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[Draugoth]

Sony combines a tablet LCD display with actual DualSense hardware to create a unique remote player for detaching PlayStation 5 gameplay from your main display. In this review, Rich assesses the rather cool hardware and gets to grips with Sony's Remote Play - what's the image quality like and how laggy is it? And does this - or any other review - actually count when so much of the experience is reliant on the integrity, quality and consistency of your WiFi connection?

00:00 Introduction
01:38 Best Practises For Configuring PS5/PS Portal
03:48 PlayStation Portal Hardware Breakdown
06:10 Remote Play Breakdown: Introduction
07:02 Remote Play Breakdown: Latency
09:25 Remote Play Breakdown: Image Quality
12:21 PlayStation Portal Summary
15:11 Features We'd Like To See
16:50 And Now, The Conclusion

 

[Cornbread78]

Amazing tech. I love mine so far... beats tablet & Vita use for remote play & has a crisp picture with very little inpit lag or digital smearing. My only complaint so far is the initial connection each use with my ps5. It's very touchy and take several tries. It should also turn on my ps5 like a controller would so I don't have to keep my ps4l5 in rest mode

 

[baphomet]

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

 

[analog_future]

Amazing tech. I love mine so far... beats tablet & Vita use for remote play & has a crisp picture with very little inpit lag or digital smearing. My only complaint so far is the initial connection each use with my ps5. It's very touchy and take several tries. It should also turn on my ps5 like a controller would so I don't have to keep my ps4l5 in rest mode

The Digital Foundry video shows that the Portal uses the exact same tech as any other device using the Remote Play app, and is prone to the same issues (latency, image quality, etc..)

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

Its rough on games like Call of Duty but perfectly acceptable in single player games

 

[Unknown?]

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

Those people are the ones saying Xcloud and GeForce Now are lag free.

 

[Sleepwalker]

I enjoyed the device well enough but after setting up remote play on the steam deck OLED, it's going back to amazon.

 

[El Muerto]

The Vita could directly connect to the PS4 for remote play, and can be used a controller in some games too. Glad he pointed out that it's ridiculous that the device can do neither.

 

[CrimsonSquall]

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

The only thing I wouldn’t do is play a ranked online game on this.

Remote play has a hiccup every now and again but it absolutely does not interfere with the experience of playing any of my games for me.

 

[Saber]

Its rough on games like Call of Duty but perfectly acceptable in single player games

What about games like Demon Souls? Or Ghost of Tsushima?

 

[Justin9mm]

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

It's the same people that play widely known bugged release games and say I completed the whole game and didn't encounter one bug! SMH

 

[Sleepwalker]

What about games like Demon Souls? Or Ghost of Tsushima?

Ghost of Tsushima works fine, I played it.

 

[Fake]

Yeah. Sucks.

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

With made me wonder if those talking good actually use their TV at Game Mode.

As Rich said, if you already play video games in your house without Game Mode active, so Portal will do fine for you.

I can't imagine me playing games without Game Mode, but here we are.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

What about games like Demon Souls? Or Ghost of Tsushima?

Haven’t tried either of those maybe the closest thing control wise is possibly Diablo 4 and it ran well enough to play and enjoy it

 

[kizito]

The Digital Foundry video shows that the Portal uses the exact same tech as any other device using the Remote Play app, and is prone to the same issues (latency, image quality, etc..)

Yeah there is absolutely no "amazing tech" behind it. It is actually more outdated than the Wii U tablet in its time.
And you can't even use it as a gamepad alone, ridiculous.

 

[Saber]

Haven’t tried either of those maybe the closest thing control wise is possibly Diablo 4 and it ran well enough to play and enjoy it

Diablo 4 is totally believable. But Ghost and Demons as single player are pretty hard to believe, as they are reaction time games(Ghost on the sword play and duels).
Sleepwalker said it was fine though.

 

[Sleepwalker]

Diablo 4 is totally believable. But Ghost and Demons as single player are pretty hard to believe, as they are reaction time games(Ghost on the sword play and duels).
Sleepwalker said it was fine though.

I only played for a couple hours but had no issues in combat but of course every network is different. To be fair I wouldn't wanna play the whole game like that although it's possible.

