Kinda like this. And I live alone. I just think it would be neat to change up my playing position now and then, play some simpler games perhaps on the smaller screen, plus it’s not always convenient or healthy to be glued onto the same position on the couch in front of the TV. Would I buy it though? Probably not, don’t think I need to add yet another screen to my digital lifestyle for such a.limited use case. But I could see myself using it if I had one. So price will be key. It might be an impulse buy for me.
Does it even do anything natively? Does it at least run a tablet or mobile type OS so it can do more than stream your PS5 console?
According to the review, no. It doesn't run anything natively. It of course has the sofware to make remote play and that PS Link work, but you can't use it for anything other than streaming.
It would be cool if they allow at least some media apps on it, like YouTube and Netflix etc. but I highly doubt that it will happen.
It’s exactly what I thought it would be, except less expensive. Not sure what I think about their proprietary wireless connection standard, though. There’s no explanation for what it’s actually good for except allowing Sony to leverage PlayStation market dominance to sell licenses to manufacturers.
Reminds me of proprietary PS Vita storage cards. I think they make these things because they are afraid if they don't do that, their products will become very successful. And they don't want anything other than their console to sell well.
Yeah, I am still salty about Vita.
No HDR, no buy from me. I have a steam deck and the only things I miss while remote playing my PS5 are haptics and HDR.
Also, no Bluetooth is dumb. It better support USB c wireless dongles for headsets like my Arctis 7. If it supports neither, then it's a no buy.
I can see why they went for low price point, but man I would have easily dropped twice as much if it was OLED+HDR, especially because of the full-featured dualsense control sticks. At lcd, I’m not interested it in the slightest, and will continue to use my backbone and iPhone despite the controller being kinda shitty, the screen is amazing.
It's awesome really. At this price, I can see myself buying this. I don't play on the go anyways, either at home or at my parents.
The PlayStation fambase is kinda ridiculous because on the one hand they're bothered by games being developed for the PS4 still, arguably downgrading them; while then wishing for an even worse handheld console and expecting devs would support it.
It would've caused awful fragmentation in the current ecosystem. Having your ps5 on the go is really the best they could've done.
Also, people complaining about latency but also complaining Bluetooth isn't supported. Make up your mind. I'm happy for this new PlayStation link thing. For the people that don't understand, it's basically the 2.4ghz adapter that comes with every headset, being built into the hardware, as Xbox has had it for years. Not requiring you to need that dongle anymore. Having that also on the handheld is perfect for good quality, low latency audio.
The only thing I really don't get is why you can't connect to the ps premium streaming directly from the handheld. Wishful thinking it just wasn't ready in time and will get added later, because connecting to a server would be cheaper, and faster if you're far from home, than your actual console. Obviously it would also give the great benefit of having games at hand without installing, updating, etc.
Big question is if it will support usb c 2.4 ghz dongles from other headsets
Yea I'm interested about that as well. Personally I'll probably be using wired headphones if not simply loud or muted. Because the latter 2 are how I mainly use my switch. When I play in the bed or shit I don't want to really be wearing a headset anyways
But what is the difference between this new thing and just streaming on any mobile device I already own? I can only use it to stream PS5 from home, no app support, no browser, no nothing. So I'm supposed to pay 200€ just for doing one thing that I can already do, with devices that can do much more than just streaming- no thanks.
1st, you can stream from everywhere, as long as you have WiFi. Not just home. Idk how people are literally unable to read, just like that. I mean how would that even work. It's made for remote play so it does remote play, simple as that.
2nd, if you have an iPad you want to do this with, fine I guess. Although it wouldn't be comfortable for me, on the couch or bed, having an iPad I'd have to place somewhere. Phone? Sure, it's an option, but it's awfully slow. Personally I only use it when I'm somewhere and have to recheck the settings, download a dlc, or whatever. Other than that, the screen is just way too small. This device will give you more than 60% more screen! And that's if you have an iPhone 14 pro max. If you have anything smaller, it will probably be somewhere around double the screen.
Lastly, I don't need any of the other things. Because for that I have my phone, and my phone is free while using it. So I can use my phone as a browser, message friends, or get calls while playing. Just like on my ps5. I'm perfectly fine with that. If I'd use it for streaming the game, I couldn't really do that comfortably in the first place, second the phone gets really warm using remote play like this, and this in the end will wear down your battery a lot. So I'm happy to have a separate device for it. Also, the so often praised switch doesn't have a browser either. Not saying it's fine, but it sucks just as much. The problem is actually more of the ps5 not having a dedicated browser you could also use in game. Would it be comfortable to use? Probably not. But it's there in the system anyways, just give us an actual app shortcut to it and it's fine.
