Shane
Keen to get your play on, but the TV is occupied?
Or maybe you’re just keen to pick up and continue your game from the home office, bedroom, anywhere in the house.
The official PlayStation Portal allows you to do just that.
Looking like a stretched PlayStation 5 (PS5) DualSense controller with a vibrant touch 8 inch LCD screen, you’ll wirelessly connect to your PS5 console over your home WiFi as though you were sitting in front of your main tele or monitor.
From the box there’s a bit of a setup.
Most likely the PlayStation Portal will need a few updates once you have connected it to your WiFi. The review unit that STG Play received did.
You also need to make sure that ‘Remote Play’ function is turned on, on your PS5.
Sony have made the connection seamless, I was expecting it to be a bit trickier, but nope. Really straightforward.
The PlayStation Portal instantly found my PS5 console on my home network and connected. It was game on from there.
While I’d have liked the giant portable screen to have been OLED, despite the LCD route that Sony took, you could easily mistake it for being something of higher quality than LCD. The compressed visuals are stunning. Games run natively at or up to 60fps / 1080p.
There’s sound too. The inbuilt speakers are actually really, really powerful and output a grunty audio. If you have a pair of the PlayStation Pulse Explore earbuds, or the PlayStation Pulse 3D audio headphones paired to your PS5, then these are the way to go for either full immersion, or to game on the Portal in the wee small hours of the night without disturbing anyone else.
PlayStation 5 has always had remote play. Downloading the app, and connecting up your smartdevice, be it tablet, phone or laptop, being able to play your PS5 and PS4 games library on the go has always been possible. But it wasn’t without it’s caveats.
There can be moments of gameplay lag or graphical rendering issues if your smartdevice is using mobile data, there can even be a few issues if you’re remote playing on a laptop via another WiFi connection, other than your own at home.
The PlayStation Portal is Sony’s way of controlling the experience, keeping it real and making sure that the gaming experience is seamless for the players.
All games that are installed on your PS5 will play – you’re remote viewing and controlling your PS5 console, the console itself is still doing all of the work.
While, initially I was surprised that there was no mobile data option mentioned when the PlayStation Portal was first announced – but having one of these on hand I fully understand why.
Keeping it connected to your home’s WiFi retains fluidity in connection (up to WiFi 6). Out of home it is possible to remote play via hotspotting, but the experience can be a bit choppy . If you’re at a mates place and connected up to their WiFi. Then you’re good.
Chargeable via a supplied USB-C cable, the remote play time will last around 4 hours with a 2 hour charge up (from flat). This said, if you’re deep within the PlayStation zone and the Portal begins to run low, plug in to a USB charger and keep going.
PlayStation Portal is a mid-priced accessory to get you gaming in an instant at home and a must have accessory for the serious PlayStation player to game on the go.
