[freditup]

Does anyone know the best way to get a reliably working PS2 nowadays? I happen to have a bunch of old PS2 games and would love to have a reliable PS2 to be able to use them with. But buying online seems fairly fraught - how do you have any guarantee you get a reliable device? And they seem to be fairly expensive now.

(I couldn't read the article because the site was currently down for me, so apologies if this comment is off-topic, but hopefully relevant!)

[exitb]

I actually have a PS2 and don't use it much, as it's a pain to hook up to a modern TV. Most games don't support progressive scan, which forces your TV to deinterlace, which im my case adds enough latency to make it unpleasant to play. There's some boutique hardware that can deinterlace with less latency, but then it starts to get expensive really fast.

Ideally you'd have to buy a CRT TV along with it.

[MobileVet]

Yes! That latency was very quick to induce nausea for me while trying to play Battlefront with my son. I thought maybe it was just the frame rate… but latency makes more sense.

Thanks for sharing that and solving a mystery for me!!

[jgalt212]

The base retrotink models work well and are inexpensive.

[stevenwoo]

The author claims they could not find a buyer for theirs but they added hard drives to the finished PS2s. Browsing EBay finds a plain refurbished PS2 for 160-200 from seller with 99.3 percent rating with over 1100 sold. The mods in the article seem really nice - allowing you to rip games you own to a hard drive and play games off the hard drive instead of waiting for DVD seek/read times. There are not a lot of details about the cost of the mod in article but I’m guessing it would add a couple hundred to his sale price .

[rtpg]

Mercari + Buyee will get you things that are decent.

Here's just one of many listings. Shipping depends on where you are of course. And it's a Japanese model so you'll need to do stuff based on that. https://jp.mercari.com/item/m93693596459

[klaussilveira]

Sadly, does not ship to the US.

[ebbi]

Have you considered emulating instead?

[trenchpilgrim]

There are still many beloved games that don't emulate well.

[bombcar]

Either spend a lot for an eBay seller that looks reputable or find them at garage sales or thrift stores where they’re cheap enough to buy and try if you can’t fire it up there.

[hamdingers]

If you don't care to do the work yourself, I've bought many modded consoles from Etsy sellers and have always had a great experience.

[johncoltrane]

The ones you can find online are sold by people who know the market all too well so the prices are high. Plus it's online so there's no guarantee about anything.

Pawn shops, thrift stores, or their "modern" equivalents (EasyCash, CashConverters, etc. YMMV) would be a good start. I got mine out of a pile for 10€ at a countryside GiFi (French store) ten years ago.

[rm445]

Try a gaming store that offers a guarantee? I don't know where you are, but here in the UK, second-hand stores such as Cash Converters are full of PS2s, fat and slim. Dedicated second-hand entertainment stores like CEX will test consoles before buying them off people, and claim to offer a several-months guarantee.

[mmarvin]

You could also check out https://ongoldscar.com, sometimes there is a PS2 in the current drop (repaired, certified and with warranty)

[etempleton]

Look for the slim models. They are much more reliable than the standard PS2.

[psyclobe]

Buy one and replace the laser they are cheap and plentiful