Choosing the Right PlayStation 5

The PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition are almost identical to one another, with the same internal components save the inclusion of a UHD Blu-ray drive in the main version. That UHD drive carries a premium, though—the PlayStation 5 is $500, a full $100 more than the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. However, we’re concerned that the hundred dollars in savings for Digital Edition buyers may evaporate in the long run.

As of 2020, digital downloads began to overtake retail discs in sales numbers for high-profile games. Although digital games go on sale more often than they used to, disc games still see steeper discounts in more places more often. And just as important for some players, disc-based games can be bought, sold, and traded. If you can save $20 per game by buying used discs, the more expensive PlayStation 5 pays for itself after five used games—something that seems likely over the life of a console. Such savings may be an even bigger consideration this console generation, as PlayStation has led the charge with a higher, $70 suggested price for most of its exclusive titles (a step that many other companies have also taken for games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and the Batman spinoff Gotham Knights).

If you have a perfectly good PS4, you might be wondering whether it’s finally time to splurge on a new console. On top of basic quality-of-life additions, the PlayStation 5 already offers some games that aren’t available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. You also get prettier, better-performing versions of games—sometimes significantly better—that are usually available on other platforms as well.

For example, although God of War: Ragnarok offers some high-resolution modes and even 120 Hz support for supported televisions on the PS5, it’s also on the PS4. Demon’s Souls looks stunning, but it’s a remake of a PlayStation 3 title from 2009. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was the first example of something truly, generationally above and beyond any game you could play on a PS4, but since then, PS5-exclusive titles have been slow to trickle out. Final Fantasy XVI came out in June 2023, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is coming soon. If you’re not waiting for a PS5-exclusive game, here’s what else you get if you upgrade from a PS4.

New games with better graphics

The PlayStation 5 features a newer, more powerful generation of graphics hardware than in previous consoles, and the results should be noticeable in a variety of ways. In most new games, you can expect higher resolutions, higher frame rates, and more detailed characters and environments than you see on the PlayStation 4, with greater amounts of fancy tricks such as smoke and fog that have physical properties and lighting that behaves and reflects more like light does in the real world.

That last part is particularly likely to improve as the generation progresses. The PlayStation 5’s GPU is capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a type of graphics rendering that allows for much more sophisticated visual effects and lighting. Launch titles such as Spider-Man: Miles Morales use ray-traced reflections for much more realistic reflective surfaces, as does 2021’s Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Ray tracing has been referred to for years as the holy grail of video game graphics, but developers have only scratched the surface of what they’ll achieve with it in the next several years.

Higher frame rates and better performance

While developers are still learning to take advantage of all of the PS5’s more powerful graphics technology, the hardware improvements of the PlayStation 5 are noticeable elsewhere. The PS5 has a powerful CPU, which means a fast user interface, speedy load times, more sophisticated character and game behaviors, and just more stuff on screen at any given moment than the PS4 or Xbox One could produce.

But the biggest improvements should be most apparent in frame rates, which hit 60 frames per second much more often than on the PS4. The more frames per second, the more often the controller and the game are communicating, which means more-responsive controls. The more powerful hardware also helps to build bigger worlds and allow more players in a game.

A number of games originally released for the PlayStation 4 include “performance” modes that have unlocked frame rates on the PS5, and these games and many others should exhibit huge improvements in performance and responsiveness. In addition, many of Sony’s flagship PlayStation 4 exclusives, including God of War (2018), Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part II, Days Gone, and Horizon Zero Dawn have received updates that upgrade their performance to 60 frames per second (and they also benefit from significantly improved loading times).

Faster storage and faster load times

All your games and saves on the PlayStation 5 are stored on a PCIe-based drive, which, combined with other custom hardware and a faster processor, brings a huge improvement in console startup, game bootups, and even in-game load times compared with previous-generation consoles, which used mechanical hard disks. Many PS4 games run better on a PlayStation 5, as well.

A new user experience

The PlayStation 5 user interface is designed to take advantage of the console’s solid-state storage and more powerful CPU to allow for faster navigation and some new features. The difference is clear as soon as you boot up the PlayStation 5, which transitions from fully powered off to its user login screen in just over 20 seconds. It comes back from standby mode in about six seconds, a considerable improvement over previous-generation consoles.

