Sony PlayStation Portal Review

About the PlayStation Portal

The PlayStation Portal is a handheld game streaming device that connects to the PlayStation 5 via Remote Play. It can only stream PS games locally installed on the console and you’ll need a minimum Wi-Fi download speed of 15Mbps.

Your host PS5 must be connected to the internet and a TV for the Portal to function. The Portal can’t run any apps natively.

PlayStation Portal specs

• Price: $200
• Display: 8-inch, 1920 x 1080, touch-enabled, 60Hz IPS
• Connectivity: USB-C (charging only), 3.5mm headphone jack, PS Link, Wi-Fi 5
• Weight: 2.6 pounds (1,088 grams)
• Dimensions: 14.0 x 3.88 x 6.0 inches
• Battery: Built-in lithium-ion
• Warranty: 1-year, limited

What we like

Comfortable to hold

While I‘m not a fan of the PlayStation Portal’s design, the PS5’s DualSense controller puts the least amount of strain on my wrists and fingers over time compared to other contemporary controllers and handhelds.

So, with near-identical ergonomics, it makes sense the PS Portal feels better in my hands than the Steam Deck or Logitech G Cloud, despite feeling like the handlebars of a futuristic steering wheel. The Portal is a half pound heavier than an iPhone 14 Max, but its weight is distributed evenly throughout its more cumbersome shape.

The thumbstick pads are smaller than the stock ones on the DualSense, about the size of the Nintendo Switch Lite’s. My tiny thumbs had a much easier time manipulating the Portal’s by comparison, and my thumbs didn’t cramp nearly as often. The buttons feel exactly like a regular DualSense controller, adaptive triggers and all.

Long battery life

The Portal’s battery life lasted a solid 7-8 hours during non-continuous play—although this was one feature we were not worried about based on our experience testing similar devices, like the Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld.

The PlayStation Portal is a fancy handheld streaming device like that one, albeit bound to Sony’s PlayStation ecosystem. Since stand-alone remote play and cloud gaming handhelds don’t need the processing power of a standalone gaming handheld that can run games natively like the Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, or Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme, they last much longer.

What we don’t like

Touchpad controls are unintuitive and broken

We spent a lot of time (more than we should have) trying to figure out why the touchpad, which shows up as two horizontally positioned rectangular boxes on opposite sides of the screen, didn’t work. It seemed like tap and press actions were malfunctioning, but after trying a plethora of combinations in several games that utilize the touchpad differently, we discovered they’re unintuitive and broken on both an individual game and UI/UX level.

For games that only bind one action to the touchpad, like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, we could single-tap anywhere on either box. For games that bind one action to either side of the touchpad (or “split” the touchpad), like Alan Wake II and God of War: Ragnarök, there’s no way to know until you are in the game and figure it out for yourself.

God of War treats the touchpad rectangles as two small touchpads that do the same thing; tapping on the left or right side of either will trigger one of two actions (pulling up the map or inventory), so the touchpad controls of each rectangle are mirrored. Still, that’s less intuitive than Spider-Man's control scheme.

But Alan Wake 2 is even less intuitive. Not only does it treat both rectangles as separate sides of a whole touchpad, but you have to hold down one touchpad rectangle and then double-tap on the other one to activate the one you just double-tapped. So, you can’t just press one touchpad rectangle or one side of a rectangle to trigger an action—you have to input one of the most unintuitive button combinations I’ve ever encountered in a game on any console.

To make matters worse, the touchpad prevents the Portal’s virtual keyboard from being used if it’s brought up in-game. If you die in Inscryption, it asks for your name and brings up a virtual keyboard, but you cannot use the keyboard because touching the screen brings up the touchpad.

As someone with a neurological disability, the more games I play on the Portal, the harder it is to remember how the Portal’s virtual touchpad works on a per-game basis. One way to make the PlayStation Portal more accessible would be to standardize how users interact with the touchpad across all games. There’s no reason why God of War or Alan Wake should have functionally different touchpad gestures on the Portal when they are the same on a regular controller.

If your Wi-Fi ain't great, you'll have a bad time

Game responsiveness and stability when streaming a game remotely or cloud gaming is completely at the mercy of your internet connection. If your home is built from Wi-Fi killing materials like mine (it's concrete reinforced) and you don't have a Wi-Fi extender or mesh router system, the PlayStation Portal becomes unusable.

It doesn't matter if my PS5 is in the same room; the Portal connects directly to your home Wi-Fi, not the console. (Never mind the Portal’s Wi-Fi adapter is, in the year 2024, only Wi-Fi 5.)

The furthest point away from my router is about 50 feet, and the Wi-Fi signal needs to pass through two or three walls to get to the living room, depending if I’m sitting on my couch or not. Even though my bandwidth still comes in at around 120Mbps, which is more than enough for remote gaming, the Wi-Fi signal strength needs to be at least -65dBM (decibel-milliwatts) to stream at low-quality.

