PlayStation Portal is an interesting gadget, an official, Sony-designed streaming device designed for Remote Play with PS5. It’s not a console or a gaming handheld in the traditional sense, which makes reviewing it a little challenging as the quality of the experience is entirely dependent on the quality of your home network. Take on board some simple advice and it’s relatively easy to get the best out of Remote Play and therefore the best out of PlayStation Portal – but there’s still the sense that Remote Play itself isn’t as good as it should be.
My recommendations for optimal conditions for PlayStation Portal starts with setting up a hard link between your PS5 and your router via a LAN cable. You see, there are two steps to data transfer between Portal and console: firstly, the console communicates with your router, then data is beamed out over WiFi to the handheld. By hardwiring the console to the router, you cut out one stage that could potentially increase latency and data loss. Secondly, you should aim to have your Portal as close to your WiFi router as possible for it to get the strongest signal. If you can’t do all of those things, the Portal experience will inevitably be degraded or become less consistent to a certain extent. To be clear though, there’s nothing stopping you from trying to run the Portal anywhere you want within the constraints set by the device – you can even access your PlayStation 5 over cellular when out and about. However, the further away you get from your console/router in both real and/or internet space, the less optimal the experience is likely to be.
You may have noticed a wealth of varying experiences with PlayStation Portal when looking at reviews or social media posts from new owners – and that may well be down to things like the individual perception of latency or image quality, but equally it may well be down to varying levels of quality over WiFi. My advice to prospective Portal owners? Download the Sony Remote Play app for your phone or a laptop and give it a go. It’ll set the expectation level for the experience perhaps encourage experimentation with moving your console or router about to improve streaming quality and consistency.
