When the PlayStation Portal debuted in 2023, I scoffed at it. A $270 handheld that can only play games over the internet and lacks any other features, including support for native games or even non-Sony Bluetooth headphones? Fast forward two years, and I still stand by those criticisms.
Having said that, a combination of some changes that have since been made to the Portal and me giving it more of a fair shake now have given me a more favourable view of the device.
The biggest reason for my evolving opinion is the inclusion of cloud streaming last year. With this feature, PS Plus Premium members can stream games from the PS Plus catalogue or select titles they own. It’s a huge improvement from the Portal’s previous utility of only being able to work via Remote Play connection to your PS5. This meant that you could only use the Portal when your PS5 was fully powered on or in Rest Mode.
I’ve always recognized how this could be more than fine for some people, like those who share their TVs with several other family members or roommates, but for me, it was too limiting. Case in point: I took the Portal with me on my recent trip to Paris for Rainbow Six Siege. I realized I had forgotten to leave the PS5 in Rest Mode, so I tried to instruct my mum how to do this over a grainy WhatsApp video call. Awkward, to be sure, and obviously, not everyone will have someone at home ready and able to do that. If this were the Portal before late 2025, I’d have been screwed.
But with new cloud gaming functionality, I can simply kick back in my hotel room and stream directly to the Portal, cutting out the PS5 middleman entirely. And with a 205.8Mbps download speed, my sessions were quite smooth. Since this was before the release of Resident Evil Requiem, I had been replaying some of the RE games, and even in the hectic gunfights of the action-heavy RE4, the streams kept up remarkably well, outside of the very occasional brief visual or frame rate stutter.
Of course, your mileage will vary depending on your Wi-Fi source, but even on slower connections, the streams were solid. It should be noted that there’s not technically an official Remote Play distance limit, but it worked terribly when I tried in my Parisian hotel room. (To be fair, Mississauga to Paris is a huge distance.) But that’s the beauty of having the cloud functionality; you can go back and forth between that and Remote Play depending on your situation.
And in the case of Remote Play, I’ve found myself warming up to that side of the Portal’s utility. In particular, I’ve been rather burnt out lately, and so I don’t always want to hunker down in front of my TV or laptop to game. That feeling is only more pronounced after I come back from the gym and I feel even more drained. But with the Portal, I can find a happy medium. I can continue working at my ever-expanding game backlog from the comfort of my couch or even my bed.
And because of this, it’s made me embrace the more pick-up-and-play nature of certain games. RE4, for instance, has that classic Mercenaries mode, and so it can be a hoot to briefly hop in, mow down hordes of zombies for a high score and then quit. Even Requiem, which lacks Mercenaries, has some of the best RE action to date, so I’ve also gone back for little dopamine bursts with Leon. Similarly, swinging around in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 remains one of my favourite relaxing activities in games, and I will occasionally boot up the game to do just that.
I’m less likely to do these sorts of things if I have to sit down in front of the TV after a long day, but more casually while lying down with the Portal? Count me in! (There’s also another handy and extremely specific use case for me here. When I’m reviewing something like Requiem, I’ll often boot up the game in short bursts to fact-check the proper names of items, abilities or enemies, so the Portal makes that much easier.)
With all of that said, the Portal does still have its shortcomings, even a couple of years later. Chief among them: I do still wish PlayStation had some official option for native handheld gaming like Nintendo does with its Switch 2 or Xbox has with the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X.
Yes, you can buy a bunch of PlayStation games on PC and play on something like a Steam Deck, but there’s no dedicated hardware for this like the Switch 2 or even the partnerships Xbox has with the likes of Asus and Lenovo. (And of course, recent reports indicate that PlayStation is actually moving away from releasing most of its games on PC, so that doesn’t exactly instill confidence for future support.) All of this is to say that the Portal still isn’t for anyone but the most diehard PlayStation fans.
But if nothing else, the inclusion of cloud streaming alone has made the Portal worthwhile for this diehard PlayStation fan. While I am fortunate to own pretty much every major gaming platform, the PS5 remains my go-to system, so I appreciate not having to leave behind my catalogue and progress when I travel. (And considering I’ve travelled more in the past year than I have in any other period in my life, the new cloud streaming functionality coincided nicely with my gaming habits.) And in the occasional instance where I want shorter and more relaxing play sessions, Remote Play is always an option.
I do still hope Sony puts out a more proper handheld in the future, but for now, I’ve found myself enjoying the Portal a lot more than I thought I would.
The PlayStation Portal costs $269.99.