Once you log in, you’ll find several quickly accessible groups, including games, media apps, and settings. Hitting the PlayStation button on the PS5’s DualSense controller brings up the Control Center, which is intended to immediately surface the most common and important options most players need while they’re using the system. This panel includes notifications, music-playback controls, audio levels for headset wearers, friends lists, and system standby.

The PS5’s OS is an attractive evolution from that of the PS4, and in some ways it’s faster to navigate than its predecessor. If you’re trying to get to a game or app as quickly as possible, you need to press far fewer buttons to do that. But once you want to do anything more involved, it’s still quite a lot of navigation to get where you might want to go. We appreciate that the PlayStation 5 provides a superficial but appealing bit of new-console smell for those coming from a PlayStation 4, but it’s not quite at the level of usability found in the PlayStation 4 OS.

The PlayStation 5’s controller is the DualSense gamepad, which retains the touchpad and share buttons from the PS4’s DualShock 4 pad, along with the same basic layout. However, the DualSense is a bit larger, similar to Xbox controllers, with bigger face buttons, tighter sticks, and more pronounced triggers. There’s also a light texture on the back side of the controller grips, much as on the Xbox Series X and S controllers.

The DualSense’s triggers also feature haptic feedback, which means they can provide additional resistance to create different kinds of feedback. For vibration, the DualSense uses coil actuators rather than simpler vibrating motors for a more varied effect. The controller also once again includes a speaker, a built-in microphone array (with a noise-canceling mic on the bottom of the pad), and a USB-C port for charging.

The sounds, combined with the controller’s vibrations, create a high level of physical feedback. The haptic triggers can also provide a remarkable amount of tension for games that take advantage of it.

The DualSense’s built-in microphone works well enough, and there’s a convenient combination indicator light and mute button that lets you see whether the microphone is picking up your audio.

Sony also offers a pro controller called the DualSense Edge, which is a more customizable—and more expensive—version of the standard DualSense.

What about the PlayStation VR2?

The PlayStation VR2 is designed to be a companion to the PlayStation 5. It’s not a standalone headset, as it uses a single USB-C cable to connect to the PS5, but it is comfortable and easy to set up, it looks great, and it comes closer than any other cabled headset to bringing console-level simplicity to VR.

Because it uses a “halo” harness system that rests on top of your head, the PS VR2 is more comfortable than other leading headsets and adjusts more simply. It’s also easier to put on and take off, and it’s the easiest time we’ve had adjusting a headset around glasses. Each eye has a 2000×2040 OLED screen that minimizes “screen-door effect,” and the high-refresh-rate modes of 90 Hz and 120 Hz should help mitigate VR-induced motion sickness for some wearers.

PS VR2’s goggles also include IR cameras that enable full eye tracking.

The PS VR2 now uses inside-out tracking and custom Sense controllers that should feel familiar to anyone who has used a VR setup in the past several years.

The result is very good hardware. Currently though, at $550, the PS VR2 is a tough sell, and it isn’t backward-compatible with the previous-generation PS VR’s software library, so it lacks the plethora of games you get with Meta’s Quest headsets or other, PC-based headsets. As for exclusives, other than added VR modes to games like Gran Turismo 7 and Resident Evil: Village, options are limited, and they’re mostly available on other platforms as well.

The original line of PlayStation VR headsets (both the launch version from 2016 and the somewhat streamlined update that Sony released in 2018) are compatible with the PlayStation 5 but require the PlayStation Camera, and they need a special adapter that you can order only from Sony.

Storage

The PlayStation 5 uses an NVMe-based custom memory component. While its base capacity is 825 GB, after operating system and other OS files are accounted for, you get only 667 GB of usable storage space for games, which can fill up quickly. Games like The Last of Us Part 1 take up 79 GB of that drive, and others take up much more.

However, the PS5 includes an expansion slot for standard NVMe drives. It supports PCIe 4.0 drives, and you can both store and run games from that expanded storage. PlayStation recommends a premium, fast PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive, which will need a heat sink. But trusted video game technology resource Digital Foundry’s testing with a variety of drives has shown pretty good results with cheaper, good-but-not-cutting-edge drives, with similar performance and load speeds demonstrated across a variety of devices.