 

[Cornbread78]

The Digital Foundry video shows that the Portal uses the exact same tech as any other device using the Remote Play app, and is prone to the same issues (latency, image quality, etc..)

Surprised because when using it, the picture, lag & everytjing is 500x better than using my Vita or Lenovo tab, lol.

 

[Zadom]

Surprised because when using it, the picture, lag & everytjing is 500x better than using my Vita or Lenovo tab, lol.

Yes, it works smoother than my GCloud also.

 

[SlimySnake]

Aside from one of the issues he mentions (the wii u lag being roughly identical to game mode's while psp is literally 100 ms more), everything else just made me scratch my head.

One of the more bizarre reviews ive ever seen.

He continues to bring up wifi connections. Ok, well, your wifi connections matters for every single fucking device that streams anything. Netflix, xcloud, ps+ streaming, multiplayer games. why the fuck is he so upset over poor wifi coverage. people who have poor wifi coverage should maybe look into upgrading their routers and maybe stop buying $50 routers if they plan on spending $200 on this streaming device while paying $50 a month to netflix, disney, amazon and gamepass every month. it would be a good investment.

Then he says you need to hardwire in the PS5 to the modem/router. Nonsense. Been playing it connected to a wifi router and its fine. the worst it ever got was when i booted it up and there was a blurry image for about 5 seconds before it resolved to 1080p. I have no other hiccups of any kind. Maybe Rich needs to look into buying better routers for his home setup.

Then the nitpicks started. it doesnt support streaming. you cant use the controller on the PS5, ps1 emulation.... blah blah blah. I legit laughed my ass off when he said here at digital foundry we care about image quality. Dude you guys have been jerking off to switch ports of last gen games running at 360p looking like pixelated messes saying dumb shit like MIRACLE PORT!! when talking about said ports. And now all of a sudden a 1080p 60 fps stream is too much? Get a grip.

I am legit blown away by this thing. It's literally a PS5 in the palm of my hands. The switch is literally two gens behind this thing. Not one. Two. I was playing Callisto Protocol, Horizon, Spiderman, GOW and Ratchet on this thing with no visual loss in their high fidelity modes. Horizon was the only one that had some artifacts because its just jam packed with foliage detail everywhere but switching to performance mode pretty much fixed that. I dont know how hard it is to understand that you cannot get this on the switch or even the steam deck which can barely run games at ps4 quality visual settings.

I can understand the nerd inside Richard being upset that Sony didnt include a direct connection to the PS5 for this a la Wii U. I was hoping for that too. But the Wii U had limitations. 480p. You couldnt take it to another house. Let alone another city. I think it had a range of like 50 feet. Maybe Sony shouldve done a dedicated mode for in-home play switching to wifi as you went beyond the 50 feet radius.

But this thing works so well, it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. I would love to see 4k 30 fps streaming on a future version of this because my internet should be able to handle it. He kept bringing up Wii U in 2012. Well, upping the resolution from 480p to 1080p is literally a 5x boost in pixels. 400k to 2.1 million pixels. I would love to see Direct ps5 connection to reduce lag, and HDR. But right now, the screen looks phenomenal even next to my oled which guts all the great colors and post processing in the game mode.

 

[Hustler]

Diablo 4 is totally believable. But Ghost and Demons as single player are pretty hard to believe, as they are reaction time games(Ghost on the sword play and duels).
Sleepwalker said it was fine though.

Why is that hard to believe? I’m playing through Lies of P on Portal at night while the Wife and I watch TV together. Works great, no issues here.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Aside from one of the issues he mentions (the wii u lag being roughly identical to game mode's while psp is literally 100 ms more), everything else just made me scratch my head.

One of the more bizarre reviews ive ever seen.

He continues to bring up wifi connections. Ok, well, your wifi connections matters for every single fucking device that streams anything. Netflix, xcloud, ps+ streaming, multiplayer games. why the fuck is he so upset over poor wifi coverage. people who have poor wifi coverage should maybe look into upgrading their routers and maybe stop buying $50 routers if they plan on spending $200 on this streaming device while paying $50 a month to netflix, disney, amazon and gamepass every month. it would be a good investment.

