PS5 review - Untapped potential, with a revolutionary controller - Android

PS5 review: Price and availability

The PS5 and PS5 Digital Edition released for $499 and $399, respectively, on November 12, 2020, in several countries before becoming available worldwide a week later on November 19, 2020.

Though popular retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and GameStop receive more stock every few weeks or so, they sell out almost instantly. If you're looking to buy a PS5, you could be left waiting for several months until stock levels out. The global chip shortage has wreaked havoc on the tech market.

PS5 review: Specs, design, and performance

When Sony unveiled the design of the PS5, it was contentious among fans. It was a far cry from the giant rectangle that's the Xbox Series X and the traditional PlayStation lineup. The two-toned console sports a more futuristic look, with an inner black portion surrounded by two white shells encompassing either side, almost like a reverse Oreo. The PS5 is also hiding some Easter eggs on the hardware that you may miss if you don't look carefully. On the inside of the white faceplates, you can see the Square, Triangle, Circle, and X symbols that create a textured pattern. This also appears on the DualSense controller. It's a neat little touch that marries form and function. Though I was worried about how easily dirt and grime would collect over periods of heavy use, it never got too bad for me, but the same can't be said for other people. Be sure to clean your DualSense.

It's way larger than some people expected (maybe even too large for some entertainment centers), but it's packing some impressive hardware that needs a powerful and efficient cooling system to keep it running.

The back features two high-speed USB Type-A ports, an HDMI port, a LAN connection, and the power supply. The front sports another high-speed USB Type-A port along with a USB-C port. Sony ships the console with an HDMI 2.1 cable in the box so it can support up to 120Hz. What it lacks is a dedicated SSD expansion slot like the Xbox Series X. Instead you'll need to open up the console to add a compatible NVMe SSD card internally. Given that the PS5 only comes with an 825GB SSD, 667.2GB of which was usable in my case, you'll need an additional card sooner rather than later. In a rather perplexing move, you cannot play PS5 games from extended storage at this time. Sony finally added the ability to store PS5 games on an external SSD or HDD in an update, but the ability to play PS5 games from an SSD will instead be added in a future update expected over the summer.

From the start screen to actual gameplay, Spider-Man: Miles Morales loads in just two seconds. In fact, the game is devoid of any loading screens. While some of the backward compatible games I played still took a decent chunk of time to load, particularly Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the load times were noticeably reduced, almost by half in nearly all instances.

From a backward-compatible game's start menu to playing the game:

From the PS5 home screen to a game's start menu:

As we've seen with some first-party games already, it looks like patches can drastically reduce their load times even further on older hardware. On PS4 Pro, The Last of Us Remastered went from loading in over a minute to loading in just 14 seconds. This bodes well for what the PS5 can do when games are optimized for it.

Spider-Man: Miles Morales loads in just two seconds.

Unfortunately, it looks like the PS5 does not have Quick Resume between multiple games the way the Xbox Series X does. People speculated that the Switcher function in the Control Center would act as Quick Resume, but it ends up fully closing your previous game instead of suspending it, meaning you can't hop between games seamlessly and pick up right where you left off. While this is a welcome feature on the Xbox Series X, I'd be lying if I said it hampered my enjoyment of the PS5. Games load so quickly that most of the time it doesn't even bother me.

A powerful SSD like this brings a lot of heat, so it was important for Sony to nail its cooling system. The PS4 Pro earned itself a reputation for sounding like a jet engine, and many worried that the PS5 would follow suit. My PS5 fan was whisper quiet — quieter than even my Verizon FiOS cable box. Even after hours of use, I never heard the fan pick up speed. The back of the console does get hot as you'd expect, but the fan does a good job at keeping most of the system cool. As long as it's doing its job and it's quiet, most people will be satisfied.

It's hard to get a good sense of just how quiet it is from the above audio clip, but it truly sounds like nothing at all. I placed my microphone up close to both consoles — about 6 inches away from the front of each — and I took a few samples of my PS4 Pro and PS5 running Days Gone. You can noticeably hear the PS4 Pro fan pick up speed and it sounds much louder. Turn down the volume on your computer or mobile device and you may not hear the PS5 fan at all. The PS5 stays at a consistent quiet level and never gets any louder. If my microphone were just a few feet away, you wouldn't hear the PS5. This is still the case after months of use.

I won't go so far as to call it a design flaw, but needing a separate base for the PS5 (included in the box), no matter which orientation you set it in, is less than ideal. It's easy enough to clip on when you want to place the console horizontally, but it needs a screw and flathead screwdriver to secure it if you want to stand it up vertically. The screw is hidden within the base and I wish I were joking, but the directions tell you to "use a coin or similarly shaped object" to tighten it. Regardless of whether or not you find this process annoying, it's silly nonetheless.

Once the base is attached, I found it surprisingly sturdy. I stood it up and pushed the console several times to see where the tipping threshold was, and it doesn't look like it'll fall over because of an accidental bump. You'd need to give it a pretty forceful shove for it to topple over.

PS5 review: Games, features, and software

There's been some talk of diminishing returns for years in regards to how advanced games can be. The more advanced technology gets in regards to game visuals, the less we'll be aware of any noticeable differences. There comes a time when, visually, these "improvements" are imperceptible from what came before — or, at the very least, not stark enough to matter. Looking at a side-by-side of Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS4 Pro and PS5, you can see the differences, though I'm not sure they're so stark that it warrants an entirely new console. The game running on PS4 Pro still looks damn good.

However, I did find impressive graphics in Godfall, a new looter slasher from Counterplay Games. This is the technical showcase I was hoping for in terms of graphics. Its hardware-accelerated ray tracing is in full effect, illuminating the environments in a jaw-dropping way. Considering this is what the PS5 pulled off at launch, I'm extremely excited for the likes of Horizon Forbidden West and the God of War sequel.

