I was debating if I want to buy one, but after trying that remote play worked well with a tablet on my home wifi, I took a leap of faith and ordered one of the last ones nearby. Picked it up yesterday.
Key points:
-Very satisfied with the performance so far, no noticable lag on home wifi. Finished Spider-Man 2 and beat the final boss on it, also tried some shooters, no issues with lag in single player games on my 500 Mbit network (meaning: maybe a partial second of stutter every 5-10 mins).
-So much smoother experience than using e.g. my tablet with a controller. Just pick it up, press 2 buttons, and you can play in a few seconds.
-The screen is also better than expected. 8 inches is super big for a handheld, around the size of the iPad mini. Very immersive, when playing. Colors are also great, and I’m saying that as an owner of an LG OLED TV. Of course an OLED screen would have been probably better, but also more expensive, and the resolution is still better than most handhelds giving us a great picture.
-The controller grips are very comfortable for even a longer session. The haptic feedback and trigger resistance feels just like the controller we are used to.
-The missing BT is annoying if you have a good headset (I don’t), but I understand the concerns with delay, though I have no personal experience on that.
-The only time connection became bad, is when downloading a game/update on my PS5 while playing, it even completely dropped once. Very annoying if you want to run an update in the background, but also not a dealbreaker, you can just run updates in rest mode.
-The price is fine, payed 219 EUR for it. I would like it a bit lower, but still okay with it (understanding the privilege that I can waste this money on something that is far from a necessity). I would not want to pay the price of a “proper” handheld for a controller with a screen.
Those who also bought it, what is your verdict so far?
Thanks for this write up! I’m loving mine so far. I do get micro studders if I turn on a game’s specific high frame rate mode so I have to toggle that off on the game specific settings and it goes away. Other than that it’s been fantastic and my experience is akin to yours.
And to be specific about the frame rate thing, my TV and PS5 have 4k, HDR, and 120 hz enabled to “when supported” instead of “always on”. And then I’ve only played Ragnarok so far, but in the Ragnarok game settings I have it in performance mode, but there is a separate toggle for “high frame rate”. This is the setting that if I turn it on I get micro studders. If I turn it off it is much smoother. So I think Sony needs to do an update to fix this issue. Wanted to explain it in detail in case others have this issue.
Thanks for the tip! These “niche” problems can be quite annoying when you get them, so hopefully somebody will find your advice useful.
I’m liking it way more than I expected too! Our baby sleeps much better when I’m in the room with him. Last night he woke up early right as I started gaming on my PS5 in our living room. I grabbed my new Portal and got a few more hours of playtime in while the babe snoozed away next to me. It was nice!
I’m curious, what’s the use case for something like this? Can you use it away from home
Yes, you can use it on any wifi (CNET even did it on mobile hotspot, but that depends on your provider). It works best though on the same wifi as the PS5.
Tbh I was also very skeptical, it just seems like such a weird solution compared to other handhelds, but it works very well.
I use it as an alternative screen option for my PS, so I can play in a different room, can do it while lying in bed, or in front of our TV while my wife watches smg else. We don’t have kids, but I imagine it’s even more useful then.
I understand not everybody has this use case, but after sitting 8+ hours in front of my laptop, I often don’t want to keep sitting to play, this is just so much more flexible and convenient.
I didn’t know that and it now makes more sense for people traveling a lot or having a TV possessive partner.
Luckily, my girlfriend only watches TV with me, so there is no screen fighting.
You seem to be lacking Baldur’s Gate 3 and that makes me sad. But congrats on the new device!
How attentive, thanks! It would be perfect to play on the Portal
So one thing that I keep wondering about. Are the controllers replaceable? I have a Switch and got it at release and gods only know how many controllers I have replaced due to drift.
So far my PS5 is only a half year old and I haven’t had that same issue with those, yet. But the paranoia is still there.
Not replacable by the user afaik.
I luckily never had a problem with stick drift this generation, so I’m not sure if you can get the sticks replaced on the DS5 easily (e.g. in a local shop), but Portal should be similar.
Thanks for the feedback and the info.
You could get a controller with hall effect joy sticks. But there probably aren’t hall effect joy cons.