Then he says you need to hardwire in the PS5 to the modem/router. Nonsense. Been playing it connected to a wifi router and its fine. the worst it ever got was when i booted it up and there was a blurry image for about 5 seconds before it resolved to 1080p. I have no other hiccups of any kind. Maybe Rich needs to look into buying better routers for his home setup.

Then the nitpicks started. it doesnt support streaming. you cant use the controller on the PS5, ps1 emulation.... blah blah blah. I legit laughed my ass off when he said here at digital foundry we care about image quality. Dude you guys have been jerking off to switch ports of last gen games running at 360p looking like pixelated messes saying dumb shit like MIRACLE PORT!! when talking about said ports. And now all of a sudden a 1080p 60 fps stream is too much? Get a grip.

I am legit blown away by this thing. It's literally a PS5 in the palm of my hands. The switch is literally two gens behind this thing. Not one. Two. I was playing Callisto Protocol, Horizon, Spiderman, GOW and Ratchet on this thing with no visual loss in their high fidelity modes. Horizon was the only one that had some artifacts because its just jam packed with foliage detail everywhere but switching to performance mode pretty much fixed that. I dont know how hard it is to understand that you cannot get this on the switch or even the steam deck which can barely run games at ps4 quality visual settings.

I can understand the nerd inside Richard being upset that Sony didnt include a direct connection to the PS5 for this a la Wii U. I was hoping for that too. But the Wii U had limitations. 480p. You couldnt take it to another house. Let alone another city. I think it had a range of like 50 feet. Maybe Sony shouldve done a dedicated mode for in-home play switching to wifi as you went beyond the 50 feet radius.

But this thing works so well, it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. I would love to see 4k 30 fps streaming on a future version of this because my internet should be able to handle it. He kept bringing up Wii U in 2012. Well, upping the resolution from 480p to 1080p is literally a 5x boost in pixels. 400k to 2.1 million pixels. I would love to see Direct ps5 connection to reduce lag, and HDR. But right now, the screen looks phenomenal even next to my oled which guts all the great colors and post processing in the game mode.

I knew DF was going to have a pretty awful review of the device.

I've not been in favor of the Portal since the first time we heard about it, but you have to review a device for what it is and not what you want it to be.

It would be one thing if Sony falsely advertised this as an offline device, a controller, or a streaming device rather than a remote-play device.

As such obviously YMMV in terms of results. That he has a problem with that and describes it as a unique situation never seen before in gaming when we've had disparate results with online gaming for years is hilarious.

DF is hilarious biased. I can't wait for their PS5 Pro review when they trash it, but it still sells the best among devices...

 

[Victor Omega]

Aside from one of the issues he mentions (the wii u lag being roughly identical to game mode's while psp is literally 100 ms more), everything else just made me scratch my head.

One of the more bizarre reviews ive ever seen.

He continues to bring up wifi connections. Ok, well, your wifi connections matters for every single fucking device that streams anything. Netflix, xcloud, ps+ streaming, multiplayer games. why the fuck is he so upset over poor wifi coverage. people who have poor wifi coverage should maybe look into upgrading their routers and maybe stop buying $50 routers if they plan on spending $200 on this streaming device while paying $50 a month to netflix, disney, amazon and gamepass every month. it would be a good investment.

Then he says you need to hardwire in the PS5 to the modem/router. Nonsense. Been playing it connected to a wifi router and its fine. the worst it ever got was when i booted it up and there was a blurry image for about 5 seconds before it resolved to 1080p. I have no other hiccups of any kind. Maybe Rich needs to look into buying better routers for his home setup.

Then the nitpicks started. it doesnt support streaming. you cant use the controller on the PS5, ps1 emulation.... blah blah blah. I legit laughed my ass off when he said here at digital foundry we care about image quality. Dude you guys have been jerking off to switch ports of last gen games running at 360p looking like pixelated messes saying dumb shit like MIRACLE PORT!! when talking about said ports. And now all of a sudden a 1080p 60 fps stream is too much? Get a grip.

