PlayStation Portal Review

thesixthaxis.com:

The PSP and PS Vita were both truly special consoles. Delivering leading handheld gaming performance in what would now be startlingly compact handheld forms, they became home to both impressive high end games and burgeoning indie gaming scenes… but one of their best tricks was remote play, able to connect to PS3 or PS4 to genuinely play those full fat home console games. Someone somewhere wished on a cursed monkeys paw for a new PlayStation handheld, and as the finger creakily folded into the palm, the PlayStation Portal went into production.

PlayStation Portal is, in essence, a single purpose device – while it looks like it could be so much more, it’s a pure remote play handheld for PS5. From a design perspective, it’s a DualSense controller that’s been split in half with an LCD screen and Android welded into the gap, and loaded with just enough processing hardware to let it connect to and stream games directly from your console.

And of course, Sony has nailed that design. Picking the Portal out of its box, there’s just as much heft, solidity and rigidity as you’d expect, with the one real surprise being how the screen is recessed from the face buttons and analogue sticks, and angled downward. It’s a striking stylistic touch, adding a little flair to a rather straightforward idea. Flip it around, though, and it looks a little funny, like they got Salvador Dali in to do a bit of plastic stretching, leading to a white connective band hiding the bulge for the battery and other innards.

Along the top you’ll find the power button, volume buttons and a dedicated button for PlayStation Link audio connections, and with the USB-C port for charging and a 3.5mm headphone jack tucked behind the lower edge of the white band. The pad