PS5 review: Full breakdown of all the new features

PlayStation 5 is finally here and I've been playing with it for two weeks straight. So what is the final verdict on Sony's next gen console? [MUSIC] I've got so much to cover here, so make sure you stick around till the end. I'm gonna cover everything I think you should know about like the UI, friends, parties, control center, back-compact, and of course, what it's like playing Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Take it away. There are, however, a few things I just can't talk about yet and it's mostly online stuff like what the store is like, how PS Plus and PS now look and feel. And I also can't talk about any of the media apps just yet sorry, but let's get this out of the way at the top here. Okay, between these two next generation consoles that release just days apart, PS5 is the one that feels genuinely new. Now it doesn't necessarily mean better, but it does mean that out of the box, PS5 does offer some stuff you haven't seen or played before. Wow, the list of these new things is short and I'm not entirely sure they all add up to a day one purchase recommendation either. Well, series x is very much focused on optimizing your legacy Xbox library and games as a service with game pass, PS 5 is about improving the overall generational experience and of course exclusive software. So first, let's take a look at the console itself, okay? It's undeniably striking at first glance, and is a complete turnaround compared to its predecessor's look. This thing is also, well it's kind of enormous in almost a comical way. It stands 16 inches tall Its screws into an included stand for vertical positioning and uses the same stand for horizontal support if you want to lay it that way instead, and I think it's actually more of a manageable size when it's laying on its side. What matters is the fact that it is not allowed system at all. I haven't even heard it rev up once during my time with it to the point where the only way to tell if it's actually on or not is by the little white LEDs that shine on top. Okay, let's turn this thing on. [MUSIC] PS5 presents you with an interface that tries to be much more streamlined than before. It's a chance to improve on top of what I think is a really good PS4 UI and seeing that preview of it that Sony teased a few weeks ago actually got me excited about the whole thing. PS5 UI design philosophy essentially takes items from the PS4's media bar and sticks them into control center, which is that bottom row of icons that come up when you hit the middle PlayStation button on the dual sense controller. It's designed to give you much quicker access to the things you'd presumably want at a buttons touch, like notifications, downloads, your friends list, and more. And it's great that you don't need to completely back out of a game to manage those kinds of things. There's even some minimal customization offered here to like letting you pick which icons appear when you pull up control center. I've actually started to miss some of the things from PS4's UI and in some ways, it's a bit of a let down. For instance, system settings right, you have to back out to the home screen and then tap over a few icons to reach it. Then there's friends and parties and I know this really wasn't manageable on PS4, but now I feel like on PS5, it's just more confusing. They're nested in something called the game base and when you open that up, the first thing you see are old parties that you were recently in, scroll further down in this list to actually start to see which friends are online and then from there you can create parties, interact and do what you need to do. I will say this everything about that game base section feels a rough around the edges and I'd be shocked if it isn't updated sooner than later. Thankfully, content sharing and game capturing remains mostly unchanged because it works really well on PS4. And now you can even add text and crop screenshots right here instead of needing another app, which is a nice addition, that combined with voice detect entry method is pretty great. And just like PS4, the share button can be customized and will let you trim videos, gives you options for adding your mic chat or party chat to the recording. Strangely enough, I think the The only way that you can access your capture library is by scrolling all the way to the right in the Control Center's activity cards. It just seems a bit strange, and maybe could use some reorganizing. Anyway, a long press on the PS button brings you back to the home screen, which does resemble a much more refined version of the one you're used to on PS4. There's small tiles that sit at the top of the screen and it's basically divided between Games and a Media tab. But that's where you're gonna be able to do all the things that aren't games. This is also where they've stuck access to the Settings screen, which I briefly discussed a second ago. It basically resembles the list of items from the PS4 settings. And there's some interesting stuff baked in there though, like the option to set default difficulty of games, whether or not you want spoilers to be hidden from things people share with you. It's definitely worth a deep dive when you're setting up your PS5, so please don't sleep