I am legit blown away by this thing. It's literally a PS5 in the palm of my hands. The switch is literally two gens behind this thing. Not one. Two. I was playing Callisto Protocol, Horizon, Spiderman, GOW and Ratchet on this thing with no visual loss in their high fidelity modes. Horizon was the only one that had some artifacts because its just jam packed with foliage detail everywhere but switching to performance mode pretty much fixed that. I dont know how hard it is to understand that you cannot get this on the switch or even the steam deck which can barely run games at ps4 quality visual settings.

I can understand the nerd inside Richard being upset that Sony didnt include a direct connection to the PS5 for this a la Wii U. I was hoping for that too. But the Wii U had limitations. 480p. You couldnt take it to another house. Let alone another city. I think it had a range of like 50 feet. Maybe Sony shouldve done a dedicated mode for in-home play switching to wifi as you went beyond the 50 feet radius.

But this thing works so well, it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. I would love to see 4k 30 fps streaming on a future version of this because my internet should be able to handle it. He kept bringing up Wii U in 2012. Well, upping the resolution from 480p to 1080p is literally a 5x boost in pixels. 400k to 2.1 million pixels. I would love to see Direct ps5 connection to reduce lag, and HDR. But right now, the screen looks phenomenal even next to my oled which guts all the great colors and post processing in the game mode.

DF still hurting ppl feelings, that's crazy.

With that aside.

PsP looks more like a Qualcomm Partnership and or just a sensible way to get consumers ready for a more radical cloud base gaming.

 

[Esppiral]

The most surprising thing is that it has a Snapdragon 680 inside, that is way more processing power than I thought

 

[mckmas8808]

DF is starting to look funny in the light.

 

[DragonNCM]

Yeah. Sucks.




With made me wonder if those talking good actually use their TV at Game Mode.

As Rich said, if you already play video games in your house without Game Mode active, so Portal will do fine for you.

I can't imagine me playing games without Game Mode, but here we are.

I just realized now that I'm playing all games without game mod active on my TV....

 

[hlm666]

steam deck which can barely run games at ps4 quality visual settings.

I mean steam streaming has been a thing for years, the difference is you know you can actually play stuff local with no pc on the deck aswell. Your bitching about DF and your making to same kind of claims about stuff you have never used apparently.



may aswell throw this here aswell before someone say but mah ps5 library.

 

[Zathalus]

I knew DF was going to have a pretty awful review of the device.

I've not been in favor of the Portal since the first time we heard about it, but you have to review a device for what it is and not what you want it to be.

It would be one thing if Sony falsely advertised this as an offline device, a controller, or a streaming device rather than a remote-play device.

As such obviously YMMV in terms of results. That he has a problem with that and describes it as a unique situation never seen before in gaming when we've had disparate results with online gaming for years is hilarious.

DF is hilarious biased. I can't wait for their PS5 Pro review when they trash it, but it still sells the best among devices...

PlayStation Portal review: impressive hardware but is Remote Play itself good enough?

The Digital Foundry verdict on PlayStation Portal with latency/lag and image quality tests.

www.eurogamer.net

Ultimately, I'm impressed with the PlayStation Portal hardware, but I don't feel Remote Play is good enough or robust enough to support a hardware launch of this scale. However, if you disagree, that's absolutely fine - the diversity of opinion on this launch has been fascinating. Thankfully, owing to the existence of a plethora of existing apps across many systems, it's easy to test how good Remote Play is before you lay down your money. On the hardware side, Sony has delivered a good piece of kit - but hopefully we'll see improvements and new features added further on down the line.

Good hardware, but remote play can be better is one of the most fair assessments I've seen for this device.

If the low bitrate and frame pacing issues don't bother you then that's great, but Sony can certainly do better on the software side of things.

 

[Panajev2001a]

It would be one thing if Sony falsely advertised this as an offline device, a controller, or a streaming device rather than a remote-play device.

For its price it could reasonably be expected to be used as a controller for the PS5 too (why would we be arguing for it not to be?).

