Sony Quietly Cuts PlayStation 5 Slim Storage in the US
It signals a rollback in Sony’s hardware strategy, as the new PS5 Slim ships with 825GB of storage at the same $499.99 price.
Sony has a habit of tinkering with its consoles mid-cycle, and the PlayStation 5 Slim just got its latest adjustment. A new digital-only model, part of the CFI-2100 series, has arrived in the US, looking almost identical to the Slim Sony model launched late last year. But tucked in the specs is a surprise: instead of the 1TB of storage that debuted with the Slim, this refreshed unit ships with just 825GB of SSD space.
That’s the same capacity as the launch PS5 from 2020. And here’s the kicker—the price hasn’t changed. The digital-only Slim with 825GB still costs $499.99, while the disc version keeps its 1TB drive at $549.99. In other words, Sony has made its cheapest model less generous without reducing its price.
You wouldn’t know it unless you looked closely. Sony hasn’t highlighted the storage change, and you’d have to squint at the fine print on PlayStation Direct to notice it. But sharp-eyed fans in Europe already did, spotting the new version rolling out earlier this summer.
Emmanuel Umahi
Tech YouTuber Austin Evans even took one apart, finding a few tweaks, a matte center panel instead of glossy, a rearranged internal layout, but nothing resembling a performance bump. The SSD downgrade stands out as the only real change.
For casual players, 825GB might not sound dramatically smaller than 1TB until you remember how massive modern games have become. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III alone takes nearly 200GB. Add a few blockbusters and some indies, and that free space disappears fast. Sure, you can expand storage with a compatible NVMe SSD, but that means spending more on top of a $500 console.
The easy answer for this shift is economics. SSD prices fluctuate, and trimming capacity may help Sony preserve margins as production costs rise. But seen in a broader light, the move also fits how Sony is reorganising its console lineup. The Slim becomes the “entry box,” steady in price but lighter on specs, while the upcoming PS5 Pro, due later this year with 2TB of storage and upgraded internals for $749.99, takes the premium slot.
Oluwaseun Bamisile
It's a quiet reshuffle that makes strategic sense, but there’s a cost to that subtlety. Cutting storage without cutting price risks feeling like a downgrade disguised as progress. For players deciding whether to buy the Slim now or hold out for the Pro, it blurs what “value” in the PlayStation lineup really means.
On paper, the change is just 175GB. In practice, it’s a small step backward in a console generation already strained by ballooning game sizes and rising hardware costs. Owners of last year’s 1TB Slim can feel lucky; their consoles just became more desirable by comparison. New buyers, on the other hand, are paying the same price for less room.
That’s the story beneath Sony’s quiet update. The company’s biggest challenge isn’t hardware design or technical performance—it’s keeping the PlayStation’s premium reputation intact while quietly redrawing its own rules. Right now, the equation for players feels uncomfortably simple: pay more, and sometimes, you get less.
