PlayStation Portal review — a new portable meant for the hardcore Sony base.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has a strange history with handheld gaming. In the 7th generation, we had the PlayStation Portable. The PSP was highly successful and drove gamers to appreciate AAA gaming on the go with titles like God of War: Chains of Olympus, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. In the 8th generation, Sony released the PlayStation Vita. The PS Vita was an utter failure due to several factors including extremely overpriced memory cards and lack of large scale games. We arrive to the present, PlayStation Portal has launched and oh boy, it’s astronomically different from the other pair of handhelds from the Japanese giant.
PS Portal is an accessory to PS5, rather than a dedicated gaming system. You can only stream games to the device via Wi-Fi from the console as there are no native games whatsoever. This means that there are no streamable games outside of that from the PlayStation library. Over the next couple of topics, you’ll hear my personal experience with the tablet and how it shapes my gaming habits.
I will note my testing conditions. My PS5 is hardwired in, I have gigabit internet as well. I have tested the Portal using 5G Ultra Wide Band from Verizon alongside low-band 5G from T-Mobile. Results did not change from the hotspot perspective just like on my iPhone itself.
HD?
The PS Portal includes a decent 8 inch 1080p LCD panel, yeah, that’s right, no OLED in 2023 strangely enough. Putting the initial lack of OLED disappointment aside, the Portal’s display is absolutely gorgeous. Sony Electronics’ panels are top notch, featuring outstanding colors and contract with beautiful dynamic range thanks to the addition of HDR.
The picture quality from streaming starts to fumble the sheer brilliance of the display though. When in high demand areas in titles like Returnal where hundreds of particles are flying around at rapid rates, the bitrate fluctuates between acceptable to an image that has a good amount of blocking in it. Not only this, but on all Remote Play devices, there’s a few stuttering issues that become evident when they start kicking into high gear.
Remote Play has been around for a long time, the issues have seem to follow all modern devices that use it to this day. Even under the best conditions like I noted in the paragraph previously, expect image smearing from the streaming quality on top of the issues of frames sometimes dropping.
It feels so good.
The excellent feel of a DualSense returns, quite literally. The tablet is essentially splitting a controller in half and putting each half on their respective sides. This means comfortability is at an all time high since the DualSense proper, at least to me, is the perfect input device.
Not only that but the weight is not extremely heavy, in fact, the weight distribution keeps everything so light. Compared to the other gaming tablets I have like the Wii U gamepad, a Nintendo Switch, and a Steam Deck, my personal favorite is the PlayStation Portal by a decent amount.
Native games?
When Sony first announced the Portal, we all saw the beautiful handheld in all its glory. We had plenty of questions though… will it have games? Technically speaking, no. The PS Portal has no games. Everything has to be played via Remote Play which really, REALLY is unfortunate. Given the OS is Android at its core, it’s only a matter of time before it’s cracked and gamers can experience a full on tablet.
The power of the device is unknown though, we’re not really sure what it could and couldn’t run in theory. Yes, it surpasses PS Vita in power by miles just for the fact PS Vita struggled even with 540p streaming, so at the very least, Minecraft should be able to be rooted onto it once someone figures out a way into the OS. For those questioning if it is even possible, various people who had their hands on with certain builds of the unit (at least 3 people have confirmed they breached the OS) show that Android is available at its base.
Imagine the possibilities!
Final thoughts.
The PlayStation Portal is a work of art in terms of its sheer beauty, display, and controls. The Remote Play experience is rather solid, surpassing that of PS Vita by leagues but fails to live up to modern smartphones and tablets. The lack of pure games knocks this down a lot lower than it should be, so, I’m going to give a pair of scores.
For the Remote Play only perspective, 8/10 seems fair.
For an all round handheld, 4/10 is the best I could give it.
My initial reaction was “gross, I ain’t want that” but now that things have settled and I’ve gotten my hands on it, I really hope Sony makes Portal a line of handhelds. Continue to offer the Remote Play only device but create a PlayStation Portal Pro that has actual PS4 and PS5 titles that can be played on it akin to a Steam Deck, just at lower resolutions than 4K and potentially requiring most PS5 games to force a type of reconstitution in play. A $199 and $499 price tag respectively seems like a great option for those that want the best of both worlds and I believe it could be a really great investment for Sony to look into.
Now, if you already have a phone or tablet, would I recommend this? Personally, no, not until the Android crack has gone live. Until then, it’s roughly up to how hardcore of a PlayStation fan you are to get one now.
Thank you for checking out my review of the PlayStation Portal, Sony’s latest handheld. If you enjoyed this review, please let me know in the comments either on Medium or on X @LumberjackRy. You can also subscribe to my Medium to receive email notifications for when a new post goes live!
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