Being tied to your own PS5 (for now) should offer a better / customised approach that takes advantage of it such as a customised streaming protocol and/or a WiFi Direct based connection if it is within distance and has good signal quality connection with your PS5 (Sony makes both PS5 and PS Portal.
It is reasonable to expect something more optimised / custom than DualSense with a screen in the middle). Why would you want to add traffic to your local WiFi and bother other people int he house when your Portal could connect directly to PS5?

The point they made about Wii U was that Nintendo at least bothered to broker something custom with Broadcom to make sure streaming was great (sure it was 480p but it was also much cheaper HW many years ago). If Portal had been planned alongside PS5 creation it would have been customised (or should have been) to perform better. 80 ms of additional input + WiFi streaming and displaying latency is quite a bit.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

4-5 frames of lag is borderline unplayable. For slower cinematic or turn based stuff it would at least be playable. Anything fast paced or requiring accurate inputs pretty much out the window.

Of course people will claim they're playing it on the other side of the world perfectly fine. To those people I say be thankful you couldn't notice lag if it were kicking you square in the dick

Maybe your internet just sucks.
I can get first of match in MW3 mp with 2.5 K/D on Portal.
With mp games like Overwatch, Wayfinder, Fortnite or Wayfinder it's basically a non-issue.
Sp play just fine.

Not to say it's perfect mp, you'd need to adjust a bit, but saying it is unplayable is highly subjective. Especially in case of sp games.
And yes, I definitely notice the few frames delay.

DF (and others) does have some fair criticism about Remote Play in general, but I think they're overly harsh.

It mostly depends on the internet-connection and how stable it is.
For at home, it's more than sufficient for what it's supposed to do.

Might be a different experience when away from home, but that is of no concern to me personally.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

The Portal without the internet is an entirely new addition to your gaming experience you never knew you wanted

Order now.

 

[rofif]

From what I am seeing it’s a piece of shit.
5 frames of lag, banding, compression, makes 60 feel like 30…
And you need to have good WiFi dipped in virgin sacrificial blood to have good signal.
And all of that when you are connected to router with cable and that router is actually good… I’ve seen review from mystic, a ps fan and he hated it. Same with Wulf den.

Unacceptable. Should have oled, should be streaming directly from ps5 like Wii u.

Edit; btw since I have premium now, I’ve tried cloud streaming some games I already have to compare lag and quality. Even ps5 4k streams like hogwarts legacy look like crap and are very delayed. And the game locks 40fps 120hz option out

 

[Zathalus]

From what I am seeing it’s a piece of shit.
5 frames of lag, banding, compression, makes 60 feel like 30…
And you need to have good WiFi dipped in virgin sacrificial blood to have good signal.
And all of that when you are connected to router with cable and that router is actually good… I’ve seen review from mystic, a ps fan and he hated it. Same with Wulf den.

Unacceptable. Should have oled, should be streaming directly from ps5 like Wii u.

You can test remote play on your phone/PC and see if it works for you. If you are happy with the latency/image quality then go ahead and buy the portal, its good for $200. The major complaint is remote play software itself, hopefully Sony will improve it down the line. The PS Portal has a Snapdragon 680 so it can certainly handle higher bitrate streaming.

 

[Senua]

Aside from one of the issues he mentions (the wii u lag being roughly identical to game mode's while psp is literally 100 ms more), everything else just made me scratch my head.

One of the more bizarre reviews ive ever seen.

He continues to bring up wifi connections. Ok, well, your wifi connections matters for every single fucking device that streams anything. Netflix, xcloud, ps+ streaming, multiplayer games. why the fuck is he so upset over poor wifi coverage. people who have poor wifi coverage should maybe look into upgrading their routers and maybe stop buying $50 routers if they plan on spending $200 on this streaming device while paying $50 a month to netflix, disney, amazon and gamepass every month. it would be a good investment.

Then he says you need to hardwire in the PS5 to the modem/router. Nonsense. Been playing it connected to a wifi router and its fine. the worst it ever got was when i booted it up and there was a blurry image for about 5 seconds before it resolved to 1080p. I have no other hiccups of any kind. Maybe Rich needs to look into buying better routers for his home setup.

