PlayStation 5 review: A big upgrade, and a bigger role for choice

The PS5 is a beast of a machine, and a major upgrade even over the PlayStation 4 Pro.

Nov. 6, 2020

PlayStation 5 review: A big upgrade, and a bigger role for choice

No matter which new video game machine you're looking at buying, the question you need to answer is the same: How will this make my gaming experience better?

The PlayStation 5 doesn't immediately answer that question as handily as other new consoles have in generations past. But don't make the mistake of thinking that reflects only marginal improvements. The PS5 is a beast of a machine, and a major upgrade even over the PlayStation 4 Pro. The changes are just more invisible than ever before.

This was always going to happen. Ultimately, the race to deliver better, fancier consoles is a game of catch-up. Home computers don't compete in that race; they're the pace car. The most cutting edge graphics and performance is and always has been on PC, for those with the resources and tech knowhow to appreciate it. Consoles are appealing because of their pick-up-and-play nature, but the tradeoff is they're never at the bleeding edge of gaming hardware.

Just pack that away for reference later as we dig into what this new PlayStation delivers.

The outer shell

Much has already been said about the size of the PS5. It is indeed a large lad. At 16 inches wide (in horizontal orientation), 4 inches high, and 10 inches deep, it's visibly larger than any previous PlayStation – including the notoriously chunky launch version of the PlayStation 3.

How about a more visceral comparison? When the PS5 arrived, I took it out of the box and set it down on the floor next to my seated seven-month-old child. The baby is only a little bit taller, and that's before I attached the console base which adds about an inch to its height (in vertical orientation).

It's big. That's fine for anyone who doesn't have a cramped entertainment center, but making it fit is still a bit tricky. If you're sticking it into an enclosed cabinet or media shelf, it's not enough for the console to just squeeze in. You'll want to leave space on the sides and in the back for air flow.

I've been using the review PS5 that Sony provided in vertical orientation and it strikes quite a figure in my office. The swooping white shell has a funky look that definitely stands out, and the size of the thing makes it impossible to miss. It almost feels like Sony meant for the PS5 to sit out and be visible, as a conversation piece.

I wish we had more color options than white-shell-wrapped-around-black-hardware, but that may be fixable (if Sony allows it). The shell is easy to remove, and in fact you're meant to be able to do it, to access both the storage expansion slot and the dust catchers – these handy little holes that ostensibly funnel dust when you stick a vacuum nozzle up to them. I haven't had the console long enough to judge how effective the dust catchers are, but they're a welcome addition if they work as intended.

It almost feels like Sony meant for the PS5 to sit out and be visible, as a conversation piece.

The storage expansion slot is a bit of an enigma at this point. Sony set the PS5 up with a solid-state drive (SSD), which crunches through data much faster than the drives consoles have traditionally used. It's a 1 TB drive with a bit more than 800 GB of usable space. People who want to add more storage will have that option... eventually, but that apparently won't be possible at launch. When it does work, the expansion slot will support M.2 SSDs, but only those that can match the speed of the PS5's drive.

Back to the exterior: Plenty of thought also evidently went into the console's plastic base, which you use in both horizontal and vertical orientation. The screw or screw cap you're not using in your chosen configuration tucks safely into a slot inside the base, making it much harder to misplace these tiny pieces over time. I won't get into the "how to" specifics of all this because Sony has delivered a great teardown already.

The same goes for hardware specs. I won't run through the stats and figures for all the various parts, but that information is readily available on Sony's website. It's powerful, though. Easily on par with a gaming PC capable of keeping up with current games for years to come.

As a whole, the PS5 struck me as comically oversized when it first showed up, to the point that it was hard to see anything else. A few weeks in, that feeling hasn't entirely abated. But I've grown to love my large, ridiculous-looking hardware child the way I have some of my more oddball PC configurations over the years. The size is going to be off-putting for some and perhaps a deal-breaker for smaller living spaces, but I'm a fan. I just wish I could change that shell to a color other than "blinding white."

The dashboard

For anyone who's already familiar with using a PlayStation from the PS4, the frontend experience on PS5 will be very familiar. Sony stuck with the horizontal dashboard arrangement of tiles for each game and app. Highlighting a tile and navigating down takes you into a social and activity feed for that app, showing you who's playing, your recent activity, and related video content.

This is all old hat for longtime PlayStation people, so I won't spend a ton of time describing the dashboard. It's immediately familiar, and that's a good thing. The biggest change is the way getting there actually works when you're using a game or other app.

