Many gaming accessories serve specific purposes, catering to a user base by performing a single task extremely well. Racing wheels, fight sticks, and flight simulator rigs all have a clear reason for being. Sony gets that idea half-right with the $199.99 PlayStation Portal. It’s certainly a specific device—a handheld controller with a screen that lets you remotely play PlayStation 5 games from a powered-on console. But that's it. It isn’t a standalone gaming handheld, and it definitely isn’t a successor to the PlayStation Portable or PlayStation Vita. The PlayStation 5 Remote Play functionality works as intended, and the Dualsense-based controls feel great. It's just too limited for the price, especially when there are more economical options that perform just as well.
What Does the PlayStation Portal Do?
First, the PlayStation Portal requires a PlayStation 5. You need to own one to get any use out of the device. The Portal lets you remotely access your PS5, interacting with it through the screen and controls from anywhere within range of your Wi-Fi network as if you were playing with the console directly. If your PS5 is off, the Portal can even turn it on with the correct setting enabled.
Playing PS5 games while someone else is using the TV is an appealing idea, which is Sony’s envisioned use case for the Portal. However, you can already do that with almost any smartphone and a compatible controller. The Backbone One ($99.99) costs half as much as the Portal and is much less bulky. Likewise, a high-end phone has a screen that's likely much sharper and more vivid than the Portal's mediocre display.
The Portal is reminiscent of the Nintendo Wii U’s gamepad in that it must be tethered to a system, and it isn’t designed to be taken out of the house. The difference is that the Wii U came out 11 years ago, and it included the gamepad as part of the console instead of offering it as an optional accessory.
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Design: A DualSense With a Touch Screen in the Middle
To create the Portal, Sony basically cut a Dualsense gamepad in half and put an eight-inch touch screen between the two parts. The grips and general layout are unmistakably those of the PS5’s controller. It has the same white-on-black look, transparent face buttons and direction pad, and black analog sticks. The Options and Share buttons are where you expect them to be, though the PlayStation and mic mute buttons are transplanted from the controller's center to the inside edges of the left and right halves, respectively.
The DualSense gamepad's many features are here, including motion controls, immersive haptic feedback, and triggers with adaptive resistance. There’s no clickable touchpad, but the touch screen serves the same purpose. At least, it should in theory (more on that later). The controls predictably feel great, because the Portal basically repurposes the hardware from an already fantastic controller.
The Portal's top holds two speaker holes, along with thin, flat buttons for power, syncing, and volume up/down. The screen's bottom edge houses a microphone hole, while the back has a 3.5mm headset jack and a USB-C port for charging.
Screen: An LCD in an OLED World
The Portal's screen is an eight-inch, 1080p LCD with a 60Hz refresh rate. On paper, it isn't impressive. Compared with the OLED Switch ($349.99), the Razer Edge ($399.99), and many current phones, it’s even less impressive.
The screen works as intended, but the 1080p resolution looks fuzzier than most modern mobile devices. The effect is exacerbated by the fact that you use the Portal to navigate the PS5’s menu system, which is designed for both a higher resolution and for much larger TV screens. In fact, the OLED Switch looks a bit better at 720p, because its interface and biggest games are made with both TV and handheld use in mind.
Resolution isn’t as big an issue as the fact that the Portal uses a pretty basic LCD. There’s a reason why many phones (along with the Razer Edge and the higher-end Switch) use OLED screens, as they usually have better contrast and much wider color range. LCDs are capable of producing colors that rival OLED screens, but that requires specific engineering (the Portal’s LCD seems pretty much stock).
The OLED Switch, my three-year-old iPhone 12, and my Hisense U8H TV (an LCD with a quantum dot layer designed to expand its color gamut) display far more vivid pictures than the Portal. This is especially noticeable in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, where the red of the costumes really pops on my TV, but looks dull on the Portal's touch screen.
Features: PS5 Remote Play, and That's it
The most baffling aspect of the Portal is its fundamental limitation. After it was announced, rumors circulated that the Portal was an Android-based device, which led to speculation that, besides running the PS5 Remote Play app, it could run other software (or at least clients for cloud-based gaming like PlayStation Plus Premium). No one was expecting the Portal to be a full-fledged gaming handheld like the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita, but many expected a use case beyond simply streaming games from a PS5.
If the Portal uses Android, it’s buried under a single-purpose interface. The device’s simple menu system walks you through connecting it to your home network, logging into your PlayStation account, and then pairing it with your PS5. Once that’s done, you’re presented with just one activity on the Portal: Stream from your PS5. It lacks apps. There's no PSN client for game streaming. The only other thing the Portal can do is remotely turn on your PS5.
This is something any relatively recent Android phone or iPhone can do, and do quite well with a clip-on controller like the Backbone One (which is available in a PlayStation-licensed, DualSense-white version). The Remote Play app is also available on Windows and Mac, and PCs can also use PSN cloud gaming.
Besides Remote Play, the settings menu is the only other accessible area. It's obviously required in case you need to adjust network settings or update the Portal’s firmware. However, the menu has one confusing aspect: Airplane mode. Considering the Portal serves only as a terminal for another networked device and can’t run any software on its own, it's unclear why this option exists. Seriously, I turned the airplane mode on as a test and it effectively rendered the Portal inoperable.
Performance: It Does Its One Thing Well
I had no problem pairing the Portal with my PlayStation 5 over my home Wi-Fi 6 network. I could perfectly parry and easily dodge in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and detected little to no noticeable input lag. Video and audio also remained synced to the action, even if the picture sometimes got fuzzy by prioritizing minimizing latency over graphical fidelity.
The only strange hiccup I found was with the touchpad functionality, which is mapped to two Dualsense touchpad-sized rectangles that appear when you tap the touch screen while playing a game. Swiping the screen launches photo mode, while double-tapping brings up the map and upgrade menus. The latter functionality isn’t as consistent as the DualSense’s non-screen touchpad.
I also took the Portal to a 5GHz Wi-Fi network two blocks from my apartment to confirm that it could access my PS5 over the internet. It connected without issue and control was nearly as responsive, but I could definitely feel a bit more lag that made playing Spider-Man 2 and timing parries awkward.
It's important to note that Sony doesn't market the Portal as a device to play with your PS5 outside of the home even if it can work over the internet, and its bulky form and lack of a carrying case make it tricky to pack into a bag. Also, any mobile device with the PS5 remote play app can work over the internet, too, so it isn't necessarily a point in the Portal's favor.
Who Needs a PlayStation Portal?
The PlayStation Portal is a strangely limited device that would have made more sense a decade ago when the Wii U was out and comparable in concept. Of course, Sony had the PlayStation Vita then, and it was a fully functional handheld gaming system that could also remotely play games from a PlayStation 4. And now, you can remotely play PS5 games using nearly any phone, with a controller that costs half as much (or any Bluetooth gamepad, which costs even less). I can’t see a reasonable use case for the Portal that wouldn’t be served more economically, and with a better screen, with many other devices. Ultimately, the Portal is just a screen sandwiched between a controller, and for $200, it should be more than that.
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