It wasn’t the most fiscally responsible thing I’ve ever done, but I wound up getting a Playstation 5 Pro despite its hefty price tag ($700US) and Sony’s cheap decision to not include a vertical stand, which cost me another $30 or something. It arrived late yesterday and I honestly haven’t had a lot of time with it but I just wanted to capture a few immediate reactions to it.
First the unboxing! It was packaged poorly, to be honest. The console itself was in there securely but the cables and the controller that comes with it were not and could rattle around in the box (though in a section separated from the console so they couldn’t damage it). This hasn’t seemed to harm anything but it wasn’t a confidence builder. You pick up an item this expensive and you hear parts moving around inside the box and you think “Uh oh.”
The console itself is smaller and lighter than I expected it to be. The power button is labeled now! No more groping my console looking for its “On” button. 🙂 The lights are lower down (when the unit is standing on end) which I find a little less distracting. The cover panels come off MUCH more easily than on the OG PS5.
Set up was a cinch. I turned off the OG PS5, unplugged the cables. Plugged them into the PS5 Pro and turned it on. As expected there was a software update and while that ran I opened the OG and took out the expansion SSD I’d installed. Once the Pro was done updating itself, I shut it down, opened the panel and installed the expansion SSD and plugged in the external drive that I store PS4 games on. Turned it back on and it did a “Rebuilding Database” sweep and then the games on my expansion SSD and PS4 games on the external drive were all ready to play. You CAN transfer data between two PS5’s but I decided I’d rather just re-download the stuff on the internal storage since I had a lot of junk on my old unit.
So what about the games!? Well the first game I booted was… erm, “My Time At Portia” which is a PS4 title not known for its fancy graphics. What can I say, I’m hooked on this silly game! The PS5 Pro has a toggleable option to “Enhance” PS4 games so of course I turned that on. It seems to just smooth things out for the most part. It was most noticeable in the UI and on screen text which was cleaner and sharper than I was used to. It also seemed to improve background images, like mountains in the distance. Actual character models and such didn’t seem to be impacted. I was pleased but not floored by the changes, but that’s just 1 PS4 game tested.
Then I tried Horizon Forbidden West and OH MY GOD what a difference the PS5 Pro makes. Most games these days (this is for you PC gamers out there not familiar with console-land) have two graphics options, a high fidelity 30 FPS mode and a lower fidelity 60 FPS Performance mode. I virtually always go with Performance Mode because I find 60 FPS gaming is both more responsive and more comfortable. Back in the 30 (or lower) FPS days I had some issues with motion/simulator sickness playing certain games, but that has gone away since I’ve been sticking to 60 FPS.
Anyway, with HFW you basically get (at least) the graphics quality of the OG PS5’s Fidelity mode, only at 60 FPS. It looks so much better. The lighting seems really beefed up too. It’s like a completely different game. There IS also a PS5 Pro Fidelity mode (that runs at 30 FPS) and I will have to at least sample that at some point. I can’t imagine how much better the game can look!
So that’s a pretty small sample size but the weekend is almost here! I’ll be testing a LOT of games this weekend!
Overall though, I’m happy so far. Honestly happier than I feared I would be. I kept reading reviews that were like “If you sit really close to your TV, this is the console for you. Otherwise you won’t see any difference.” I sit a normal distance from the TV (55″ TV, maybe 8-10 feet from it depending on if I’m leaning forward or lounging back?) and these reviewers are on crack. Maybe comparing like for like it seems that way. Like taking the Best Graphics mode on the PS5 and comparing it to Best Graphics on the PS5 Pro? Maybe? But being able to get the really good graphics at 60 FPS is a HUGE difference, and that is exactly why I bought the thing.
While watching a preview on Digital Foundry one of the guys said something like “If you’re a person who is always agonizing over whether to play at 60FPS with lower graphics, or getting the best graphics but dealing with 30 FPS then this is the console for you.” and that is exactly who I am and it was this one line that sold me on the Pro. I always wind up at 60 FPS after first sampling the pretty 30FPS and then I’m kind of disappointed at the 60 FPS image quality. Now I can have both.
Couple elephants in the room. The PS5 Pro does not come with a disk drive. For me personally this doesn’t matter but I know it matters a lot to many people. You can get an add-on drive but it’s like $80 more or something which is a fairly significant bump to an already very high price. Second, over on reddit there’s some folks complaining about coil whine. I haven’t noticed this but at 64 years old my hearing isn’t the best anyway, particularly when it comes to high pitched sounds like coil whine. So that might be something to watch develop. It could be a real issue or it could be an Internet molehill being turned into a mountain.
And all that said, I’m not here to sell anyone on a $700 console, because the price is pretty danged high. Though if you were shopping for your first PS5, I’d say the jump from the $500 OG to the $700 PS5 Pro is probably worth it. On top of the better performance you get a 2nd TB of storage (which would otherwise cost you $100 or so) and a smaller, nicer looking console. But if you’re a casual PS5 owner then you can almost certainly find a much better use for $700. I’m just an old man who sometimes over-indulges in retail therapy.
That said, I’m really pleased so far.