By the time it reaches me, the bandwidth has reduced by 87% and the signal strength has fallen to -79dBM, frequently causing the game to stutter, pixelate, and dramatically increase input latency until the Portal disconnects from my PS5—repeatedly.

We recommend testing the stability of your Wi-Fi connection first before buying the Portal. For a handheld gaming console designed for home use, it should work in all rooms and you shouldn’t have to go out and spend a couple hundred dollars on a mesh router or extender to get it to work. This isn’t Sony’s fault, but it is the reality of the current state of housing and internet infrastructure.

Bluetooth connectivity is missing

The options for connecting the Portal to a pair of wireless headphones don’t include Bluetooth. There is, however, a dedicated PS Link button for wirelessly connecting the PlayStation Pulse Elite headset and Pulse Explore earbuds.

Presumably this is an attempt by Sony to lock more PS5 superfans into its gaming ecosystem or force the average user to begrudgingly purchase the Pulse Elite or Pulse Explore. (At least those come with a PS Link USB adapter.)

The only way you can connect non-PS Link headphones, headsets, or earbuds directly to the Portal is via the headphone jack on its underside. That pricey SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless headset you got last Black Friday won't work with the Portal.

Not even the Sony Pulse 3D headset works with the Portal, or any of the Inzone wireless headsets. The Sony Inzone H3 is the only one that will connect because it's wired.

However, if you have a wireless headset that uses a 2.4GHz dongle, you can connect it to the PS5 itself and mute the Portal. (Sound comes out of both the portal and headset at the same time.) This works only if you are close enough to your console for the signal to reach your headset, but it’s the most hassle-free option.

We didn’t notice or discover any latency using this workaround during our testing. Any differences are imperceivable to human ears alone.

It’s overpowered by sunlight

The Portal’s display doesn’t get very bright. We were, unfortunately, unable to confirm the actual maximum nits, but judging by our experience testing displays on other devices we’d be surprised if the Portal’s display can go over 300 nits.

This isn’t an issue in a dim or dark room, but in a brightly lit area, and especially one with multiple windows, the glossy screen works better as a mirror than it does at displaying games. It worked so well as a mirror that my eyes automatically kept adjusting their focus between the game and my face, which is not so great when you're playing a fast-paced fighter like Mortal Kombat 11 or a horror game filled with quick-time events like The Quarry.

Those games and others that have a lot of dark, dimly lit scenes are also problematic because your reflection will be more pronounced. Even in a slow-paced card game like Inscryption, it was hard for me to see what objects I could interact with around the edges, and sometimes the middle, of the playing space unless I was in a dark room. That’s the only time I could see the display’s rich colors and deep contrast.

A whole bunch of poor quality-of-life missteps

Several other annoying non-features about the PS Portal make it hard to justify its $200 price, even though $200 isn’t terribly expensive in the world of first-party handheld consoles.

For the same price, the Nintendo Switch Lite lets you switch between player profiles on the device itself, something Remote Play does not support. On the Portal, this means you’ll have to log off (disconnect) from your PS5 and then log out of the Portal itself because only a single account can be connected to the Portal at a time.

But you can still pick up a regular controller and take control of the PS5 as well as the Portal. If controller assistance worked with Remote Play that would have been a nice workaround to the touchpad issue.

Remote Play doesn’t support cloud gaming, either. That means even if you have PlayStation Plus Premium, the subscription tier that supports playing certain PlayStation games in the cloud, you can’t play any of those games via the Portal. Not even original PlayStation, PS2, PS3, or PSP games. You must buy those from the PlayStation Store.

Lastly, even though the Portal is advertised as being compatible with Remote Play over any Wi-Fi network, not just your home’s, it failed to connect every time we tried from a different (private) Wi-Fi network even when we had a strong, stable signal.

Should you buy the PlayStation Portal?

No, it doesn't live up to the hype

Functionally, the PlayStation Portal works almost perfectly if you have fast and stable Wi-Fi. For a chill night in with your friends, family, or partner it frees up the TV for a movie or another game on a different console so you all can still be in the same room while doing different things. If Remote Play didn’t already exist as an app or program for other gaming handhelds or your phone, buying the Portal would be a no-brainer.

But the Portal doesn’t do anything different or special compared to Remote Play on a different device, except you can connect a DualSense controller to any of those devices and have a functional touchpad. Most quality-of-life features are either missing or slapped on with as much care as getting slapped in the face by your friend with one of those vending machine sticky hands.

Whether or not the Portal would be a frivolous purchase depends so much on your lifestyle and personal surroundings: how many TVs you have, where they are in your house, the strength and stability of your Wi-Fi, if you have other devices that are compatible with remote play, how many games you own—if, of course, you even own a PlayStation 5.

That’s a lot of thought to put into purchasing a $200 device that’s not only locked into just one gaming ecosystem but also not compatible with all of the peripherals in that ecosystem. Remote Play’s touchpad controls are broken across any device with a touchscreen, including the Portal.

You’re better off getting a phone mount for your DualSense controller or a PlayStation-themed Backbone controller for your phone, or installing a third-party remote play app like Chiaki on your Steam Deck.