PlayStation Portal Remote Player 5

This has a lot of potential but profits nerfed this potentially OP'ed remote player. I got this because I have a child who spends half their time over at the other parents house and we sometimes wanna play COD zombies together but their side of the family doesn't have a console to play on. I thought since I got us a PS5 I could simply get a portal and they could play whenever they were visiting their mom.. unfortunately, being the money hungry industry this is, they made it so you absolutely must get a basic ps online account and if you wanna connect another portal you must upgrade the account to the plus so one acts as a remote player while the other uses the play station plus storage to play. All this is nice and all but, some of us can't afford this stuff and just wanna use this for what it was intended to be used for. Bonding with your loved ones and having a fun time, but unfortunately these large corporations just don't care about those little moments.. so all I have to say is be careful if you do decide to get this, because it's a lot more expensive than you think, just to get it set up. So much lost potential, plus they could of made this even better by making it so one can play games offline too, instead of catering to Nintendo, they could of made a switch eliminator.

This thing is wonderful. Flat out. If you have a PS Plus Premium account you can stream games anywhere you have decent Wi-Fi, and if you don't you can still remotely turn your PS5 on from wherever you are and play everything on your storage. I was a little concerned that the screen isn't OLED before buying, but it's not an issue. The Portal's screen is big and bright, and it stays that way from any angle. The graphics look gorgeous and fully detailed in 1080p on a screen that size. The battery lasts longer than a Steam deck or Switch when you're playing with the brightness up. Probably a solid 3 hours with everything cranked to the max and streaming a PS5 first person shooter in full HD, and double that with lower brightness and less resource intensive games. The sound isn't its highest point but it is more than passable. A lot of how good it sounds seems to be game specific, but it never sounds terrible or anything. Headphones sound like they should. I definitely recommend the Portal, I wish I'd gotten one sooner. I mistakenly thought they were pretty much the same thing as playing remotely on my phone with a PS5 controller, and it is not. At all.

Bruh…. I have a very poor vision, so it makes it very hard for me to play PlayStation in my living room on the normal TV. Having the ability to keep it close to my face without losing definition is wild. I did not know gaming could be like this. I know I’m sounding like I’m buttering biscuits, but It’s the truth. Definition and remote play are the reason you should buy this. If you like the game and have crappy eyes, this may be the thing for you. It was a game changer for me.

Really like this! It takes a a little while to get used to the joysticks and the sheer size of it. Once I got used to it it’s really just like playing on console. I have heard others gripe about the joysticks feeling like “toys” but after you play it for a while you don’t even notice that

