Well folks, the PS5 Pro is finally launching tomorrow. Four years since we chose the PS5 over Salem Ilese, the new console is drumming up a lot of discourse surrounding how important better graphics really are to the average gamer.
Thanks to the good folks at Sony, I’ve been able to get my hands on a review unit a week early and collect my thoughts on it. I’ve been a PlayStation console gamer all my life since the PS1 era (underrated), and I haven’t strayed since. In saying that, I wasn’t gonna go crazy for a PS5 Pro just because it can make graphics slightly look better. It would have to do a bit more to win me over, especially at its eyewatering price tag.
So, without further ado, here are my pros and cons for the new PS5 Pro. I’m sure we will all agree that my opinions are a hundred per cent correct, and no one will argue with me (please don’t argue with me, I’m fragile).
Pro: The design
I have to give the design team Sony credit. They straight-up slapped lines on the PS5 like a four-year-old drawing flames on a moving car, and I can’t deny it—I think it looks sick.
The new PS5 Pro is a slimmer, more slick design for the PS5. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and it doesn’t really change much from the original design, but it didn’t have to.
Truthfully, I’m pleasantly surprised that the PS5 Pro is slimmer than the original PS5. With the announcement of all the better tech and preview photos, I assumed the new console would be an absolute unit and struggle to fit my setup. Thankfully, it’s not an issue at all; it’s barely an inconvenience.
I’ll tell you this for free as well. Before picking up the console, you should know that the PS5 Pro vertical stand is different from the original PS5’s vertical stand, so you won’t be able to reuse your old one here. I tried (for science), and a simple knock of a vacuum or a house cat’s zoomies would easily have this toppling over like Jenga.
Cons: That price tag
There’s no need to beat around the bush—this thing is expensive. It has a hefty Australian retail price of $1,199.95, and that’s without a vertical stand or disk drive.
It’s a tough sell for many to fork out what might be an entire month’s rent for a better version of a console that already exists. You can play the same games on the original PS5, and they’ll still run very well.
However, I could see an argument where the PS5 Pro could set you up for the next five to eight years of gaming. If you were looking at buying a console for the long term, the PS5 Pro should have a lot of value here. Even today, games are still released on the PS4. That’s eight years after the PS4 Pro dropped and only four years after the PS5 dropped. So, while I can understand why someone wouldn’t immediately race to grab this, I do think that this console has a long life ahead of it.
Pros: New specs good
The PS5 Pro has received three big improvements: a larger graphical processing unit (GPU), which promises to render games 45 per cent faster, advanced ray-tracing, and PlayStation’s new AI-driven upscaling method, Spectral Super Resolution. If that sounds like a sleeper agent activation code, ask someone near you to read it out loud a few times to be safe.
Sony promised these upgrades would eliminate the choice between graphical fidelity and performance. In my experience, this is true. On the original PS5, I usually played with fidelity settings so I wouldn’t suffer huge frame rate losses or stuttering. With the PS5 Pro, I’ve toggled to the highest settings I could, and to my surprise, games have been running perfectly.
Ultimately, one of the biggest quality-of-life features of the new PS5 Pro is that it comes with a 2TB SSD. Before, if you wanted more storage, you’d have to install a second SSD onto the console manually. Video games are huge, so much so that if you have anything less than a TB, you will be fighting for your life to have more than four or five games ready to go whenever you want to play.
Cons: No disk drive
One of the more disappointing features here is that the PS5 Pro is a digital-only console. This irked me as I recently picked up a copy of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on disk and have already sunk a tonne of hours into it. Now, with the new PS5 Pro, I’ll have to repurchase the game or a separate disk drive for the console. What broke my heart even more is that reviewers who got to check out the console at an event in Japan said that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on the regular PS5 compared to the Pro model was night and day. Sadly, I can’t confirm because I’m a dinosaur that still buys discs.
Kidding aside, I’m not a huge fan of a digital-only model moving forward. Australia has some of the worst internet in the world, and video games are ballooning in size. If you want to play a new game, you could wait hours for it to download. You could also end up angering your entire household by hogging the internet trying to download all 120+ GBs of the new Call of Duty.
Pros: Graphics good!
Graphical fidelity is the big selling point Sony wants to make with the PS5 Pro. With its AI-upscaling tech, Sony is promising to reach the highest of highs a video game console can offer.
It’s hard to tell through screenshots, but games receiving the PS5 Pro visual updates are looking stunning on the console. It’s such a small detail in the grand scope of things, but the fact that you can see every blade of grass when walking through towns in The Last of Us II without painful load screens or framerates tanking is a marvel of tech work.
Another game receiving a significant boost from the Pro is Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. While the game looked stunning on release, I remembered plenty of stuttering during cutscenes. In my ten hours playing the game on the PS5 Pro, I only experienced a slight 0.5-second stutter in the opening cutscene, which is huge. It might not seem like it, but playing the game with nearly no issues or framerate dips improved my experience significantly. Playing a game without framerates dropping is like receiving a compliment. You don’t notice how nice it is until you get one.
Cons: You’ll need a better TV to really get the most out of it
I feel like I’m still only scraping the surface here. I played the console on an older Hisense HD Smart TV, meaning it wasn’t OLED, 4K or an ultrawide resolution.
To really get the most out of your PS5 Pro, you’ll need a stellar TV—one that can hit those higher resolutions and display all those subtle details in colour, saturation, shadows, megapixels, you name it.
I think this makes the PS5 Pro a tougher sell, in my opinion. Not only would you have to drop major cash on the PS5 Pro – one of the most expensive console releases to date, but you’ll also need to look at dropping more money on a larger, better TV if you haven’t in the past few years. While this is great for enthusiasts who want their games to push the threshold, it might not be as relevant for the average gamer looking to play Fortnite, NBA or Call of Duty.
Pros: Performance
I’ve mentioned performance a few times in this review, but it really needs its own pillar. For the record, I’m a PC gamer, and I’ve sun enough money into my setup it’d make my accountant weep. All so I can comfortably run games on High to Ultra settings. When I say that the PS5 Pro was the most seamless gaming experience I’ve had, I’m saying it’s more seamless than a $2.5k gaming PC could buy.
I spent the majority of the week grinding through Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was released just last week. Granted, it’s a tremendously well-optimised game, but regardless, I’ve had zero performance issues, and for the first time in a long time, I prefer playing an RPG on a console instead of my PC. If you told a PC gamer this ten years ago, you would be exiled from Steam forums and have your ISP leaked online. Now, I think this might become a more popular take.
Overall, I think the PS5 Pro is an amazing console that lives up to its potential. Given our cost-of-living crisis, however, that price tag is a big ask (thank you, Australian dollar value). If you’re passionate about your gaming setup and want the best gaming experience you can get across any console on the market, the PS5 Pro is the best there is, and by a wide margin. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more Dragon Age to grind through.
If you’d like to pick up your own PS5 Pro, you can order it below from your retailer of choice.
- Amazon Australia, $1,199
- Big W, $1,199
- EB Games, $1,199.95
- JB Hi-Fi, $1,199
- The Gamesmen, $1,199.95
- Harvey Norman, $1,198
Image credit: PEDESTRIAN.TV, Last of Us II / Sony Interactive
The post I Spent A Week Playing The $1,199 PS5 Pro To See If It Was Actually Worth The Price Tag appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