Then the nitpicks started. it doesnt support streaming. you cant use the controller on the PS5, ps1 emulation.... blah blah blah. I legit laughed my ass off when he said here at digital foundry we care about image quality. Dude you guys have been jerking off to switch ports of last gen games running at 360p looking like pixelated messes saying dumb shit like MIRACLE PORT!! when talking about said ports. And now all of a sudden a 1080p 60 fps stream is too much? Get a grip.

I am legit blown away by this thing. It's literally a PS5 in the palm of my hands. The switch is literally two gens behind this thing. Not one. Two. I was playing Callisto Protocol, Horizon, Spiderman, GOW and Ratchet on this thing with no visual loss in their high fidelity modes. Horizon was the only one that had some artifacts because its just jam packed with foliage detail everywhere but switching to performance mode pretty much fixed that. I dont know how hard it is to understand that you cannot get this on the switch or even the steam deck which can barely run games at ps4 quality visual settings.

I can understand the nerd inside Richard being upset that Sony didnt include a direct connection to the PS5 for this a la Wii U. I was hoping for that too. But the Wii U had limitations. 480p. You couldnt take it to another house. Let alone another city. I think it had a range of like 50 feet. Maybe Sony shouldve done a dedicated mode for in-home play switching to wifi as you went beyond the 50 feet radius.

But this thing works so well, it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. I would love to see 4k 30 fps streaming on a future version of this because my internet should be able to handle it. He kept bringing up Wii U in 2012. Well, upping the resolution from 480p to 1080p is literally a 5x boost in pixels. 400k to 2.1 million pixels. I would love to see Direct ps5 connection to reduce lag, and HDR. But right now, the screen looks phenomenal even next to my oled which guts all the great colors and post processing in the game mode.

Damn slimy you finally lost it, godspeed brother.

 

[N1tr0sOx1d3]

Haven’t tried either of those maybe the closest thing control wise is possibly Diablo 4 and it ran well enough to play and enjoy it

This. As DF say in the video, you can test this right now using your phone, iPad, laptop etc to get a good understanding of how remote play would work for you.

I can only speak about my experience and I can say this, throughout PS4 gen and early PS5 remote play had enough lag for me to completely disregard it.
After testing remote play a couple of months ago, improvements have absolutely been made, good enough for me to enjoy it in a single player setting.
Thing is, my setup isn’t even ideal. My ps5 is connected to 5GHz network not wired and the experience is great. Connected via wire would absolutely improve it further.

What I can absolutely confirm is what DF said in this video. There are inexplicable frame drops from time to time. Quite annoying. Like DF I don’t believe this is down to network, more likely a bug within the PS5 itself.

On wireless, I’m not seeing the 4-5 frame lag that DF are talking about here. It’s defo NOT Nintendo Wii response, but it isn’t far behind.

 

[NEbeast]

It's the same people that play widely known bugged release games and say I completed the whole game and didn't encounter one bug! SMH

Starfield ain't on playstation.

 

[Zathalus]

Starfield ain't on playstation.

Spider-Man 2 on the other hand.

Played it over the weekend on my Portal again and ran into, loss of audio in a cutscene, a crash, getting stuck in a building, and the famous Spider-Man 2 is now a white block bug.

 

[BbMajor7th]

I legit laughed my ass off when he said here at digital foundry we care about image quality. Dude you guys have been jerking off to switch ports of last gen games running at 360p looking like pixelated messes saying dumb shit like MIRACLE PORT!! when talking about said ports. And now all of a sudden a 1080p 60 fps stream is too much? Get a grip.

Yeah, this is the bit that is starting to bug me. Handheld experiences will always be compromised - for Switch, that's apparently okay, because you have to have realistic expectations based on the tech, for PS Portal it's apparently not. Despite the fact that Rich compares the added response time as being like going from 60FPS to 30FPS, which is exactly what the Switch already does with most of its ports. Like, if you had to play Hogwarts Legacy on PS Portal or Switch, which are you gonna pick?

 

[NEbeast]

Spider-Man 2 on the other hand.

Played it over the weekend on my Portal again and ran into, loss of audio in a cutscene, a crash, getting stuck in a building, and the famous Spider-Man 2 is now a white block bug.