In the end it simply comes down to whether you want to afford it. For me it will be a godsend, easily being able to work on my backlog while hanging with my gf. I could play things on the switch but that thing is awfully uncomfortable and the performance is awful. The exclusives are cool but apart from the few that interest one, there's nothing good to play on, because everything just runs better elsewhere.
A steamdeck is a nice piece of hardware but expensive as hell and the battery life is meh. This says to strive for the same as the Dualsense which in my experience is like 5-7h which for a handheld these days would be very nice. Especially at 1080p60.
I wasn't really interested in a Sony Handheld, because of fragmentation, specced down games, etc. I just wasn't fond of playing worse versions of the same games and if it would've been like that I would've probably never used it, because I could just get to my console. Also for the market it would've been utterly useless.
You got the switch that got awesome exclusives. You got the steam deck which is powerful to play games at a good quality and also got emulation on its side, which is a nice upgrade over the switch. And with Sony you would have... Sony exclusive, but hope that the devs patch their games into a worse quality version, just for the handheld to cost as much as a ps5? Who would buy into that? Now you can just take your ps5 in all its glory on the go, which is amazing. And it comes at a super cheap price of 200€.
Again, you can use other devices but a dedicated handheld is more comfortable to me
Not being able to stream games from the streaming catalog is my biggest issue with this. If it could do that, I'd definitely get it. As it is now, I'll wait and see if it does support it eventually. Though I'm not holding my breath
Yea I totally agree on that. Although from what I read it sounded like streaming directly onto the console wasn't possible.
I mean in it wouldn't really make sense you could not stream a game to the console and from there to the handheld? Maybe that's what they meant.
And streaming onto the console directly is something they could add in the future. Obviously there's no guarantee, but it would turn this from a meh device to a very good one imo
Copying text from another post:
The Portal is a day one purchase for me. Sure, it’s niche, but I often get kicked off the PS5 so my SO can watch TV, so this will be a godsend so I can keep playing. I do use the Remote Play app, but I find it often lags or almost loses connection too much, and the latency can sometimes be bad, even with our 400mbps internet connection. Hopefully with Sony engineering behind it, it will be more reliable connection-wise than Remote Play, and I’m excited to be able to jump straight in without having to mess around with opening apps and connecting or pairing controllers.
If you have lag with the phone, you’ll have lag with the portal as well. It won’t work like the Wii U gamepad and will not do an ad-hoc connection. You need to look at your network setup.
I have a relatively lag-free experience using remote play on my iPhone. Your internet speed has nothing to do with it - even if connecting outside you local network you realistically only need 10mbps of bandwidth, even that. Ping is the number you need to be looking at - and is ideally below 10ms. Make sure your PS5 is connected to your router via Ethernet. If you’re having problems connecting locally, upgrade to a WiFi 6 router and make sure you’re one wall or less behind the access point, set up a mesh (with a hardware backend, I use MOCA for mine) if you’re two walls or more away.
Thanks for the advice - we do have a mesh network already, but I can’t hardwire the console due to the distance from the router (same room, but opposite sides). Ping is usually single digits, but I’ve still found even with a small number, latency can be a bit hit-or-miss. I’ve tried configuring settings to make things smoother, and I seem to have found some kind of sweet spot where drop-outs are less frequent, but there’s still times where it just refuses to work properly. Or even at all sometimes. I’ve seen in some preview videos that the Portal uses a “better” version of Remote Play due to how it’s been made, which swayed me in my decision to get it. With what you’ve said though, I may hold off until reviews come out before taking the plunge. Thanks again for your tips.
Was really disappointed the more I learned about this. And I'll say it looks awful too, something an 8 year old would design. But, I don't play my playstation nearly as much as I'd like simply because it's not portable like my switch. Maybe this will be the kick I need to play my PS games more and for $200, it's pretty affordable. Might as well give it a try.
You can just buy the backbone for 100 bucks and do exactly what this thing does on any mobile device. Or buy this clip for the controller that holds your phone on top of it for 20. I went with the backbone and I'm pretty happy with it.
I mostly agree with this, but I don't think I'd enjoy playing with a clip + controller combo and I'd really love to use a backbone if they made one that fit my phone.
There's other backbone-like controllers that do though, so I may give that a shot.