Overall the PS Portal is a great device. I’ll list my personal pros and cons but the takeaway I want to leave it is that if you have solid and dependable WiFi, then the device should be considered. If not, even for travel, then it’s not going to be worth it in my opinion. I did try and use this for travel such as airplanes and it was ok for some points but not very dependable. Also, since this device now offers cloud gaming I’ll split my views on both as well.Pros:- Perfect size and lightweight. If you’ve held a PS5 controller then this feels practically the same as far as grip and comfortability.-The screen is up to 1080p and up to 60 fps so pretty clear and smooth as long as you have consistent and strong WiFi.- The power and volume buttons are on the top and easy to access and pretty tactile so you’ll know when they’re pressed down.- Thumbsticks and overall buttons on the controller feel the same as the PS5 controller. Thumb sticks are smaller and more sensitive, so they’ll move around a bit more freely compared to the actual controller.- The system does have haptic feedback, so games that use this feature like Guardians of the Galaxy will use this to the full capability. Feels like you’re much more immersed into the game.- Battery life was good. I was able to get over 4 hours for remote play and for the cloud.- Easy to pick up and play. For remote play, the system picks off whenever you last were, based just off of rest mode on the PS5. You’ll turn on the power button, and depending on how far you are from your PS5 and your overall WiFi it’ll take up to a minute or two in my experience to connect to your PS5. I was able to connect to my PS5 from across the country pretty easily.For cloud, this would be even easier since no PS5 is required. Depending again on your WiFi, this will take up to a minute.- Device price. For $200, having an official ps controller in your hands with a 1080p screen and able to seamlessly play PS5 games is a pretty solid deal for remote play. You can use ps5 remote play with your phone or even other handhelds, but having actual controller trigger and haptic feedback is what makes this system great to me. Now if you’re purchasing this for cloud, I put my opinion as a con.Cons:- WiFi, WiFi, WiFi. If you want to use the system, you have to have solid WiFi that won’t drop in speed or connection. If at any time the connection drops, for remote or for cloud, the game quality significantly drops to pixels, followed by getting disconnected from your PS5 or cloud. You’ll have to go through the process of reconnecting. If your WiFi isn’t strong, this is a repeating cycle and takes away from gaming.- Not for geared for multiplayer games. Cloud does have a few multiplayer games at the moment like dead by daylight, and works pretty good. But multiplayer games for remote play isn’t quite worth it if that’s your reasoning of purchasing the system. Even when sitting right next to the system, there’s a small but noticeable input lag for games. Single player games can get away with this most of the time, but multiplayer games will end up hindering the experience. I tried playing Marvel Rivals through remote play and although the game looked great and was overall smooth, the connection felt much demanding and any movement was a bit delayed. You can definitely continue to play if your WiFi is strong, but I’d stay away from more competitive multiplayer games.- No Bluetooth on the device. This one is pretty shocking considering it is a modern system, but Sony decided the only native Bluetooth headphones you can use are the ones they made specifically for the system. These are a separate purchase, and are the only official way to use Bluetooth headphones. There’s a button on top of the device that’s for connecting to these Sony buds. If you don’t have them, the button does absolutely nothing when pressed. You may be able to get around using Bluetooth headphones if you really want by putting in a Bluetooth adapter into the headphone jack. Otherwise you’ll have to just use the system speakers which aren’t bad, or use the headphone jack which is in the bottom of the screen itself.- Gestures and touchscreen. Gestures don’t really work. I connected remotely to my PS5 and played Detroit become Human on this device, and overall the experience was good but when fast action sequences start, the game thinks you’re playing on a PS5 (technically a PS4 for this specific game) and wants you to turn your “controller” certain ways to dodge or move in-game. The PS Portal does support this but it’s often not smooth as swinging an actual controller. You’ll likely miss events like that from games. Touchscreen is also not designed very well. Games that expect trackpad inputs, you’ll have to touch the screen and deal with your fingerprints smudged on there. Not great, but I guess to keep this price point adding a back touchpad like the PS Vita wasn’t an option.- Cloud pricing. Cloud is great overall, the list of games seems to grow every week at the moment. The games launch quick and are pretty smooth. To note the list of games available is completely different than the cloud games on the PS5. The cloud games on the PS Portal are unique to this system and currently not as many as the PS5. The reason why this is a con for me is its pricing. You’re not only paying for the console, but you’re paying a monthly or yearly subscription to play these games. Sure you don’t have to worry about storage, but paying continuously for a system that quite literally depends on WiFi is a bold move. This wouldn’t be terrible if you really want to take this on the go and are ok with paying extra every year, but when have subscription prices ever dropped for anything? Ps Plus prices will likely and inevitably rise, and that’s something to consider always when purchasing PS Plus.- Travel. I actually bought this as the main intention for travel. Despite more technical reviews I thought I’d give it a shot and took this across the globe with me to a few countries. At airports, this device barely worked. Because you need strong and reliable WiFi, I could only play on this system in lounges and even that was finicky at times. Airplanes? Forget it. Hotels it worked ok, but I disconnected pretty often for remote play, but was ok for cloud gaming, I was mainly getting 720p instead of 1080p. I think the only ok way of travel play would be your mobile hotspot, but this varies completely depending on your plan and connection. Staying over at families and friends and using their WiFi worked pretty good. Remote play in this scenario took about 5 min to connect but the input lag was horrendous, making it unplayable. Cloud worked perfect though.Overall if you want play PS5 games, with the same controller feeling and feedback, while at work in your office or in another room, patio, or family/ mfriends house with dependable and strong WiFi, this system is solid. If cloud is what’s drawing you that’s great, but consider the overall cost again and be comfortable with a sticky, fixed and likely growing subscription. Consider where you’ll be using this system and the WiFi in that area.

I use this way more than I expected I would. When my wife is watching shows I don't lovein the living room I often play games using this next to her on the couch. Nice evening? I be played outside in the hammock.The performance is great and lag/delay exists at times but is very minimal. I wouldn't play call of duty on it, but for games like bg3 or even ncaa football doesn't really matter. I had a harder time using it with nba2k as the shot release timing is so important and that tiny delay was felt.Important to note we have reliable and very fast internet and my ps5 is connected via ethernet. Can't vouch for performance for those with other setups.