Bought one because my main gaming frustration stems from having limited opportunities in the evening to game - mainly due to having a partner who is not interested at all in gaming, and prefers to either listen to music in the evening or watch tv. So my gaming is limited to weekends and a few hours during the week. Many of the games I like playing tend to be the large, open world games - and when I get into these, I tend to like exploring, doing side quests, getting the collectables which makes the games take a lot longer to complete. Yes, I know, and I can see the eye-rolling from here: not enough time to game, plays big open world titles and spends ages looking for (mostly) pointless collectibles....
I set up the Portal today and all went smoothly. From taking it out the box to booting up a game on it took 15 mins or so, and there were no issues with the Portal finding the PS5 etc. Initially, I was sitting on the sofa, with the TV still on in the distance and I couldn't see any lag in terms of moving around the PS5 menu, booting up Assassins Creed: Valhallla, starting the game and playing it.
The screen is great, certainly very detailed - anyone who has played AC:Valhalla will know the on-screen text/menus are small and there is a lot going on in the menus, but this was all really clear and easy to read. I played the game for a couple of hours and I'd say it took 30 minutes or so for it to feel intuitive - by that I mean getting used to the controls and manipulating a game that I'm used to playing of a 55" 4K TV on a handheld. At first I thought the game was running a little slower, but again as I got used to playing on the portal it was absolutely fine and I didn't feel I was playing an inferior version. I also didn't get any lag, even in a couple of large battles with many different characters on screen.
My two hours included getting collectibles, going off on side quests and finishing the last three quests of the campaign arc I was on. Would I want to play a whole game like this (or God of War Ragnarok, or Spider-Man 2) in handheld mode? No, probably not; but, as I said at the start, that wasn't the aim for me, but I'll be really happy with the purchase if it continues to run as well as it has done initially, and if I'm spending a few hours (or more) a week on it, using that time to help break the back of some of these big games. I also want to try some of the indie games and PS4 games that are on my backlog, either through purchases or my PS+ sub, where the smaller playing time and slighty less opulent graphics will perhaps lend themselves to playing in handheld mode.
So it's admittedly a brief snapshot of what is a niche system, but at first glance it is going to achieve exactly what I want it to - the ability to play my PS5 at home more than I am currently able to, in such good quality that I'm not sitting there thinking 'I'm playing something inferior here...'