on it. [MUSIC] So overall, the new PS5 interface feels functional enough, but I do think the Control Center's activity cards are a bit messy. There's just a lot of them when you hit that PS button. And I wish there was a way to control their size, or at least limit the amount of them that show up. It's a minor complaint, but it's also something that can be addressed with an update. The first few cards that come up will likely relate to the game you're playing. And they might even offer some additional info, like objective trackers or even video gameplay hints. It's safe to say though, that all that stuff is going to vary by game. For example, when bringing it up in Astro's Playroom, there's video hints, objective lists, completion percentages, and more. But when I bring it up in Spider-Man, there's no video hints, and only some mission tracking offered. I think we're gonna have to wait and see how developers choose to take advantage of this. So right now, I'm not necessarily expecting it, at least not in third party games. [MUSIC] When you get yourself set up and logged into PlayStation Network, you'll have access to your library of PS4 games as well. PS5 doesn't really treat PS4 games any differently. They're just labeled as a PS4 game, and can be downloaded and played just like anything else. The only difference here is when it comes to cloud saves. So it seems like PS4 and PS5 saves are separate, and it's up to the developer whether or not they want to allow a PS4 save to transfer over to the PS5 version of the same game. So for example, I have the PS4 and PS5 versions of Bugsnax on my PS5 here. And the save that I made on my PS4 Pro only works with the PS4 version of the game on my PS5. It is confusing. Overall though, PS4 backwards compatibility works just fine. These last two weeks, I've been playing the PS4 version of Warzone with my friends online, and they had no idea I was using a PS5 to do it. Party chat, matchmaking, all that stuff worked without any issues. The Series X has made legacy game optimization a priority, even labeling it as a feature of their new consoles. I'm sure you've heard of smart delivery. PS5 doesn't have necessarily that same approach, or at least the fancy name for it. But some PS4 games will get optimization patches for play on PS5. Games like like Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, and Everybody's Golf have planned patches that aim to improve performance on the PlayStation 5. But is there any improvement in load times, taking a PS4 game and playing it on the PS5? The answer to that sounds like it actually is gonna vary by game also, in whether or not it does get a patch. But I wanted to try out a few just for myself, so I tested this with the Last of Us 2 and Uncharted 4. Spider-Man, of course, has a dedicated PS5 version, but we'll talk more about how that game performs in a little bit. [MUSIC] PS5 seemed to load Uncharted 4 maybe a few seconds faster than my PlayStation 4 Pro. [MUSIC] But oddly enough, the Last of Us 2 took 50 seconds longer to load on PS5 than it did on my PS4 Pro. To be clear, it's entirely possible that a patch is coming along that's gonna improve this. But right now, that's the load time I'm getting. In terms of fidelity though, there's really no difference to make note of here. And both games play exactly the same way on each console. [MUSIC] PS5 doesn't have a quick resume feature like Xbox Series X, but you can still suspend and resume gameplay like you could with PS4. Games will need to load from scratch if you play something else. Quick resume on Series X feels like a Game changer, but it's tough to tell how big of a deal that will be long term. Especially if games are going to continue to load as unbelievably fast as Spiderman Miles Morales does. [MUSIC] [NOISE] Isn't that crazy? I mean arguably, even more impressive is the fast travel loading in the game as well. Check this out. [MUSIC] I mean, we're talking like 3 seconds here. It's wow, Sony made a very big deal about the PS5 SSD data delivery speed. And it seems like that stuff is on display when you see new worlds being streamed into games in real time, like in all those Ratchet and Clank demos we've seen. [SOUND] That game feels like the perfect application for that kind of tech, and I'm not exactly sure that's what's happening here in Miles Morales. But the speed is undeniably impressive either way. Just like the series X is internal storage situation, you won't be able to run PS5 games off an external drive. Because it can keep up with the PS5 data speed requirements, but you can download and play PS4 games directly off an external drive. And you'll likely wanna have one of those ready to go, to help support your PS4 games on the PS5. Only downloaded a handful of games, mostly PS41s, before I needed to plug one in. And yes, granted I did have warzone on there, which is that 200 gigabyte monster, but yes, it fills up very quick. Unlike previous consoles, the internal drive is not replaceable, but you will be able to add an internal NVME SSD as long as it meets the PS5 data transfer requirements. Sony hasn't been forthcoming really about which drives are compatible just yet, so my early advice to you is wait and see. If you have a dual shock four that will connect to your PS5 