I spent a week playing on the $1,199 PS5 Pro to see if it’s worth it

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Guys, PS5 Pro is finally coming out tomorrow. Four years since we chose PS5 Salem IleseThe new console is causing a lot of discussion about how important high-quality graphics are for the average gamer.

Thanks to the good folks at Sony, I was able to get my review unit a week early and gather my thoughts on it. I’ve been playing PlayStation consoles my entire life, starting with… PS1 era (underrated) and I haven’t deviated since then. In saying that, I wasn’t going to go crazy over the PS5 Pro just because it might make the graphics look a little better. It will have to do a little more to win me over, especially at its attractive price.

So, without further ado, here are my pros and cons of the new PS5 Pro. I’m sure we can all agree that my opinion is one hundred percent correct and no one will argue with me (please don’t argue with me, I’m fragile).

Pros: design

I have to give credit to Sony’s design team. They straight up drew lines on the PS5 like a four year old would draw flames on a moving car, and I can’t deny it – I think it looks disgusting.

The new PS5 Pro is a thinner, sleeker PS5 design. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel and doesn’t differ much from the original design, but it didn’t need to.

Honestly, I’m pleasantly surprised that the PS5 Pro is thinner than the original PS5. After all the top specs and preview photos were announced, I assumed the new console would be an absolute unit and would struggle to fit into my system. Fortunately, this is not a problem at all; It’s hardly an inconvenience.

I’ll tell you this too for free. Before you pick up the console, you should know that the PS5 Pro’s vertical stand is different from the original PS5’s, so you won’t be able to reuse your old one here. I tried it (for the sake of science) and a simple whack with a vacuum cleaner or a house cat’s zooms would easily make it topple over like Jenga.

Cons: such a price tag

No need to beat around the bush – the thing is expensive. It retails for $1,199.95 in Australia, and that’s without the vertical stand and disc drive.

Many people find it difficult to fork out the monthly rent for the best version of their existing console. You can play the same games on the original PS5 and they will still run very well.

However, I can see an argument that the PS5 Pro can prepare you for the next five to eight years of gaming. If you were looking to buy a console long-term, the PS5 Pro should offer great value here. Even today games are still coming out on PS4. That’s eight years after the release of the PS4 Pro and just four years after the release of the PS5. So, while I can understand why someone wouldn’t rush to grab this immediately, I still think this console has a long life ahead of it.

Pros: New characteristics, good.

The PS5 Pro gets three major improvements: a larger graphics processing unit (GPU) that promises to render games 45 percent faster, improved ray tracing, and a new artificial intelligence-driven PlayStation scaling method. Spectral super-resolution. If it looks like a sleeper agent activation code, have someone near you read it out loud a few times, just in case.

Sony has promised that these updates will eliminate the trade-off between graphics fidelity and performance. In my experience, this is true. On the original PS5, I usually played with the precision settings to avoid huge framerate drops or stuttering. On the PS5 Pro, I switched to the highest settings I could and to my surprise, games ran perfectly.

Ultimately, one of the most important features of the new PS5 Pro is that it comes with a 2TB SSD. Previously, if you needed more storage space, you had to install second SSD to the console manually. Video games are hugeSo much so that if you have anything less than TB, you will fight for your life to have more than four or five games ready to play whenever you want to play.

After loading three games, barely a quarter of the space is occupied.

Cons: No disk drive.

One of the most disappointing features is that the PS5 Pro is a digital-only console. This annoyed me because I recently picked up a copy Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth on disk and have already spent a ton of hours on it. Now, with the new PS5 Pro, I will have to buy the game again or a separate disc drive for the console. What broke my heart even more was that reviewers who were able 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 there was night and day. Unfortunately I can’t confirm this because I’m a dinosaur who still buys CDs.

All jokes aside, I’m not a big fan of moving forward with a digital-only model. Australia has one of the worst internet connections in the world and the size of video games is growing exponentially. If you want to play a new game, you’ll have to wait a few hours for it to load. You might also piss off your whole family by overloading the internet trying to download everything over 120GB of new Call of Duty.

Pros: Graphics are good!

Graphical fidelity is the main benefit Sony wants to achieve with the PS5 Pro. With its AI upscaling technology, Sony promises to achieve the highest performance a gaming console can offer.

It’s hard to tell from the screenshots, but games receiving PS5 Pro visual upgrades look amazing on the console. It’s such a small detail in the grand scale of things, but the fact that when you walk through cities you can see every blade of grass. The Last of Us II Without painful loading screens or framerates, tanking is a technical marvel.

Another game that received a significant boost from Pro is Spider-Man Marvel 2. While the game looked amazing upon release, I remember a lot of stuttering during cutscenes. In ten hours of play on the PS5 Pro, I only noticed a slight stutter of 0.5 seconds in the introductory sequence, which is very important. It may not seem like it, but playing the game with virtually no issues or framerate dips improved my experience significantly. Playing a game without a framerate drop is like receiving a compliment. You won’t notice how nice it is until you get it.

Cons: You’ll need a better TV to get the most out of it.

I feel like I’m still only scratching the surface here. I played the console on an old Hisense HD Smart TV, which means this is not the case. OLED4K or ultra wide resolution.

To truly get the most out of your PS5 Pro, you’ll need a stellar TV—one that can support those higher resolutions and display all that fine detail in color, saturation, shadows, megapixels, and more.

I think this will make the PS5 Pro a harder sell. Not only will you have to spend big money on the PS5 Pro, one of the most expensive versions of consoles to date, but you’ll also have to consider spending more money on a bigger and better TV if you haven’t done so in the past. several years. While this is great for enthusiasts who want their games to push the threshold, it may not be as relevant for the casual 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 foundation. For the record, I’m a PC gamer and have invested enough money in my system to make my accountant cry. All so that I can comfortably run games on settings from High to Ultra. When I say the PS5 Pro gave me the most enjoyable gaming experience, I mean it’s smoother than the $2.5K gaming PC you could buy.

I spent most of the week trying to figure it out Dragon Age: Guardian of the Veilwhich was released just last week. Granted, this is an extremely well-optimized game, but despite that, I had no performance issues, and for the first time in a long time, I prefer to play an RPG on a console rather than a PC. If you had told a PC gamer about this ten years ago, you would have been kicked off the Steam forums and your ISP information would have been leaked online. Now I think it might become more popular.

Overall, I think the PS5 Pro is an amazing console that delivers on its full potential. However, given our cost of living crisis, this price is a big deal (thanks, cost in Australian dollars). If you’re passionate about your gaming setup and want the best gaming experience you can get on 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 Age of the Dragon wipe.

If you’re interested in getting your own PS5 Pro, you can pre-order it below from your retailer of choice.

Image credit: PEDESTRIAN.TV, Last of Us II / Sony Interactive