 played catch-up with the Oppo Find N2 Flip and Razr 40 Ultra by expanding the outer display.

On the smartwatch front, the Watch 6 Classic heralded the welcome return of the physical rotating bezel, while the cheaper Watch 6 picked up a larger screen when compared to the Watch 5. Finally, the tablet range was updated with IP68 water resistance and not a whole lot more.

The updrades are fine – Trutsted Reviews’ Mobile Editor Lewis Painter was impressed by the new clamshell foldable in his Galaxy Z Flip 5 review – but they all felt very minor, without many new standout features to really get too excited about. This seems to be something of a trend with recent Samsung launches and hopefully it doesn’t become a common occurrence.