The good news: The Portal means Sony is officially rejoining the portable gaming hardware race that it abandoned after years of market struggles for both the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita.
The bad news: The Portal can only run games streamed from a PlayStation 5 via Remote Play and is apparently completely useless for anything else.
Cons and pros
A dedicated streaming portable may seem a bit redundant for Sony, especially since the PS5's Remote Play feature already works with the iOS or Android phone that's almost definitely already in your pocket (not to mention Windows PCs, Macs, tablets, and even other PS5 or PS4 consoles). Snap a mobile controller like the Razer Kishi V2 to your phone and you've got access to essentially the same Remote Play experience offered by the Portal (not to mention, um, an entire smartphone).Even streaming-ready Android-based gaming portables like the AYN Odin (which also starts at $200 in its "Lite" configuration) seem to offer a lot more bang for the buck. For the same price as the Portal, the Odin will let you stream your PS5 games and titles from practically any other game-streaming service and give you access to a whole world of local Android games and emulators.
Even more oddly, the PlayStation Portal doesn't even support games streamed directly through Sony's dedicated cloud-streaming subscription service, PlayStation Plus Premium. Instead, every game has to be running on a PS5 you own, ideally on the same local network (fully remote streaming far from your PS5 is also available if you're willing to tolerate Internet-level latency). This seems like an obvious missing feature for a dedicated streaming device released by Sony itself, though to be fair, Sony also doesn't offer cloud streaming on mobile devices (a distinct difference from Microsoft's game-streaming efforts).
That said, the Portal does have some advantages over Remote Play on other mobile devices, chief among them a luxurious 8-inch, 1080p 60 Hz screen. The device also sports all the ergonomics of a DualSense controller and has support for features like haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and a "virtual touchpad" on the device's touchscreen (in the rare games that support it).
Players who also invest in Sony's newly announced Pulse Elite or Pulse Explore wireless headphones will be able to take advantage of PlayStation Link and its "low latency lossless audio" through the Portal. But IGN's hands-on preview notes that the Portal doesn't support standard Bluetooth connectivity, meaning players who own other wireless headphones are out of luck (wired headphones can be connected through a standard 3.5 mm jack, at least).
Who knows. Maybe our own hands-on time will convince us that $200 is a fair price to pay for a device that can act as a secondary screen for PS5 Remote Play and absolutely nothing else. For now, though, consider us skeptical that the PlayStation Portal can stand up to all of the mobile devices that already support PS5 Remote Play and a whole lot more.
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