With PS5 backward compatibility, you can play almost every PS4 game you own. The system in place isn't as good as Microsoft's solution for backward compatibility, but I'm satisfied with how it runs. I tested out Assassin's Creed Odyssey, The Outer Worlds, and Control, to name just a few games, and they all ran spectacularly.

On launch day, the PS5 released with exclusives like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Astro's Playroom, Demon's Souls, Godfall, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Compared to the list of Xbox exclusives at launch, which lost Halo: Infinite, it's a strong list, if a little sparse.

That scarcity has continued due to the pandemic, with games like Deathloop, Gran Turismo 7, Gotham Knights, and more being delayed. What Sony has going for it right now are major third-party releases like Resident Evil Village.

PS5 review: DualSense controller

The DualSense is every bit as revolutionary Sony claimed it would be. I've been outspoken about how much I hated the DualShock lineup of controllers, so to get me to praise the DualSense was a tall order. Ergonomics make or break a game controller, and the DualShock 4 lacked any basic sense of good design in that category. The DualSense, by comparison, is nearly perfect.

Haptic feedback and adaptive triggers enable a level of immersion otherwise impossible to obtain. Haptic feedback adds granular changes to the way the vibration motors in the DualSense function so they're more precise. Adaptive feedback adds tension and resistance to the triggers depending on what you are doing, a common example given is being able to feel the triggers resist your press as you draw a bowstring. These features can be adjusted, or completely turned off, in the console's system settings.

The DualSense is every bit as revolutionary as Sony claimed.

Sony's engineers worked magic to make the DualSense's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers as incredible as they are, in a way that's hard to convey over words alone. It's something you just need to feel. Walking through the rain in Astro's Playroom (which was designed as a DualSense showcase, to be fair) felt like my controller was actually being pelted by rain, drop by drop, due to its haptics. This sensation was aided by its built-in microphone echoing the sound of rain pattering against a window, only adding to the level of immersion. When the rain changed to hail, I could feel subtle differences in the way my controller vibrated.

Likewise, the tension and resistance you can get from the triggers are equally impressive. There's a section in Astro's Playroom where Astro hops into the suit of a robotic monkey and starts to effectively rock climb. I could feel the trigger resisting in a way that mimicked the force I'd need to pull myself up.

Sony's engineers worked magic to make the DualSense's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers as incredible as they are.

In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, there's a little jolt that happens when you thwip your web and are swinging through the air. The varying levels of tension are subtle, almost imperceptible in this case, but are definitely there. Even if just first-party Sony games take full advantage of these features, it'll be worth it. Thankfully, we've seen a number of third-party developers add support for DualSense features, even on older backward compatible games.

Iconic face button pattern on the DualSense shell.

With an internal battery at 1,500mAh, the DualSense certainly outlasts the DualShock 4. No doubt this is due to its larger battery size and the design of the lightbar, which now wraps around the touchpad in a less obtrusive way. You can even adjust the brightness of the lightbar in the PS5's settings, but it cannot be turned off completely. After properly testing out how long it lasted on a single charge, my DualSense made it almost exactly 14 hours before I needed to plug it in, three of which were spent in Astro's Playroom, which puts the haptics to heavy use. Depending on which games you play and which settings you have enabled on the controller, I'd wager you can easily get 15+ hours out of it. If you play games that are taxing on its battery, though, you may just get around 10 hours.

What players have discovered over the last few months is that there's a hidden flaw in the DualSense that has been causing joystick drift. It's not affecting everyone, but it's become a big enough problem that a class-action lawsuit was filed against the company.

PS5 review: User interface and OS

The PS5 user interface is similar to the one found on the PS4, focusing on providing a clean look and seamless experience. There a dedicated section for the fully integrated PlayStation Store, along with sections for Games and Media. Foregoing themes at the moment, the background of your dashboard will instead change depending on which game you currently have pulled up.

The newly integrated PlayStation Store is a treat. There are sections for the Latest Games, Deals, Collections, Subscriptions, and a place to browse. In any of these sections, you're also free to select whether you want to view PS5, PS4, free-to-play, or PS Plus games. I found it easy to navigate and responsive to my controller inputs. Overall, Sony did a great job of integrating the store, even if the PS5 games section is a bit sparse at the moment. There's even a wishlist feature that was sadly dropped from the PlayStation Store on PS4.

What the store removes now are dedicated sections for add-ons, movies and TV shows, apps, and themes (because they aren't supported). I understand why movies and TV shows were moved because there's now a new dedicated section for Media outside of the PlayStation Store, but it seems odd to remove spaces for add-ons. There's a row under Latest that showcases options to "Expand your games," but it only seems to show a limited amount of add-ons for recent games you've played, with no way to expand and search for other game add-ons.

Jumping over to the media section, you'll notice it automatically pulls up TV & Video apps first, displaying some of the most popular services like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and more in a row at the top. Should you wish to search through all of its app offerings, you can slide on over to the left under All Apps to view its music, video, and VR apps. To easily get to all of your downloaded apps, you'll slide over to the right under App Library. It's all fairly intuitive and I like how everything is laid out.

What ends up being a shining star is the new and improved Control Center, pulled up with just a quick press of the PS button on your controller. This grants you easy access to some of the most important and widely used features on the PS5 like the power, sound, notifications, friends list, and more.

When pulling up the Control Center, you'll also notice new Activities cards depending on the game you're in. These cards show everything from official news, newly created screenshots or videos, and progress indicators for individual levels. By selecting a particular card, you can jump directly into that level of a game.