While many fans are waiting for a true PlayStation handheld that could bring back the glory days of the PSP, the PlayStation Portal is quietly offering more than you might think. What started as a remote player has now transformed into a cloud streaming device thanks to PS Plus. I’ve been testing this update for a couple of weeks now, so let’s see if it’s worth it.
When Sony first revealed the PlayStation Portal, I was intrigued but also a bit confused about who the device was really for. As a Remote Play device, it worked exactly as advertised, but it also meant the Portal completely depended on your PlayStation 5 being turned on somewhere in the house. Without a PS5 running, the device simply didn’t have much to offer. Of course, on location, you could still access your PlayStation 5 console over wi-fi when you left it in rest mode at home, but it never became more than ‘just’ a Portal to your gaming library at home. It’s nothing bad, but it isn’t as standalone as some might have hoped when it first got revealed. That’s where the recent cloud streaming update changes things quite a bit.
With a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, the Portal can now stream games directly from Sony’s servers instead of relying entirely on your own console. In practice, that means you can simply pick up the device, choose a game from the PlayStation Plus catalogue or your digital library, and start playing without even touching your PS5. You can stream the games that are supported in the service, so be aware that not all of your own digital games are supported. It might sound like a small change, but after using it for a couple of weeks, it actually makes a huge difference, and I found myself picking up the handheld a lot more than before.
Before this update, I always had to think about whether my PS5 was on or whether I was clever enough to leave it behind in rest mode. With cloud streaming, that extra step is gone. You just launch a game and start playing. It’s a small but important change in how I approached the PS Portal, to be honest. Where I had to find the connection with my PS5 before starting, that extra step disappeared with this update, and I’m pretty enthusiastic about it.
But, of course, there’s a catch. Cloud streaming on the Portal requires a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription. If you’re already using that service, it probably won’t bother you much, but if you’re not, the idea of paying a monthly subscription on top of the hardware might feel a bit harder to justify. You can compare it to modern streaming services, where you’ll need compatible hardware and a subscription in order to get going. It’s nothing strange for television, but for gaming, it’s still all pretty new, even though the technology itself has evolved over the years and really took me by surprise.
Cloud gaming has improved a lot over the past few years, and the Portal benefits from that progress. With a stable connection, the experience feels surprisingly smooth. Yes, there is some input delay, but in most single-player games, I quickly stopped noticing it. The 8-inch screen helps a lot here, too. Yes, it’s a 1080p screen, but because of its smaller size, games still look sharp and colorful. The games looked great on the Portal’s screen, and the form factor of the handheld really helps, too. It’s basically a DualSense with a screen in the middle, so you’re comfortable for the next couple of hours. For my solo games, I liked this new update. When my connection was stable, I had zero issues aside from a couple of smaller frame rate drops or lower quality images for a couple of seconds. Nothing that breaking, so I happily continued playing until I tried multiplayer games.
It’s there that the true limitations started to appear. Cooperative games worked better than I expected during testing. Competitive multiplayer is a different story, though. In fast PvP games, the added latency can definitely put you at a disadvantage compared to players running the game locally. But the Portal isn’t really built for competitive play anyway. It’s much more about convenience and giving you extra options and freedom. And that’s where the hardware still shines.
After a few weeks with the update, the PlayStation Portal feels like a very different device than it did at launch. What once felt like a niche remote player now feels like a much more practical way to jump into PlayStation games in short handheld sessions. It’s still not a true PlayStation handheld, but with cloud streaming added to the mix, the Portal finally starts to feel like it has a real purpose.