Did you go out of your way to get those bugs? Like the videos I see all over twitter. I've got the platinum trophy and had zero issues.

 

[Zathalus]

Did you go out of your way to get those bugs? Like the videos I see all over twitter. I've got the platinum trophy and had zero issues.

No, I just played the game. The audio cutscene bug just happened in the Zoo, the crash as I was swinging in New York, stuck in a building as I landed on it, and the white block as I was switching between costumes to get my fashion on. The last was the funniest as swinging through the city as a white block was cool.

Starfield was about the same, a one or two crashes and the usual NPC getting stuck in the environment. Some AI silliness as well. It's nothing like Skyrim was, I guess the delay was good for QA.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

For its price it could reasonably be expected to be also used as a controller for the PS5 (why would we be arguing for it not to be?).

It should be expected to have some additional benefits of being tied to only stream from your own PS5 (for now) such as a customised streaming protocol and/or a WiFi Direct based connection if it is within distance and has good signal quality connection with your PS5 (Sony makes both PS5 and PS Portal, it is reasonable to expect something more optimised / custom than DualSense with a screen in the middle). Why would you want to add traffic to your local WiFi and bother other people int he house when your Portal could connect directly to PS5?

The point they made about Wii U was that Nintendo at least bothered to broker something custom with Broadcom to make sure streaming was great (sure it was 480p but it was also much cheaper HW many years ago). If Portal had been planned alongside PS5 creation it would have been customised (or should have been) to perform better. 80 ms of additional input + WiFi streaming and displaying latency is quite a bit.

I think Sony has some really serious engineering/design deficiencies across its hardware.

I get the sense that people work at projects essentially in silos at Sony with consultation happening minimally or after the fact.

There is always something with Sony, they miss a ton of opportunities, which ultimately holds back their ecosystems. That being said, you take products like this for what they are.

I was never going to buy a portal but I was VERY interested in the PlayStation Pulse Elites, but I'm dismayed by the use of a dongle even in the PS5 Slim model. It's ultimately poor design language that continues to be a thing at Sony. I think you can critique these choices, but I think it becomes disingenuous at a certain point to harp on a product at a specific price point for not having certain features.

Like I'm not going to criticize a 20K dollar car for not having heated cupholders.

 

[StereoVsn]

I thought DF comments were reasonable.

• Lack of Bluetooth is inexcusable. Why the hell does a portable device not support such a basic feature? I don’t want to hear shit about audio lag, let users decide.
• Why not let folks use Portal as controller for PS5. Seams pretty logical. Which goes to the next step.
• Why not let Portal have direct connection to PS5 vs having to go through the router? Make it an option at least.
• Chosen SoC is while decently powerful is deficient in functionality as can be seen by lack of WiFi 6/6e support which could greatly help with latency and having to deal with glut of other devices on the network.
• PS4 streaming should be supported. Why not enable it for 50-60 million people still using PS4s?

These are not unreasonable requests. Native Cloud Streaming should also be present. This is pretty vanilla Android chipset which could support it.

 

[kriolo]

no direct wifi with ps5? damn!

 

[DrFigs]

I thought DF comments were reasonable.

• Lack of Bluetooth is inexcusable. Why the hell does a portable device not support such a basic feature? I don’t want to hear shit about audio lag, let users decide.
• Why not let folks use Portal as controller for PS5. Seams pretty logical. Which goes to the next step.
• Why not let Portal have direct connection to PS5 vs having to go through the router? Make it an option at least.
• Chosen SoC is while decently powerful is deficient in functionality as can be seen by lack of WiFi 6/6e support which could greatly help with latency and having to deal with glut of other devices on the network.
• PS4 streaming should be supported. Why not enable it for 50-60 million people still using PS4s?

These are not unreasonable requests. Native Cloud Streaming should also be present. This is pretty vanilla Android chipset which could support it.

