I can’t believe this is $200 - Playstation Portal Review

a friendly reminder that the PS Vita could do literally everything this thing could and also play it's own games, you could gamestream from a ps3 and a ps4 along with some games having support for using it like a wii u style controller, the vita also has an oled screen and bluetooth, as well as a much much longer battery life, still to this day, i cannot wrap my head around how sony managed to screw the pooch so hard on marketing the Vita, it took the steam deck for me to drop it as my main mobile gaming console, and even then i still prefer it for retro games, like gameboy and nes/snes titles.

people were definitely outraged about the dualsense edge's price, and the issue isn't that it's 200$ for a streaming only device, it's that it feels like it's a waste of the hardware, if it could stream ps+ games over the internet without a ps5 being required it would be fine but as is it feels like the portal could do more.

That the portal cannot connect to streaming services like Sony’s own PS+ takes out all the joy for me. I cannot understand how Sony couldn’t include this!

Not being able to use Sony's own service to stream games on the Portal is the most baffling thing to me. Aside from having to handle a login phase and keeping account data on the device, how different could it be from streaming from your own PS5.

150ms latency is kinda atrocious considering you're staying in your local network. Even Stadia over the internet had 150 or better, local as low as 80 iirc. With how sensitive Linus is to input lag, it seems a little too focused on trying to find the good points and being okay with issues they normally wouldn't be. Even a Steam Link running on a (wired) Raspberry Pi 3 is better than that.

Wifi 6 isn't strictly better on speeds, as described. It is, however, on compliant environments significantly better than 5 in latency, which is massive for this use case. 6e is similar, but just adds 6GHz support.

My BIGGEST issue with the portal isn't the price. It's the wasted potential. If it could stream ps+ games over just the internet, that would be a massive improvement. Combine that with the lack of Bluetooth, wifi 6, display out, etc. It is not worth 200 bucks for something practically anything with a screen can already do.

The issue with this thing is not so much the price but how crazy limited it is. This makes its usecase super niche and feels like wasted potential. Remember the whole issue with the memory cards on the Vita? That one dumb decision held the device back quite a bit. The Portal's issues are like that, but multiple. Edit: As someone else mentioned, the Vita can already do everything this thing can and more. The Portal is basically the "remote play" feature turned into a standalone device.

Im fine with the idea of cloud gaming. My issue is that the point of cloud gaming is to create a cheaper alternative if you cant afford a device that can actually run the games. However for this device you have to already own the more expensive item in order to even run this thing which to me makes it pointless for what most people want it for. Especially considering that if you want to just remote play like linus said you can get a backbone and use the remote play app on your phone

I'm a big fan of game streaming as well, but I have to say that my biggest issue with something like the Portal is just that it's not that much cheaper than a standalone device (Steamdeck, Android Handheld, etc.) that can also run Steam/Android/Emulation locally on top of streaming, to say nothing of the fact you could stream from a PC or Xbox as well. Sure most of them don't have an 8" screen, but I'd trade 1-2" of screen space and ~$50-100 more for the ability to play way more games. I'm not sure how reasonable it would be to hit this price point, but if this was more like $100, maybe $150 I think it would be a lot more compelling but as it stands, I think it's just too close in price to full-fledged handhelds.

3:00 He seems to have forgotten, all processing is happening on the linked PS5. This device only streams the video and sends the control data.

On the wifi 6 point...you discounted the lower latency that comes with wifi 6 (up to 10 ms faster) and features like beamforming which can improve the stability of the connection. Both huge things for streaming real time.

I don't think the issue is the $200 pricetah. It's the very limited device that you get from it. I'm sure it'll be worth it for many people but for most, it'll be too limited.

The price justification angle starts to fall apart when you remember there are dozens of portable Android consoles like the Retroid Pocket 3+ that are able to do the whole PS5 remote play thing for $50 cheaper, and they include the ability to run games natively, stream other services like Steam Link or Moonlight, and they don't need proprietary wireless audio like the Portal.

I hope the Portal can be updated over time and that it will eventually allow streaming games from the PS+ streaming service.

The captive portal thing is a slight issue with the console itself too, but you can use a phone and the playstation app to get around this. I would hope they would use the same work around for the handheld too.

A big problem with the portal is the potential it brings for parents buying it thinking that its a self contained game console.

I can't believe Nintendo and Sony did a collab and made a new Wii U. Always knew it was possible.

I think it should be a 1080p 120/144hz - but put limitations based on connection speed/latency. If at a friends/parents house but console is at home then 60hz, but if you are on the same network that the ps5 is connected to then give it the 120/144hz. They could also give it the option for passthrough display via cable- USBC from PS5 to portal for a direct connection so that it wont be distracting for others/ give the best latency/response time. During lunch at college someone brought their switch with extra controllers so we played smash bros. It isnt a farfetch idea to add this to it even if it is limited to 2 additional controllers. Battery life does look more like a short break instead of extented gameplay.

the portal works great on my deco x20 mesh network. Kind of a missed opportunity for sony to use wifi6 in this instead of wifi5.