The downside with the SD if he plays a lot of PS5 is that there is usally (ever?) not any cross saves between them so all his progress would be lost. If he plays different games on the PS5 and SD this of course not a problem

The thumbsticks are different, black instead of white. All the button text is more grey instead of white. Bezels around the screen is smaller. Hex screws instead of philips.

Just return it and order a new one, if you wait 30 days I guess your return window expired and dead pixels rarely start working unless you are lucky

Never, that’s one of the best features with the deck that you can just put it to sleep quickly and resume instantly. In some games you get a audio bug but usually it fix itself, other than that it worked every time