All of these sound reasonable. and i think they could be implemented in patches. except the bluetooth thing does sound legit - the ps5 and xbox series consoles don't support bluetooth. the switch didn't even support bluetooth until 2 years ago? and even then it's not doing streaming. if sony wanted to screw people from using their own headphones, they probably would not have included a headphone jack.

edit:
I'd like to see the portal have a setting to allow us to have 3 different types of connections: as a regular controller, direct ps5 connection, and remote play. this seems so simple but probably because it is so simple, it means that its something they already considered and had no interest in :/

 

[SlimySnake]

I thought DF comments were reasonable.

• Lack of Bluetooth is inexcusable. Why the hell does a portable device not support such a basic feature? I don’t want to hear shit about audio lag, let users decide.
• Why not let folks use Portal as controller for PS5. Seams pretty logical. Which goes to the next step.
• Why not let Portal have direct connection to PS5 vs having to go through the router? Make it an option at least.
• Chosen SoC is while decently powerful is deficient in functionality as can be seen by lack of WiFi 6/6e support which could greatly help with latency and having to deal with glut of other devices on the network.
• PS4 streaming should be supported. Why not enable it for 50-60 million people still using PS4s?

These are not unreasonable requests. Native Cloud Streaming should also be present. This is pretty vanilla Android chipset which could support it.

Regarding wifi6. I have a Wifi 6 router and it has terrible range. From what I gather, the 2.4 Ghz channel has the largest range, followed by 5G then finally 6G. I was able to test this with my laptop. Not only is the signal a lower strength, i get hickups i dont normally get in 5G so i just switched to it. 6 Ghz is better if you are around the router and if it hasnt be diluted by walls which fuck with both 5 Ghz and 6Ghz connections. My tv in my man cave had to be set to 2.4 Ghz because the signal strength of the 5G connection just wasnt strong enough for vudu 4k movies. Of course if you only have 100 mbps connection then you are losing a lot with 2.4 Ghz but since i have 1000 mbps, my 2.4G connections give me 250 mbps which is fine for 4k streaming.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Some genuine things to be excited about with the Portal but also some valid criticism as they point out. I'll wait for the next iteration which hopefully has an OLED screen.

 

[SlimySnake]

I mean steam streaming has been a thing for years, the difference is you know you can actually play stuff local with no pc on the deck aswell. Your bitching about DF and your making to same kind of claims about stuff you have never used apparently.



may aswell throw this here aswell before someone say but mah ps5 library.

What are you talking about? I am literally talking about native switch and steam deck performance. If you use it to stream games, good for you. I never claimed it didnt. Stop putting words in my mouth.

I cant believe we are at a point where saying something factual like switch and steam's native performance is generations lower than the PS5 is now considered too controversial of a take.

 

[Zathalus]

Regarding wifi6. I have a Wifi 6 router and it has terrible range. From what I gather, the 2.4 Ghz channel has the largest range, followed by 5G then finally 6G. I was able to test this with my laptop. Not only is the signal a lower strength, i get hickups i dont normally get in 5G so i just switched to it. 6 Ghz is better if you are around the router and if it hasnt be diluted by walls which fuck with both 5 Ghz and 6Ghz connections. My tv in my man cave had to be set to 2.4 Ghz because the signal strength of the 5G connection just wasnt strong enough for vudu 4k movies. Of course if you only have 100 mbps connection then you are losing a lot with 2.4 Ghz but since i have 1000 mbps, my 2.4G connections give me 250 mbps which is fine for 4k streaming.

Wifi 6 can be done over 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz as well, you don't need to use the 6Ghz band for it. Even on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz it brings a number of benefits.

 

[SlimySnake]

Wifi 6 can be done over 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz as well, you don't need to use the 6Ghz band for it. Even on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz it brings a number of benefits.

Sorry I dont understand. Right now, i have three connection options available for my router. 2G, 5G, and 6G. Signal is full strength for my 2G connection, 3 bars for my 5G connection and 2 for my 6G connection. Are you saying that even if i select 2G instead of 6G, i will get 6G enhancements?

 

[Mithos]

Having tested Remote Play multiple times PS4 Pro ethernet to router, and PC ethernet to the same router (TUF-AX5400, RT-AC66U, RT-N66U).
It is unplayable you can already feel the delay in the PS4 Pro menus before you even have started a game and then it gets even worse.

Also as you can see have tested multiple times over a long time, on different routers.