With the extraordinary hype over the iPod this year, not much has been said about the PSP. That’s understandable, but for a certain segment of the market the PSP offers a very cool handheld device and its new version offers a few new features.

The Internet, of course, is going to be more accessible over the iPhone and run much more sophisticated web sites. But in range of wi-fi, the PSP is very good at browsing text-based or mobile sites, and it has a very nice, large screen. The games are of course the main feature, along with the ability to play UMD movies.

One of the main new features of the new model is its smaller size and silver color (at least the one I saw in the picture looks silver, and the old ones are black). It’s certainly a large device and though I don’t mind its width because it affords a wide screen the PSP is definitely more of a backpack device than a pocket device, and making it smaller can’t hurt for usability.

It seems like the real key feature of the new version is its ability to output its signal to an external cord. This is something that can allow anyone with the right cord and monitor to play games or watch movies on a TV screen. While that may be a poor substitute for a PS2 in gaming, there’s value in allowing people to view the UMD movies, which seem to come in at pretty high quality and might look alright on medium or small screens.

I can’t say I regret getting the first model earlier this year, but Sony has definitely given a small but measurable increase to the utility of the PSP with the new tweaks to the device.