easily enough, but it won't work with PS5 games, so keep that in mind. In fact, you actually can't have both a DualSense and DualShock 4 connected simultaneously. But let's get back to that DualSense controller just for a second. Like I said in my in depth preview of it, the locational an precise haptic feedback are the big takeaways here. And the addition of the adaptive triggers is really cool. Depending on the game, they can feel like their bumpy or resistive. If it's something that will really impress you the first time you feel it, and it's also on display in the new Spiderman game 2. The DualSense is definitely a big change for play station controllers, its broader and has longer grips. It's got some heft to it too, and the battery life is noticeably longer compared to the DualShock 4. It charges via and included USB C cable or you can use one that you might have laying around. I touched on this in my last video, but that middle PS button. Yeah it's not great and sometimes it's tough to find and It's definitely gonna take some getting used to I promise. That older rounded button on the DS4 was fine, I don't know why they got rid of it. I'm kinda of bummed about it. Below the PS button is a dedicated knew toggle for the microwave that refs blow that. And this can be used as a chat mic or allow for speech to text, which is great. The new D pad does feel the tiniest bit more mushy compared to the DualShock. But I wouldn't stress it, I've been using it, it hasn't been an issue so far, I'm not panicking about it just yet. So if you really want to get the full controller experience, there's a built in- game in the PS5 called Astros Player Room. It will give you all of that, plus all the Playstation nostalgia you'd ever want. It's actually a really good mini adventure game filled with easter eggs and hidden items. It's just a love letter to playstation. It's built into the system, ready to go out of the box. It's really hard to complain about that, but of course you probably wanna know more about Spiderman, Miles Morales and that is totally fair. In short, Miles Morales looks spectacular and plays just as well as its predecessor on PS5. Even if it doesn't necessarily bring a whole lot of new ideas that the table. A lot of this game feels like the original and because it was such a strong title that's probably more than fine for a lot of people. That said, it still delivers an incredible and I mean incredible amount of production value and plenty of moments that are sure to surprising. It's the exact same experience with the PS4 version of the game. The PS5 definitely allows this game to really shine. I did some side by side comparisons and you can easily see the difference in fidelity and performance between PS5 and my PS4 Pro. In it, you play as Miles Morales, of course, and you're given the opportunity to be New York City only. Spiderman because Peter Parker is literally on vacation overseas, which I guess he deserves, that's fair. Miles Morales introduces a new layer of power ups in the game called Venom Power, which let's Miles unlock electrical abilities in combat and in puzzle solving. [SOUND]. It's the only true PS 5 game that I was able to spend some serious time with before shooting this video. But if you love the original, this one is likely going to scratch that same itch for you. So the new Spiderman game has two different fidelity modes, one that prioritizes visuals, and one that improves frame rates. And I found the former to look phenomenal and run just fine. I don't think frame rate mode is really gonna help you out here. So PS 5 doesn't let you force the system into a certain refresh rate like the Series X does. In fact, it will just give you information on what it's currently outputting to your TV, though it does let you know which refresh rates your display supports. On my LG OLED C10 I'm seeing support for 4K up to 120, so that's good to know. It's not entirely clear how games that will support things like 120 hertz will work, but I'm assuming the PS 5 will force the output to the correct format when it's necessary. [MUSIC] Okay, that's a tour of PlayStation 5. I hope I touched on everything you might want to know about Sony's new console. This video really isn't meant to be an Xbox Series X comparison, but having already done a full preview of that console, definitely gives some context when talking about the PS 5. And that's the thing I keep repeating about Series XM PS 5. These two platforms have never been more different in their philosophies, so deciding between these two this time around is about making a choice on what you value more. A generational console with more exclusive titles to look forward to, or the overall value experience and ecosystem, the flexibility of Xbox. Now I know I couldn't have possibly answered every question you might have about PlayStation 5, but that's what the comment section below is for. Sound off their, hit me up on Twitter and I'll do my best to answer anything that wasn't addressed in this video. Please keep it here in the following days and weeks for more next Gen console videos, including a very final post review comparison of Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. That's gonna do it for me. Everyone stay safe and thank you so much for watching.