This Week's Purchase: PlayStation Portal
The PlayStation Portal came out 3 years ago and in a world where the cost of gaming is on the rise, this strange device feels suspiciously cheap. I purchased mine second hand for £120 and probably overpaid, I mean they're nearer to £100 on eBay.
The Portal doesn't play games directly. It streams them, through the internet. This is both the USP of the device and also its obvious, immediate weakness. Seriously, all they needed to do with this thing was make it so that it could play PSP games in HD. That's all we needed. Loco Roco Remastered running natively.
Instead, the PS5 needs connecting to the router, ideally via Ethernet cable, and the game is then streamed directly from the console. The experience is unmistakably reminiscent of the Wii U, if you remember that one. In fact the other clear missed opportunity is the lack of asynchronous games that use the Portal as a second screen. It could be a map or an inventory!
I have my PS5 connected to the same monitor as my desktop PC, which might not be the standard use-case, but it is admittedly useful to be able to play PS5 games whilst keeping the monitor in PC mode. It also means I can now play PS5 in other rooms of the house that are not the office. But ultimately, there's just something better about playing a game handheld, so I often found myself using the Portal in-front of (or at least very near) to the monitor the PS5 itself can run on directly.
At first I was a little underwhelmed by the picture quality on the device and ran through a series of network tests to confirm that it was a) not my router and b) this was basically as good as it got quality wise. The issue is that the video picture is still compressed before it's sent to the device. So even when you're rendering a 'full 1080p' resolution, a few shortcuts have been taken to get the image updating on-screen as fast as possible.
As a result, text can appear a bit sharp and sometimes block colours don't display properly. The trick is just to get used to it, and once you do the Portal starts to feel like the sort-of handheld PS5 that it actually is, and that's fundamentally quite a cool thing.
The Good
- There's very little latency, less than I'd thought there would be
- It's lightweight and comfortable to hold
- It can play PS4 games remotely as well as PS5 games
The Bad
- It can take a long time to start up
- Swapping discs becomes a total pain
The Ugly
- Some performance and quality issues
- Battery life doesn't seem too great
- No ability to play local games
Although not a glowing recommendation, I do find myself using the Portal, and I also don't hate it. With that information in mind the only question is price. If you can find it for cheap and go in with low expectations – you won't be disappointed!