We recommend the Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD for PlayStation 5 owners looking to expand their storage. We bought our own heat sink to install on the version of the drive sold without one, but Samsung now offers a version of the 980 Pro with a heat sink preinstalled, and we recommend going that route. Installing an aftermarket heat sink isn’t nightmarishly difficult, but it takes a number of minutes and was more than a little annoying for just a few dollars of savings. This accompanies the not especially difficult but still involved process (video) of opening up the PlayStation 5 and installing the drive.

PS5 games can also be transferred and stored on external devices (but not played from them), so such drives can serve as an archive that will let you avoid having to redownload a game in the future.

For backward-compatible PS4 titles, games can be stored and played via external storage options, and USB SSD options are plenty fast and cheaper than adding an NVMe drive. Just plug in an external, portable SSD drive, such as the Samsung T7 Shield we recommend, another similar drive, or a plain SSD attached via a USB-to-SATA cable.

If you’re most concerned about storing a lot of PS4 games for later, a USB hard drive like the Western Digital My Passport Ultra is your best option. Load times will be only somewhat better than on the PlayStation 4, and you can’t use such drives for PS5 software, but you can’t beat the price per gigabyte.

Any drives you’re already using with a PlayStation 4 console should work on the PlayStation 5. Plug them in, and compatible PS4 games you have installed will appear automatically and should be playable barring any required updates.

If you want to play multiplayer games on the PlayStation 5, you need a subscription to PlayStation Plus. The base version of PlayStation Plus, which is called PlayStation Plus Essential, includes online multiplayer and at least two free games per month, though the quality of those games is unpredictable. You can download them and enjoy them in your library for as long as you have an active subscription, but you lose access to them if you cancel your membership.

There are two additional tiers of PlayStation Plus worth considering.

It’s not Game Pass, but PlayStation Plus Extra has a lot of games to play. PlayStation Plus Extra adds $5 a month to your PlayStation Plus costs but gives you access to a catalog of PS4 and PS5 games available via download. PlayStation Plus Premium includes all of the benefits of Extra, along with downloadable access to a selection of original PlayStation, PS2, and PSP games, and streaming access to a collection of PS3 titles.

But PlayStation’s big first-party games don’t release on PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium. While PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium cycle titles in and out every month, unlike Xbox’s Game Pass, PlayStation does not include day-one access to its first-party titles like God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, or The Last of Us. For a full listing of available games, check official channels like the PlayStation Blog.

PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium offer access to some PlayStation 3 titles, sort of. A number of PlayStation 3 titles are available to Extra and Premium subscribers, though they are accessible only via streaming—the games in question run remotely on a server. As a result, access and performance are dependent on your internet connection and the overall latency between your console and PlayStation’s servers, so don’t expect a particularly responsive experience in faster, more action-oriented games.

Effective September 6, PlayStation Plus Essential will increase from an annual cost of $60 to $80, Extra will increase from $100 to $135, and Premium will go from $120 to $160. These changes still reflect a moderate discount compared with month-to-month pricing on PlayStation Plus, but we’re not thrilled about the price hike.

PlayStation is launching two new, slim PlayStation 5 models in November: a $450 digital-only version without a disc drive, and a $500 version with a removable disc drive. It will also sell a disc drive separately for $70, if you want to add one later. Both models have slightly increased storage, to 1 TB. Though the bump in storage is useful, and we appreciate the new design’s smaller footprint, the digital-only version is getting a $50 price hike, and we’re not happy about the lack of an included vertical stand (which Sony will sell separately for $30). We’ll have more information on the new PS5 models when they launch in November.

Sony has announced a price and name for a new handheld device, the PlayStation Portal. The $200 device resembles a small LCD screen with the left and right halves of a DualSense controller on either side, and it’s designed to stream PS5 games locally from your home console over your home network—a PS5 is required, however, and at launch the Portal cannot stream games from the cloud that are not installed on your home console. The PlayStation Portal will release on November 15.