Pressing the controller's centrally located PS logo button doesn't take you to the dashboard anymore. Instead, it summons a pop-up menu that lets you see your recent Trophies, friends who are actively playing, and open party chats. It also serves up a semi-customizable mini-menu that lets you quickly access features like music, audio controls, friend/party lists, and power/rest mode. You can still get to the dashboard by long-pressing the PS button.

The basic PS5 user experience feels better, as it should.

It's a small change, but a welcome one. The pop-up menu just appears on top of whatever you're playing or watching, making it easy to, say, hop into a friend's game with just a few button presses and minimal interruption. In a game like Avengers, which doesn't have the most helpful in-game social menu, this feature is a lifesaver. Instead of hunting through menus and sub-menus and user profiles, I was able to tap the PS button, highlight the friend I was trying to join, and press X. Moments later, we were partied up in-game.

It's also just a snappy experience, in a way that's difficult to appreciate until you're using it yourself. This is the "next-gen" promise, right? The interface may be familiar, but overall performance is smoother and more responsive. Instead of waiting a second or two while you're switching from game to dashboard, it happens instantaneously.

In short, the basic PS5 user experience feels better, as it should. Computing hardware has leapt forward significantly since the PS4 launched in 2013. And while that snappiness may not sell consoles on its own, the wider performance improvements it speaks to are the whole game here.

The accessories

Now we come to the big surprise, the PS5's true secret weapon. It's the new DualSense controller.

If you've followed games for a long time, you've probably heard about haptics before. In gaming and game controller terms, haptic tech gives you a more advanced take on what's traditionally been thought of as "rumble" features.

DualSense controllers don't just vibrate, though. In addition to rumbles that can very in both location and intensity, the truly unique "adaptive triggers" give developers the ability to tweak the resistance you feel as you pull either trigger, to better reflect what's happening on the screen.

So in a game like Miles, you feel a noticeable "click" at the end of the pull (plus a little "thwip!" through the controller's speaker) whenever you press the trigger to use Spidey's web swing. It's also evident in Bugsnax when you're scanning the game's adorable chirping critters with a camera-like device. The strong initial resistance you feel as you pull the trigger is a perfect representation of snapping photos with a camera.

The caveat, of course, is there's a long history in video games of controller haptics landing as more of a gimmick. That was most recently evident from Nintendo, which hyped "HD Rumble" on the Switch at launch. But the feature never fully took off, as too few developers fully embraced it.

The same thing could happen with the DualSense, and that would be a damn shame. The PS5's pack-in game, Astro's Playroom, ends up being a perfect showcase for the many different ways the controller can be used. Some of that is motion sensitivity, a carryover feature from earlier PlayStation controllers. But Astro also lets the DualSense haptics really shine.

The PS5's true secret weapon is the DualSense controller.

The controller also features a built-in microphone and speaker. The speaker is old news, yet another carryover feature from earlier hardware. And the mic is... fine. It's a serviceable option for letting people in a party know that you're looking for your headset. (And in an added bonus, chat audio comes out of the controller's speaker.) But you're not going to use the DualSense mic for voice chat in most circumstances. It's just not good enough.

The same can be said of Sony's Pulse 3D Wireless headset (not included with the console). As a delivery system for showing off the console's 3D audio, it's perfectly fine. But reports from every friend I partied up with are that the Pulse 3D mic sounds lousy. Fortunately, the wired headset I used with my PS4 plugs right into the DualSense and works great, so there are options.

There's also the new HD Camera (not included), though that will primarily appeal to streamers. It's a powerful little camera with a white-on-black design that mirrors the console's look and a built-in grip for affixing it to your TV screen. But unless you're someone who likes to game on camera (I am not), there's not much use for it at this point.

The games

Before I dive into game performance, let's just set some expectations. The only PS5-native games I had ready access to before launch were Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Bugsnax. The remastered Devil May Cry 5 and the Annapurna-published Pathless both showed up later in the process, so I tested those as well.. But not nearly as much as the others.

I also sampled backward compatibility in a number of PS4 titles. Let's talk about that first. Games that haven't been updated to take advantage of the new hardware don't seem to benefit in any way. Assassin's Creed: Origins, one such example, runs perfectly fine on PS5. But the load times don't seem much different (if they're different at all) and the in-game performance is exactly the same.

