Kinda like this. And I live alone. I just think it would be neat to change up my playing position now and then, play some simpler games perhaps on the smaller screen, plus it’s not always convenient or healthy to be glued onto the same position on the couch in front of the TV. Would I buy it though? Probably not, don’t think I need to add yet another screen to my digital lifestyle for such a.limited use case. But I could see myself using it if I had one. So price will be key. It might be an impulse buy for me.
It’s exactly what I thought it would be, except less expensive. Not sure what I think about their proprietary wireless connection standard, though. There’s no explanation for what it’s actually good for except allowing Sony to leverage PlayStation market dominance to sell licenses to manufacturers.
Reminds me of proprietary PS Vita storage cards. I think they make these things because they are afraid if they don’t do that, their products will become very successful. And they don’t want anything other than their console to sell well.
Yeah, I am still salty about Vita.
Yeah, but everything else has stopped supporting wired headphones, so I have switched to wireless ones now. 😀
Does it even do anything natively? Does it at least run a tablet or mobile type OS so it can do more than stream your PS5 console?
According to the review, no. It doesn’t run anything natively. It of course has the sofware to make remote play and that PS Link work, but you can’t use it for anything other than streaming.
It would be cool if they allow at least some media apps on it, like YouTube and Netflix etc. but I highly doubt that it will happen.
No HDR, no buy from me. I have a steam deck and the only things I miss while remote playing my PS5 are haptics and HDR.
Also, no Bluetooth is dumb. It better support USB c wireless dongles for headsets like my Arctis 7. If it supports neither, then it’s a no buy.
Copying text from another post:
The Portal is a day one purchase for me. Sure, it’s niche, but I often get kicked off the PS5 so my SO can watch TV, so this will be a godsend so I can keep playing. I do use the Remote Play app, but I find it often lags or almost loses connection too much, and the latency can sometimes be bad, even with our 400mbps internet connection. Hopefully with Sony engineering behind it, it will be more reliable connection-wise than Remote Play, and I’m excited to be able to jump straight in without having to mess around with opening apps and connecting or pairing controllers.
If you have lag with the phone, you’ll have lag with the portal as well. It won’t work like the Wii U gamepad and will not do an ad-hoc connection. You need to look at your network setup.
I have a relatively lag-free experience using remote play on my iPhone. Your internet speed has nothing to do with it - even if connecting outside you local network you realistically only need 10mbps of bandwidth, even that. Ping is the number you need to be looking at - and is ideally below 10ms. Make sure your PS5 is connected to your router via Ethernet. If you’re having problems connecting locally, upgrade to a WiFi 6 router and make sure you’re one wall or less behind the access point, set up a mesh (with a hardware backend, I use MOCA for mine) if you’re two walls or more away.
Thanks for the advice - we do have a mesh network already, but I can’t hardwire the console due to the distance from the router (same room, but opposite sides). Ping is usually single digits, but I’ve still found even with a small number, latency can be a bit hit-or-miss. I’ve tried configuring settings to make things smoother, and I seem to have found some kind of sweet spot where drop-outs are less frequent, but there’s still times where it just refuses to work properly. Or even at all sometimes. I’ve seen in some preview videos that the Portal uses a “better” version of Remote Play due to how it’s been made, which swayed me in my decision to get it. With what you’ve said though, I may hold off until reviews come out before taking the plunge. Thanks again for your tips.
