A few weeks ago I reviewed the PS3Break, and I was disappointed by the poor quality of the product. The nice guys at mygamingmart.com heard my distress signal, and sent me a PS3Key sample for me to test. Let’s do this review!

Overall

The PS3Key is another PSJailbreak Clone, made by the same team as the Wiikey. It is updatable through proprietary firmwares (which you might like or not, read more below), and works as advertised. The dongle itself is extremely small, which is kinda cool but sometimes unpractical. As all other such dongles, it will only work on a PS3 with 3.41 firmware, and requires you to follow a simple series of steps (the same steps as other such keys) in order to run homebrews and backups.

I won’t go into the details on how to run backups, or how to operate the key on the PS3. It works the same as all other dongles, and if you are interested, you can watch the videos on my previous test of the PS3Break. Just know that I tested it, and it worked (including the possibility to run a Game without a blu-ray disc inside the drive, but more on this below)

Hardware

The PS3Key is small. That’s cool, but also impractical for people with big hands like me. Since one has to plug/unplug the key on a regular basis, I almost miss the cheap strap that came with the PS3Break. The key has 2 leds, a blue and a red one, which light up in specific sequences to give you basic information about success/failure of the operations. It seems the PS3Key ships with two types of board, an Atmel and a Silab. My version is an Atmel, so I cannot talk for the Silab version. But again, to me this means you get different behavior for the same product name, which is really not good. They should just give it another name when the hardware behind it is different. Unlike the PS3Break, there is no “update” button, and entering update mode is done with a specific trick (read below).

Updates

Since the PS3 hack is still very recent, there’s a very active scene working on updating the firmwares, and having an updatable key is a key factor at this point of the game. There’s a weird manipulation to do in order to put the PS3Key in update mode, it consists in plugging and unplugging the dongle in your computer several times in a row within a few seconds until both the red and blue leds are turned on at the same time…honestly, not super convenient given the size of the key, look at this video:

But overall, it’s still quite easy to do and I had no specific difficulty here. For the updates themselves, the site PS3Key.com provides (proprietary) software to do the updates (as well as their own backup manager which I didn’t try because it is apparently work in progress). The firmwares they provide are proprietary and encrypted. According to the PS3Key team, this is to provide some security when installing the update and guarantee that the key will keep working. It seems to be possible to install a regular “HEX” firmware (for example PSGroove), but might (will?) prevent further “official” updates.

So, you are basically left with a choice with the PS3Key: will you only use the official updates provided by the PS3Key team, or give up on their official firmwares once and for all the day you want to install a newer version? honestly that’s a tough choice, and as far as I’m concerned, this will depend how fast they can update their official releases.

The update tool is easy as pie to use (and that’s another reason to not go away from their proprietary firmwares), but Vista users have to run it in “Windows XP compatibility mode” (right click on the exe file and go in the properties), otherwise you’ll never get the update done (progress bar doesn’t move at all). Despite this minor issue on Vista, the tool worked fine and I had no issue. I would appreciate to be able to “navigate” the key, and for example retrive information, such as which firmware is currently installed on it, etc… Let’s hope this comes in future updates.

So far it seems that the PS3Key team is releasing updates fast enough to be almost in line with what open source developers are doing, so I don’t see any reason (for now) to not use their update mechanism. People who don’t want to be tied to proprietary software can apparently buy an AVRKey, with similar hardware and sold by the same team, but which is apparently more “open firmware” friendly (see more here)

Updates are extremely easy

Running Backups and Homebrews

Homebrews directly from the XMB 🙂

I tested the key with a backup of Fallout 3, the same I used with the PS3Break. I didn’t notice any major issue. However, I tried to run the game directly from the Game manager (to test without any blu ray inserted) and loading savegames was painfully slow in that mode. This could be because of the way I ran the backup, maybe there are other ways to do this, I don’t know.

Regarding homebrews, I tried the famous blackb0x FTP Server, as well as scummVM (yay!). I’m thinking that we’ll soon get a bunch of emulators running on the PS3 🙂

Conclusion

The PS3Key is a solid product if you are looking for something simple and with support from the manufacturer. Updates are simple and the website is clear enough (I’d like more documentation with pictures on how to use the key though) and you’ll appreciate the fact that the PS3Key website is in correct English, unlike the Engrish that can be found for some competitors.

I want to thanks the site mygamingmart.com again for providing me with this sample. They have both the PS3Key and PS3Break (they told me it was the new model, so it should be safe, but I still recommend the PS3Key) at their sister site aceKard.ca, as well as other dongles that I haven’t tested yet. They ship internationally.

I used the opportunity to open a thread on our forums: What dongle do you use, do you recommend it and why?