PlayStation Portal Review: A PS5 in Your Hands, With Limits

6.5/ 10
SCORE

PlayStation Portal

$200 at Sony

Pros

• Big, crisp 8-inch display
• Excellent controller and haptics
• Easy to set up

Cons

• Streaming game quality varies greatly
• No Bluetooth audio support
• You could use the PS Remote Play app on your phone or tablet instead

Sony seems obsessed with ways to extend the PlayStation 5 experience beyond your TV. Earlier this year, I reviewed the PlayStation VR 2, an immersive tethered headset that can play PS5 games. The $200 (£200, AU$330) PlayStation Portal is a less radical, more affordable proposition. Take your PS5 into another room in your home, but in handheld streaming form. But despite its handheld game system-like looks, it's a far more limited and more specialized product than you might expect.

I've been playing with the Portal for weeks, and I like it a lot. Yet I still have a hard time recommending it. Its controls are excellent, the display's big and sharp, but the streaming quality is hit or miss. I can also tell you that this thing is flat-out weird. Sony, a game company that made its own handheld consoles like the Vita once upon a time, now has something that looks like a standalone handheld but isn't. The Portal can't play games by itself. Instead it streams them from your PS5. Think of it like a PS5 controller that sprouted a screen in the middle. 

The Portal may be the best way to play PS5 games on a handheld from anywhere in your home, but it's also clearly an idea that Sony should refine further. It's a reminder that the PlayStation's remote play functions are excellent, but this hardware is really just a specialized device for the same streaming features you can get on a phone or tablet and a snap-on or wireless controller using Sony's PS Remote Play app. Sony has improved the experience with its Portal display and controls, but the streaming quality is no different.

Watch this: PlayStation Portal Review

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For more detail, make sure to watch Sean Booker's video for up-close impressions.

Better and bigger than a Backbone

Taking it out of the box for the first time, I thought it looked goofy. Clean, but goofy. The flat tabletlike display is sandwiched between two halves of a full game controller, with some swooping contour lines that are vintage Sony. The USB-C charging port is tucked underneath, like it's hiding. It doesn't look particularly portable. It's awkwardly shaped and doesn't have an included case. With its jutting grips, it's sort of like a Sony Batarang. Then again, it's not meant to leave your home.

This is Sony's answer to the Nintendo Wii U GamePad, which you may remember was also a way to play games in your home away from the TV screen. It had perfect video quality but needed to be close to the Wii U to work. The Portal can stream your PS5 console's games anywhere there's a Wi-Fi signal, similar to how the Remote Play already works, but it's made to work most reliably on your home connection.

So why buy a Portal, then? After all, there are decent snap-on game controllers for phones like the Backbone One that work with PS Remote Play and can be portable PS5 players too. Well, so far, having played on a Backbone One, I can already tell you one major difference: Sony's Portal has a far superior controller.

Controls are the reason the Portal feels fun. The grips, the buttons, the sticks -- they all feel just like an actual DualSense for a PS5. There are haptics, and the triggers have the same force feedback. That makes a huge difference in how I play my games, and it's why my teenage son doesn't love devices like Backbone One for playing his own games. Most handheld options don't feel the same as a standard controller. But the Portal does. 

One note on haptics, though: They do feel a bit different than a normal DualSense. The rumble motors get loud sometimes, and they feel less subtle to my hands on games I've played. Still, I've never felt haptics on a streaming-based handheld before, though, so the quality here is a big plus.

Streaming quality: Not always great

The way the Portal streams PS5 games is the biggest downside the Portal has. This isn't the same buttery-smooth experience as playing on the actual PS5. The streaming frame rates, smoothness and overall gameplay vary quite a bit. Yes, it's serviceable, and the software may still improve, but so far the streaming quality has been inconsistent. Sometimes it's fantastic, and other times it's merely OK. Your mileage will absolutely vary.

I went straight to Madden 24, downstairs, two floors below the PS5. For some reason, there aren't any handhelds that do Madden (no Switch, no Steam Deck). I played a Jets-Raiders Sunday Night simulation, and I appreciated having all the haptics I expect for tackling and running. The Portal's display, despite being 1080p and LCD, looked crisp. It's 8 inches, which means text looks reasonably readable -- a problem with some handhelds playing console or PC games, like the Steam Deck. Once streaming ran for a bit, the graphics looked sharp and pretty vivid. However, the frame rate varied. I found that one play suddenly hiccuped, and I missed a tackle because of it.

