Vita Slim coming to the UK next week, but there's no date for the US yet

Sony will release the slimmer and lighter PS Vita redesign in the UK next week, on February 7. The suggested retail price for the machine is £180 (roughly $300).

The PCH-2000 model, which supersedes the old PCH-1000 Vita and was originally released in Japan last October, is 15 percent lighter and 20 percent slimmer than the original Vita. The machine claims it features a 6-hour battery life for games, and 1GB of storage is built into the device.

There's also a slight tweak to the machine's edges--they're slightly rounder--but the highly-praised OLED screen has been swapped out for an IPS LED one, though it's still running at the same resolution of 960x544.

The PCH-2000 Vita will reach US shores down the line, though Sony is yet to announce when this might be. And while the Vita Slim's Japanese launch saw the handheld available in lots of fancy colours, in the UK we'll still have to make do with just regular black.

Stock of the old Vita model will not be replenished, so if you're after one of the old models, then you might want to think about investing in the next few weeks.

The Vita's fortunes have been boosted slightly by the launch of the PlayStation 4, with Sony saying that its own internal data shows that many people are using the Remote Play functionality of the two machines.

For more on the Vita Slim, check out our hands-on and comparison photos.