PlayStation Portal
First published in GRIND IV, pages 224–227.
PlayStation Portal "Se" – is a PS Portal worth it at the end of 2024?
We have the following scenario: "It's evening, the festive lights twinkle in the living room and give the place a cosy feel, and the carefully decorated Christmas tree seems to be waiting to host Santa's presents for one evening only. Andrei, a 30-year-old man, is wrapping up yet another long day of corporate work. His laptop stays shut on the desk, but the tiredness built up over eight hours with his eyes fixed on the monitor won't let him relax completely. He knows exactly what he needs: a short Astro Bot session on PS5 – just him, the controller and the 300 friends he has to rescue from the clutches of the game's green alien. But his plan runs into a small snag: the living-room TV, the PS5's command centre, is occupied. His wife and his child are deep into a Disney Christmas film, and he doesn't want to break up that family moment…
Andrei sighs, but he isn't about to give up. He makes himself a mug of hot chocolate, settles on the corner of the sofa next to them and pulls his new PlayStation Portal out of the games drawer. He hooks up his Bluetooth headphones, switches the device on and, with a smile playing at the corner of his mouth, teleports as if through a magic portal into the virtual world Sony and Team Asobi built. While the adventures of the Disney characters in Elsa's Frozen kingdom play out on the TV screen, on the PS Portal Astro is exploring colourful galaxies in search of Puzzle pieces and his lost crew. An hour later, Andrei closes the Portal, satisfied. Not only is he completely relaxed, he's also managed to stay part of the family atmosphere. For him, the Portal isn't just a device – it's a bridge between his own passions and the time he spends with the people he loves."
How does the little story above sound?
Do you recognise yourselves? If not, never mind – you'll see for yourselves once you have kids, hehe. In the pages that follow (hopefully not too many), I'd like to describe my experience with Sony's handheld device, in the hope of answering the question "is a PS Portal actually worth buying?". It's a question that has run around my head on repeat ever since the thing launched. Sure, I could have ordered one, tested it for 30 days and then returned it if it turned out not to suit me, but I didn't want the hassle. Besides, there were plenty of new games and other priorities, so I preferred not to spend money on that sort of thing. About a year after the PS Portal launched, Vlad offered
(joke – I asked him a few times) to lend me his device so I could finally satisfy my curiosity. You know the saying, what's in your hand isn't a lie: you can watch 100 reviews on YouTube and still be none the wiser if you don't get to test the thing yourself...
Unboxing and first impressions No sooner said than done. I carefully unboxed the gadget, and my first reaction was "wow, that looks cute!". The unboxing experience doesn't differ much from that of a DualSense controller, but Sony products have a charm of their own. And it's always a joy to unbox a gaming accessory. The box is as minimalist as it gets: just the console (I hope I'm not upsetting anyone by calling it that, I know it's only a companion device), a USB to USB-C cable, and the manuals nobody reads anymore. There's no power brick to plug into the wall, but you can use one from your phone, or hook the Portal up to the PS5 to top it up just like a regular controller. Unfortunately I can't describe what it's like to unbox a sealed console and run the initial setup, but apart from a white film stuck to the screen and that joy of peeling it off like in those reels with the blonde girl saying "Mercedes" (or other expensive car brands), I don't think I'm missing much.
Now that the cardboard and the paperwork are out of the way, let's talk about the console itself. As I said a few lines up, my first impression was a very pleasant one. From the clips and photos I expected it to be smaller (that's what she said). Sony tore a DualSense in two, stuck an 8-inch tablet in the middle and hey presto, the PS Portal was born. It sounds crude, but I guarantee you, with these designer's eyes of mine, that they did a fine job of it. Attention to detail is second to none, absolutely none. Everything is measured and put together with great care, and in the most innovative way possible. Even if at first glance it looks like a boring, uninspired design, the fact that you get the feel of a DualSense controller and as big a screen as can be, without the Portal turning into an unwieldy device, seems almost fascinating to me. It's got a bit of the for- mula "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" about it, but they managed to add refinements too, so that it fits into almost any context.
