Both the PS3 and Xbox have their pluses and minuses. Much of the choice between them comes down to personal taste and what you’re going to use it the most for.

Gaming has grown a great deal in the recent few years, and several game systems now double as Blu-ray players and as products with which you can actually stream all types of Internet media content. The very best gaming consoles as of early 2012 are detailed below.

Sony PS3

The PS3 has come a long way in 3 years. It now starts at a acceptable $299 and has a more compact case and is significantly quieter. All the games that you play on the PS3 now are in HD, and the interface is extremely simple to operate. It has a Blu-ray and dvd player built into it. Wi-Fi is integrated and it also includes a large hard drive. In addition, it has output in HDMI and 1080p video.

Having said that, the PS3 lacks support for PS2 games and it does not have an infrared port. So controllers that are not Bluetooth aren’t supported. We also find that the online gaming and media options are not nearly as good as the Xbox, but the PS3 is getting better and better.

This unit is 33% smaller and 36% lighter than the old PS3s. We find it to be a more appealing gaming console than anything Sony has come out with before.

You can get a PS3 today with a 160 GB hard drive or a 320 GB hard drive.

Microsoft Xbox 360

The latest Xbox is slimmer and is significantly quieter when it’s operating. Additionally, it has a much better cooling fan and a 250GB hard drive. It’s got Wi-Fi built-in and a whopping 5 USB ports. One thing we have definitely noticed with this updated game console is how quiet it truly is. When it’s idle, the 360 is just about noiseless, and when the hard drive is running, you can hardly hear it. This is significantly better than the old 360s.

The 360 prior to now has suffered from what some call ‘red ring of death,’ which has caused some people a lot of problems. The earlier 360s were not great at heat dissipation. This led to the device burning out after a year or two. Microsoft states that have fixed this problem in the new, slim devices. We also don’t like that you cannot swap out the hard drive if you wish. Sony enables users to do this with PS3s.

We do find the 360 to be tops in online gaming and streaming of media, however.