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PlayStation 5 Pro Hardware Review – The Next-Gen Graphics Upgrade

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PlayStation 5 Pro Hardware Review – The Next-Gen Graphics Upgrade

Product Info

PlayStation 5 Pro

November 7th, 2024

Type

Gaming Console

Price

$699.99

Mid-generation console refreshes are nothing new in the gaming industry. Everything from the pre-market crash Atari 2600 up through just about every Nintendo console to hit the market, console manufacturers have found ways to introduce additional purchases into the lifespan of a console, usually accompanied by a form factor change or addition of new features in the box. The concept of introducing a console that could run all of the very same games but with added performance was something unique to the Sony ecosystem with the PlayStation 4 Pro or Microsoft’s Xbox One X. Companies like Nintendo tried something similar with the New Nintendo 3DS but these introduced games that were exclusive to the upgraded hardware (Xenoblade Chronicles being one of these rare titles). Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro aims to be the console that can achieve a higher benchmark across all of their titles, but is that boosted flagship console worth the investment if you’re already a next-gen player?

What comes in the package is the same usual assortment of parts that Sony has bundled with all of their consoles. To get a deeper look at what’s in the package and my powered-off impressions, check out our unboxing article here. One of the first purchases I will be making this weekend will be to get the external disc drive so I can finally check out the latest Prince of Persia and several other titles from my backlog that I own the discs for and couldn’t justify double-dipping on a digital version just to play on this particular piece of hardware. I know I will keep banging the same drum here, but I am really disappointed with Sony’s answer to the horizontal stand on the PlayStation 5 Pro. It lacks stability, and nothing short of a hardware update could improve that stability, whether it’s a third-party stand or purchasing that disc drive. The vertical stand that Sony provided would work for most people, but given how my consoles are set up directly below my wall-mounted television, there isn’t space to have the PlayStation 5 Pro stand upright and not block the screen.

PlayStation 5 Pro owners won’t find a secret menu that gives players superuser access to overhaul the appearance and performance of a given game. Instead, Sony’s PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) runs behind the scenes at all times. If players didn’t have a list of PS5 Pro Enhanced titles or a base model PS5 sitting side by side, there’s a good chance that the secret sauce wouldn’t even be visible to the player. For some titles, such as Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, which features a Quality mode that runs at 30 FPS, the same mode running on PlayStation 5 Pro is a significant gameplay boost.

Personally, I found the Quality Mode on PS5 to be sluggish and not as responsive when it mattered most. The same game and graphical mode instead ran much closer to 60FPS, the same performance I was getting out of the aptly named Performance Mode. Right out of the box, for players booting up a PlayStation 5 Pro enhanced title, It Just Works™. One option available to players in the Screen and Video menu is the toggle for 8K Output (which, truth be told, I don’t have a capable display in my office and most likely won’t unless Sony does a massive upgrade to their InZone monitor line).

Another graphical toggle on the PlayStation 5 Pro is to enhance the image quality for PS4 games. Interestingly, the toggle is disabled when the console is attached to a FullHD display, and the PS5 Pro will advise that this option is only for a display that supports 1440p or 2160p output. This doesn’t seem to be the only way to enhance a last-gen title as I started up Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven to take a peek at the image quality and was quite surprised at how much the console cleaned up and applied anti-aliasing to the character models and environment.

It wasn’t a 100% perfect enhancement as some strange artifacts and image warping appeared while I was focused on a particular character’s idle animation and the way the image would bend and partially distort as hair clashed with their helmet, something I hadn’t seen on the same version running on the base PS5. The fact it took me to stop and focus so intently on a specific character to notice a flaw meant that in action, I didn’t see much issue with the native upscaling in actual practice. I intend to revisit some of the other titles in my collection, Persona 5 Strikers for one, to see how much the aliasing and jagged edges I observed while reviewing that title have been addressed with the native PSSR support.

I touched upon this during my unboxing, but the PlayStation 5 Pro design feels built for the optional disc drive attachment or the vertical stand, at the very least. The two white stand pieces offer a quick and dirty way to lay your PlayStation 5 Pro down horizontally, but with how much it would wobble, there’s stability at play here that hurts the presentation and overall aesthetic of Sony’s flagship console. Consider investing in something like Sony’s vertical stand or the disc drive that’ll permit playing the rest of your disc-based library, both of which will add to the total bill to the point of being in the ballpark of simply buying two PlayStation 5 Slim units.

It will take some time to dig into and fully appreciate what Sony is bringing to the table with their mid-generation refresh of the PlayStation 5 Pro. With nearly 100 PS5 Pro Enhanced titles, Sony has already shown a big commitment to proving their $699 console refresh is an initial value, but it will take through next year to see what the barriers of entry will be for every developer to take advantage of the PlayStation 5 Pro’s unique feature set or the automated PSSR running behind the scenes. Many gamers might balk at the premium price tag of the PlayStation 5 Pro or use it as fuel for the ongoing console wars, but it’s important to consider its role in the console ecosystem as more along the lines of an upgrade from the base GeForce RTX series to a SUPER. If you’re guilty of upgrading your graphics card for $600 or more to achieve ten or fifteen more FPS in Cyberpunk 2077, you already know the value Sony’s bringing to the table with the PlayStation 5 Pro.

[Editor’s Note: Sony provided Wccftech with a PlayStation 5 Pro review unit for editorial purposes.]


Mark Cerny has crafted something amazing with the PlayStation 5 Pro, introducing new AI upscaling and PSSR rendering techniques that will make existing games look their best. Rather than being a new console entirely, Sony is positioning themselves as the graphics card upgrade that players have been asking for for years.

Pros
  • Officially the most powerful gaming console on the market
  • 2.5x as much storage as the base PlayStation 5
  • Smoother gameplay on a growing number of PlayStation 5 titles
  • Mark Cerny’s Secret Sauce has potential
  • Much smaller footprint and form factor than the standard model.
  • Whisper quiet even during demanding next-gen gaming
  • Ray tracing without the performance hit
  • Native image quality upscaling to 4K120 in select games, with many offering a close to locked 60 FPS experience where available
Cons
  • No option to disable PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution if experiencing unintended performance
  • Price point can be tough to swallow, especially in territories that don’t use the dollar
  • Adding in the disc drive brings the console price to double that of the base model
  • Poor stability in the real world without purchasing an extra stand to prop up the console
  • Limited selection of official PS5 Pro Enhanced titles and no new first-party titles at launch to showcase the enhanced GPU’s potential

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