It feels nice when you hold the Portal in your hand (stop thinking dirty thoughts), and the screen is actually better than the one on the Switch OLED. Don't jump down my throat, the explanation is coming! An OLED display is 100% prettier and easier on the eye than an LCD one, but the people at Sony really did a good job with the technology in the Portal's display, and the combination of screen size and image quality, from where I'm sitting, is an excellent formula. As the French say: "sometimes, less is more".
One last thing I want to mention here is weight and heat. Wait, what!? Yes, the Portal is a light device, obviously, because it doesn't have the components of a standalone console – it's only a remote player for the mothership PlayStation 5/Pro. That comes with another nice bonus: it's always cool. Now, joking aside, maybe sometimes it's good to warm your hands when you're mashing buttons on a device, as happens with the laptop I'm writing these lines on… but I assure you, it's no fun at all. It doesn't have fans making noise either, so you can use it in bed, or in a library, without everyone else thinking a plane is about to take off when you start God of War: Ragnarök.
What's it like playing on a PlayStation Portal?
My first gameplay session on the PS Portal was... rubbish! I waited ages for it to connect to my PS5, even though I was literally 30 centimetres from it and the router. Same thing happened on the laptop when I tried to use the Remote Play app. Lucky for me it was already late in the evening, so I left it charging and went to bed. The next day I decided to give it another go. It was as if it had been tired, and now, with a full battery, it had come to its senses. The connection still wasn't great – I had to press the On/Off button a few times before everything settled down, but it worked! Yay! I managed to play for a few dozen minutes, but something still wasn't quite right. The image would freeze every now and then, the resolution would drop dramatically as if I were playing a pixel-art title rather than a game from 2024. All in all, an experience that certainly wouldn't be worth 1200 lei... I talked to Vlad about it too, and he confirmed he'd had roughly the same experience while playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth.
A week later the Portal got an update from Sony, and things seemed to look up. I managed to play Astro Bot with no interruptions or disconnects, but with the odd stutter and sometimes lower resolution. In a game where every move has to be timed just right, especially in some of those infernal rounds where you feel like throwing everything within reach at the TV (please don't actually do that!), that just doesn't feel right. You'd expect a device that promises immersion and magic to actually deliver, or at least try... If there are problems like this a year after launch, I don't even want to know what it was like in the first week.
By the way, I forgot to mention, I have DIGI's best internet, I was always in the room with the PS5 and in the router's green zone, full signal.
So is it worth it, or "that is the question", as Hamlet would have said. Well, I can tell you it is worth it, but it depends how you use it. If you're like me and the TV is occupied most of the time, then it's worth it. If you find one for around 600-800 lei, even better!
That's roughly the price range I consider optimal, the one that makes the Portal a "must-have!" device. Another situation where it comes in handy is when you're away from home, you already have a Premium subscription and you want to enjoy the whole PlayStation games catalogue without spending on extra storage, or ringing your wife to ask her to swap the physical disc so you can put something else in...
The Portal is a useful device in the cases described above, but it can equally be an indulgence you can pass on without regrets. As long as Vlad, in his kindness, lets me hang on to the Portal, I'll use it carefully and I won't let not!? a single speck of dust to settle on it. But when that sad moment comes and I have to hand it back, I plan on buying one.
If at first I wasn't at all convinced by the magic Sony promised with this device, now I can say, nice and relaxed, that it does its job well — and it's left me curious to see how it behaves once the new streaming feature comes out of beta testing.
In a world where the PC is losing more and more ground to the phone, gaming "on the go" will only become more relevant. So, although I'm not a big fan of this kind of play and only turn to it out of necessity, I'm super curious what the industry will look like in the years to come. I also appreciate my own history with Sony's portables: I've got a PSP (thanks, Darky!) and a PS Vita in the collection. Both were and will remain con- soles, legendary, without which we wouldn't have the Portal today, nor the other portable systems for us to enjoy. Still, there's only one King, and that's Nintendo... I don't want to derail, but if there's one console I'm waiting for with all my heart, it's the Switch 2, or whatever Nintendo's new toy ends up being called. If I've convinced you to buy your own PlayStation Portal, then I hope you enjoy it and button-mash it to your heart's content. If I haven't, then you're better off making wise decisions and not buying things on impulse — but only if they're essential or bring you joy when you use them!