As I come across the first turn of the Tokyo Expressway, I have to admit I’m pretty impressed by the detailed reflection off the side of my van. Cars and buildings all around me are bent and warped by the vehicle’s rounded sides just like one would expect. The rain that’s falling is sharp when I switch to the first-person view and watch it run down my windshield. The clouds in the distance looked lifelike and ominous, allowing only a small amount of ray traced light to pass through.
I am reminded of the massive backlash against Nvidia's RTX 20-series products based on the Turing architecture back in 2018. The products were pricey, nobody bought into the AI narrative, ray tracing was derided. And yet today, DLSS upscaling has proven to be one of the most transformative technologies in the PC space
Because of console specific optimizations PS5 in combo with PSSR might perform like 4070 super + DLSS
The PS5 Pro is a superb console and now the best PlayStation 5 machine available. The advancements are glorious and bring a new level of immersion and beauty to games, while also boosting performance levels to offer fluid and smooth frame rates - at the same time - offering a clear advancement over the base PS5, and will be perfect for those enthusiasts yearning for more from the camps of fidelity and performance. The increase to 2TB of storage and the inclusion of Wi-Fi 7 are very welcome and make tangible operational advancements too.
However, the headline graphical upgrades aren’t truly groundbreaking and if you’re not a PlayStation fanatic or graphics obsessive then you can likely skip the Pro. Plus, the exclusion of a disc drive and stand, despite its position as an enthusiast console, is disappointing. But if you have an eye for detail, want to be at the bleeding edge of console tech, and want to get the most out of this PlayStation generation, then the PS5 Pro is the console to get.
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The visual quality that the Pro-enhanced performance modes have thus far look fantastic, and it’s all the more enticing because hitting 60fps gives a smooth gameplay experience that’s tough to come back from. I’ve also found performance modes on the base PS5 to be lackluster in some cases, and since the Pro has shown the potential in addressing that shortcoming, I find that the new console can be a worthy investment.
For a lot of people, playing at 30fps isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, and if you’re happy with that level of performance you might well be happier with a few hundred dollars still in your bank account.
And the Pro is a hard sell for anybody who expects a whole new experience when they unbox a brand-new console. The PS5 Pro doesn’t fundamentally transform how games are played, it just makes them look prettier and run smoother, and if you’re happy with how your games look and play on a base PS5 then it’s absolutely not worth paying a premium to upgrade.
The PS5 Pro only suits its price tag in niche circumstances, but it does deliver on its promise to improve both graphics and framerates. That $699.99 / £699.99 MSRP is still difficult to justify, particularly to those using a standard living room setup with a 50 - 65-inch TV. Those using a large display or a monitor are going to feel the benefits more keenly - especially if you have the funds to stay at the cutting edge of tech.
Considering that the PS5 Pro costs $250 more than the most affordable PS5 slim model (and $300 more than a Sony-refurbished PS5), this isn’t an upgrade to be taken lightly for current owners and newcomers alike. It’s also not an upgrade that will scream “new” to PS5 owners in any way. The UI is exactly the same throughout, and the Pro is too subtle at times with communicating its benefits.
As time goes on, how much better the PS5 Pro is compared to the base PS5 will eventually fade into the background. Instead, how the PS5 Pro stacks up to the always-evolving state of PC graphics in 2025 and beyond will be a much more interesting — and telling — sign of whether it’s worth your money.
The kind of person who should buy a PS5 Pro is the kind of person who doesn’t want to muck around. They’ll want the best console gaming experience money can buy, a large OLED display to go with it, and a plan to park themselves real close to that screen.
Back when the PlayStation 2 launched, I distinctly remember thinking that video game graphics had reached a "good enough" plateau, past which future hardware improvements would be mostly superfluous. That memory feels incredibly quaint now from the perspective of nearly two-and-a-half decades of improvements in console graphics and TV displays. Yet the PS5 Pro has me similarly feeling that the original PS5 was something of a graphical plateau, with this next half-step in graphical horsepower struggling to prove its worth.
Maybe I'll look back in two decades and consider that feeling similarly naive, seeing the PS5 Pro as a halting first step toward yet unimagined frontiers of graphical realism. Right now, though, I'm comfortable recommending that the vast majority of console gamers spend their money elsewhere.
What Mark Cerny and the engineers at Sony proposed to do in the PS5 Pro reveal has been achieved to a degree. The gap between how a fidelity mode looks and the way a performance mode plays and feels is smaller. Having a technology like PSSR and a machine-learning chip in consoles is also impressive. But, for now, all of this is only exciting on paper; it's not enough to recommend over the alternative, cheaper options. And, ultimately, there is still a choice to be made between better visuals and performance, just with a less noticeable trade-off. I hope that one day the PS5 Pro really shows off what it can do to elevate games, but for now, this is a console you should get only if you've got cash to spare and just want to know you have the latest version of the console. For everyone else, a standard PS5 will do just fine.
This is interesting
PS5 Game Boost - what does it do?
We had no idea what to expect from Game Boost, except that we would expect to see some level of improved performance on legacy games. Looking back to PS4 Pro, you got a marginal increase to GPU performance (typically around 15 percent max in line with the increase in GPU clocks but seemingly no access to the extra compute units) but a whopping great 30 percent increase to CPU clocks, meaning you could actually play Assassin's Creed Unity smoothly.
As PS5 Pro's GPU clocks are much the same as the standard model, we must assume that Game Boost is instead using all of the new compute units in the way that PS4 Pro did not as the increases are substantial. You can read about my impressions in attempting to run Elden Ring at 60fps elsewhere, but the bottom line is that a lot of the PS5 games I tested showed an increase of around 30 to 35 percent in extra performance.
In many cases (like Silent Hill 2, for example), that's enough to make a wobbly 60fps mode run much more consistently. The biggest boosts may come from 120Hz game modes - Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition seemed to show anything from a 30 to 50 percent performance improvements in like-for-like content.
Sony PlayStation 5 Pro review: across the board improvements, but is it worth the money?
The PlayStation 5 Pro is here - and Digital Foundry presents its verdict.www.eurogamer.net
Sad but true. The GPU market is so awful right now that a comparable card costs as much as the entire console.
I think I'll just pick up a PS5 (maybe even a Pro) and wait for the AI bubble to burst.
The PS5 Pro upgrade here is pretty enormous in its 60fps performance mode, which honestly looks generationally improved over its base console counterpart. The RTGI does seem to have a considerable performance impact here, but it's absolutely critical for lighting in this particular title. It's hard to overstate how diminished the game is without the technique.
Assassin's Creed Shadows delivers one of the most substantial PS5 Pro upgrades we've seen
DF's Oliver Mackenzie analyses the PS5 Pro version of Assassins Creed Shadows versus the base PS5. Is this the most substantial Pro upgrade we've seen yet?www.eurogamer.net