Games that do get updated are a totally different matter. I spent the most time with Ghost of Tsushima, which is PS5-ready on day one. Load times are faster, though not by much. It took about 10 seconds less to go from dashboard to loaded save file on PS5 as compared to PS4 (1:04 on PS5 vs. 1:14 on PS4).

It runs so much better, though. Tsushima already shipped with PS4 Pro support, so there's a menu option that lets you choose between higher resolution or better frame rate. But on PS5, there's no reason not to choose the former. Both options give you 60 frames-per-second (FPS) gameplay, or thereabouts. But the higher resolution option is still sharper.

(I also tested God of War and Days Gone, both of which seem to be PS5-ready. I spent less time with them, but both performed comparably to Tsushima.)

You may not always see what's improved in the PS5, but it's impossible to not feel those changes.

The next-gen difference feels much more dramatic with games that are actually built for PS5. But here again, it's not necessarily the extra visual razzle-dazzle that's exciting. Miles Morales looks great with "fidelity" mode turned on, but it cuts performance to 30 FPS. What you get in exchange, mainly, is ray-tracing, a buzzy graphical feature that essentially sums up to "much cooler lighting effects."

I ended up strongly preferring "performance" mode, which still looks all kinds of pretty but also lets you play at 60 FPS. You lose ray tracing in the bargain, but (for this game, at least) that translates to a light visual downgrade in exchange for gameplay that feels silky smooth.

This is where the next-gen advantage is tough to talk about. For one, it's incredibly subjective. Some people prefer fancy graphics and that's fine! I'd also wager that there are lots of console gamers who aren't familiar enough with the 30 FPS vs. 60 FPS difference to fully appreciate what a swell time the latter can be.

All I'd say to that is: New PS5 owners, definitely do play around with visual settings in your individual games. That's going to be a new experience for people who haven't done much gaming on PC. Consoles are taking baby steps here, so it's pretty much a binary choice between wanting better graphics or more frames. The fact that the choice exists at all is a welcome leap forward, and the difference is much more pronounced now than it was with the PS4 Pro.

Regardless of what you choose for visual settings, PS5-native games also load quicker. Like, a lot quicker. Bugsnax went from dashboard to loaded save file in 15 seconds on PS5, a time that more than doubles on PS4, which took 38 seconds. It's a similar story with Miles: Loading my save from the title screen took about 12 seconds on PS5, compared to 29 seconds on PS4.

That's an upgrade, and one that's emblematic of the next-gen difference. You may not always see what's improved, but it's impossible to not feel those changes.

Also! Don't overlook Astro's Playroom. It's included for free and comes pre-loaded on your PS5, but that doesn't mean it's nothing. There's multiple hours of entertainment in there, especially if you get caught up in finding all the secrets and setting high scores.

In many ways, Astro does for the PS5 what Super Mario Bros. did for the NES back in the '80s. It's a top-to-bottom showcase of what the new console can do, with the added bonus of it also being absolutely filled with neat little PlayStation-themed Easter eggs, both in terms of references to popular games of the past and collectibles that honor older hardware.

In summary

It should be said, the PS5 is a little too advanced for this current moment. It's got support for 8K 120 Hz displays over HDMI 2.1, which isn't an option in all of the currently available TVs you can buy and probably not something you have at home unless you recently upgraded and went for something fancy. I just bought a new set for my office in mid-2019, and it's already behind the times as far as PS5 is concerned.

The good news is, you can still expect to see performance boosts and visual upgrades even without that newer tech. Especially if you have at least a 4K TV, regardless of any other bells and whistles. We've already put together a thorough rundown of the TVs and specs you should be looking at for your new console, so I won't belabor the point here. But it's an important factor to keep in mind.

Look. The PlayStation 5 is a great machine. Whether or not your living room is fully ready to take advantage, it still represents a huge upgrade over the PS4's capabilities and performance. And you definitely don't need a high-end TV to appreciate the wondrous DualSense controller.

The PS5 also pushes console gaming more urgently out of its "everything works the same for everyone" comfort zone. Outside of the PS4 Pro, PlayStation people haven't really had to choose between visual splendor or smooth gameplay until now. Just having that choice available in many games as a simple binary is a huge step forward, and a win for all players.

You probably made up your mind on which console you want long before you clicked to read any review. But I'm here to confirm what you expected already: The PS5 is a worthy successor that does virtually everything its predecessor can (including backward support for most PS4 titles) while stepping up its game with improved performance, faster load times, and an overall better user experience.