Gran Turismo 7 and WipeOut Omega Collection were very playable on the Portal (and my kids got really into taking turns with it), but I had to turn controller-motion steering off on GT7. Motion controls seemed too laggy. The frame rate kept up enough to feel like I could play well, though I missed the more precise timing of being on the actual PS5. 

I brought the Portal to my sister's house for Thanksgiving, and showed my nephew my PS5 game collection. That was a ton of fun, and games played pretty well even with my PS5 at home about 60 miles away. That was a pleasant surprise. But when I brought the Portal into the CNET office to show colleagues -- carried in a Ziploc bag in my backpack because the awkwardly shaped Portal doesn't have its own carrying case -- it didn't stream at all. 

Audio choices are limited

The speakers on the Portal are fine, but for headphones, you'll either need to plug in something wired via the 3.5mm jack or use Sony's proprietary Pulse earbuds or over-ear headphones for wireless connectivity. It's annoying that regular Bluetooth audio isn't supported.

I set up a pair of the Pulse Explore wireless buds sent along with the Portal, which arrive in December, also for $200 (£200, AU$330). They're chunky buds and, again, they use a proprietary wireless audio protocol called PlayStation Link to connect to the Portal, pairing with a single button press (the Portal has its own button to do that initial setup). To play games on the PS5 directly, they use a USB dongle similar to PlayStation's older Pulse headphones. They also double as regular Bluetooth earbuds, which I didn't try. On the Portal, they're serviceable and sound fine, but not notably stellar to my AirPods Pro-spoiled ears.

Setup was easy, but some things are weird

Setting up the Portal is simple and doesn't require plugging in to the PS5 at all to pair. I logged in via QR code to the PlayStation mobile app, found the local PS5 and I was connected. There are a few menu options on the Portal to control brightness and connection, but it's a bare-bones sort of package.

That bare-bones aspect causes trouble, though. I tried bringing the Portal into the office to show people how it worked, but it couldn't get onto our office Wi-Fi. Part of the reason is that the Portal can't handle pop-up Wi-Fi logins. That rules out tons of places you might otherwise try playing on the go. And when the Portal can't connect to the PS5 for whatever reason -- say, you turned the PS5 off instead of putting it in rest mode -- the Portal has no advice for you. It just basically shrugs and says the console can't be found.

One other weird part of the Portal, and its biggest control downside, is how it tries to replicate the DualSense clickable touchpad. The Portal doesn't have a touchpad at all and uses the touchscreen to simulate one. But I still haven't figured out how to make that happen. On-screen glowing rectangles indicate possible interactions, but I haven't made it work. I think it's via tapping? I couldn't call a quick time out in Madden because of it. Any PS5 game that leans heavily on the touchpad may feel really weird on the Portal -- just a warning.

Should you buy a PlayStation Portal?

Given that a Backbone One costs about $100 and a PS5 controller costs around $60, charging $200 for a screen-enabled Portal isn't that crazy an upsell. But it's also entirely unnecessary, and very niche. It really is just a remote streaming screen bonded with its own controls, which means it's super specialized. The controls show promise, but the streaming functions make this feel more throttled, at least on my older home network, than a dedicated game handheld like a Steam Deck or even a Switch. 

I can't shake the feeling, after weeks of playing on the PlayStation Portal, that this device is a prototype of where Sony should really head with handheld gaming. It works, but really by leaning on the same PS Remote streaming technology that has already existed. I love that Sony's back in the handheld game -- sort of -- but what if the Portal had truly seamless optimized video that was directly connected to the PS5, like the Wii U had? What if the Portal had a true touchpad like the DualSense? What if the Portal could also play games offline… or stream games from the cloud without a PS5 at all?

These could be pieces of what the Portal's future might be. But at the end of 2023, the Portal 1.0 isn't that. The Portal does have software update support, but it's unclear what Sony will have in store for it. 

For a PS5 owner who craves a portable accessory for mostly in-home remote play, and has the budget, this may not be a weird buy at all. Still, it feels like an experimental product versus a truly optimized one. Compared to every other Sony PlayStation product that exists right now, the Portal is surprisingly good… but not always good enough.

In a year when handheld game systems have re-emerged everywhere, I'd love to see Sony come back to making handheld consoles again. Maybe the Portal is a step in that direction. Don't stop, Sony -- just do it even better next time.