The PlayStation Portable uses the common "slab" or "candybar" form factor, measures approximately 17 x 7.3 x 2.2 cm (6.7 x 2.9 x 0.9 in), and weighs 280 grams (9.88 ounces). The front of the console is dominated by the system's 11 cm (4.3 in) LCD screen, which is capable of 480 x 272 pixel video playback with 16.77 million colors. Also on the front are the four PlayStation face buttons (Triangle, Circle, X, Square), the directional pad, the analog 'nub', and several other buttons. In addition, the system includes two shoulder buttons and a USB 2.0 mini-B port on the top of the console and a WLAN switch and power cable input on the bottom. The back of the PSP features a read-only UMD drive for movies and games, and a reader compatible with Sony's Memory Stick Duo flash cards is located on the left of the system. Other features include an IrDA compatible infrared port (discontinued in PSP-2000 and later series), built in stereo speakers and headphone port, and IEEE 802.11b Wi-Fi for access to the Internet, ad-hoc multiplayer gaming, and data transfer.[7]

The PlayStation Portable PSP uses two 333 MHz MIPS32 R4000-based CPUs [97], a GPU with 2 MB onboard VRAM running at 166 MHz, and includes 32 MB main RAM and 4 MB embedded DRAM in total.[7][98] The hardware was originally forced to run more slowly than it was capable of and most games ran at 222 MHz.[99] However, with firmware update 3.50 on May 31, 2007, Sony removed this limit and allowed new games to run at a full 333 MHz.