The Playstation Portal, hands on

Christmas was upon us, and so was the time to buy prezzies for loved ones, or more importantly, buy cool shit for yourself. Cool shit like something that allows you to play PS5 games, lying prone on the couch, while recovering from too much Ham and Potato Salad!

The Playstation Portal sits in the weird middle-ground of looking and feeling like a top-tier portable video game machine, but having no actual processing power and needing to be tethered to a PS5 to be of any use. Saying that, everywhere except NZ and Aussie, and a couple other places, Sony just introduced “Cloud Gaming” to the Portals bag of tricks. But as stated, not something I can speak too as we don’t have it down-under yet.

So, this wee run-down is purely based on the PS5 Remote-Play mode and how its slotted into my day-to-day gaming.

Quality in bucket loads, but Vita this is not.

To start with, lets deal with the device itself and the build quality. Simply put, it is stunning. For $350 (Xmas Prices) it “feels” like an amaaazing deal. It is literally a PS5 DualSense snapped in half with a gorgeous 8” LCD screen jammed in the middle. The triggers and haptic features are identical to a PS5 and granted the sticks are slightly smaller, but importantly still feel the same as the “real thing”.

As a “quality device” discussion goes, gotta say it’s a steal.

The challenge is to make the most of this awesome wee device though. As it is fantastic , but only when it was talking to my PS5 and remote play was working as intended. And it is totally possible, but not straight out of the box and not without doing a couple of wee things first.

Through trial and error and a fair bit of reading on Reddit, there are some must-haves to get this remote play systems to operate as intended, or more importantly, as one desires. 

My Tips are:

• The PS5 the Portal is connecting to, ideally needs to be on a hard-wire ethernet connection to the router. I say “ideally” here, but really, it’s a must.
• Connect the PS Portal to the 5G Band on the wifi router and have it be the only device using the band.
• Make sure the HDMI link options on the PS5 are turned off, so the PS5 isn’t sending any HDMI signals when its is just being used in remote-play mode.
• If the image quality or input lag is average, shutdown the PS5 and restart it using the Portal.

There is an array of other advice online and in Reddit, like having the HDCP copyright protection turned off on the PS5 etc… but nothing else I tried seemed to have a tangible effect.

So, with these tips in effect, 90% of the time I had a brilliant remote-play device, the other 10% it is basically unusable though . But I honestly didn’t think I would use it as much as I do! 

Its not all hard work though, there is gaming joy to be had

I have been playing a heap of Path of Exile 2, and for some reason, instead of turning on the TV and commandeering the couch. I would sit on the deck with a beer, turn on the Portal and grind out some dungeons for half and hour and love it. Feet up, under the shade sail, the sun shining, just killing monsters….it was really relaxing.

The screen is bright and beautiful too. I was playing an Indie metroidvania called “Dark Light”, which I had already started on my TV days prior. When I played on the Portal, I was seeing things I had missed on the big screen, weird I know! I recall seeing a whiff of gun smoke come from the barrel after firing for the first time, which I had not seen on the TV for some reason. The enemy animations for parry seemed to be easier to spot too. It felt like playing the perfect game on a top-tier portable device.

The elephant in the room though is that its not a “real” portable gaming machine, at least based on my experiences. Around home, with all the aforementioned “Tips” in place, it was a great alternative way to consume games, especially if the lounge was in use. But it is unusable away from home. Trying it on public wifi networks, it was choppy and the input lag made it totally unplayable. The device would disconnect, the lag was horrific and it was running at about 240p.  Even if a internet speed-test said I was on a 50Mb+ connection, still it was no good. 

It’s form factor I loooove. It feels like a real controller, so much better than the “backbone” I was using, but the issue is that it needs a good-sized backpack to carry it around. It is massive. It is far from being “portable” like the wonderful Vita and PSP were. God I wish the Vita had proper bumpers and triggers!!!

And that brings me to a coalescing of thoughts. 

The Playstation Portal suffers again from what the Vita did. Its close to being perfect, but just not quite. If the Vita had proper bumpers and triggers, it would still be used today. If the Playstation Portal had infallible technology for seamless wireless connection for Remote Play and perfect cloud-gaming services, it would be a revelation to the Playstation eco-system. But it doesn’t, well not yet anyway.

The crux of it is that the Playstation Portal is only $350 and I love it. It looks nice, it feels even better and when everything works, it is a great way to play games at 1080p/60fps when not using the TV. As a Playstation gamer, if I got it in a Xmas Stocking I would be a happy, happy, nerd.

(Thanks to Sony NZ for the “loan unit” to Review prior to Xmas)