- Yes, the PS5 is worth it.
Not since the PlayStation 3 generation,
have we seen such a big leap, not only in just performance,
but in the overall experience of next generation gaming.
Now you may have seen all of our videos this year
on the rumors and every little bit of information
we've gotten on the PS5,
but until you have the DualSense in your hand
and a 4k HDR TV in front of you,
can you really appreciate
just how big of a leap the PS5 truly is.
It's good.
It is really, really good.
This video is sponsored
by the new SteelSeries Arctis 7P headset.
It all starts with the DualSense controller.
Now I'll be honest with you.
Last generation, I preferred the Xbox One controller.
It was more comfortable
and it just felt more natural for me to play on.
But this time around it is very clear.
Sony have taken the lead with the DualSense.
Not only is this a nicer controller to use and to hold,
but importantly, it gives you an entirely different level
of immersion in the game.
So first of all, we have "Astro's Playroom".
Now this is a game which comes pre-installed on the PS5,
it's free, it's similar to something like "Wii Sports".
And that it's almost a little bit more of a controller demo,
but it does an excellent job
of showing you why this controller
is completely unlike anything you've used in the past.
So every little motion inside the controller, you can feel.
So for example, as I went left to right,
I could feel the controller vibrate,
the triggers are unique because like,
there's like actual real resistance there. Can you see that?
That's in software.
Look at that. That's crazy.
Not only do I have the sound coming from the controller,
but the vibration sort of moves back and forth.
It's something which is difficult to get a good sense of
on video.
(whirring)
The way that I feel a vibration for every little step.
It is so cool.
Now of course, "Astro's Playroom"
is certainly a proof of concept to make the DualSense,
look and feel as absolute best as possible,
but it's actually a pretty fun game.
The fact that this is included with the PS5
I do think is, it's more than just a demo.
You can definitely spend a few hours
having fun with this thing.
Now, if I have one nitpick with the controller,
it is battery life,
especially with a game like "Astro's Playroom",
which really does take advantage of all aspects
of the vibration, the triggers and whatnot.
It drains battery pretty quickly.
I mean, you could be spending something like
five or six hours between charges,
which to be fair it's USB-C, you can easily plug it in,
but if you're playing a lot of games
that take full advantage of things,
you gotta charge your control a little bit more often
than you're probably used to.
Now launch games are never the greatest example
of what a console is capable of
three, four, five years down the road,
but we do have enough titles
to at least get a sense of where the PS5 is headed.
So I think Spider-Man, Miles Morales
is probably the most high-profile game that's out
and it does something kind of interestingly.
So you usually have two different modes here,
you have 4k 30 and 4k 60,
quality versus performance.
Performance looks good and runs well
and is certainly a step up over what you have on the PS4,
specifically, when you look at like the load times
and how you're able to seamlessly fly through the city
without any sort of bottlenecks,
but a thing I find a little bit more interesting
is the quality mode.
This enables all the bells and whistles,
including ray tracing.
In fact, actually "Astro's Playroom" does a pretty good job
of showing you how ray tracing can kind of make
the world feel more elaborate and sort of more lived in.
So if you look at the way
that his visor is naturally reflecting
the environment around him
and even his entire body
is being colored by this green grass around him,
essentially what ray tracing does is it grounds a game
in much more of a realistic lighting solution, right?
I mean, essentially what you're seeing here
is exactly the way that light works in real life.
If you stand next to a bunch of green grass
with a ton of light around you,
and you're a reflective surface, guess what?
You're gonna look green.
And that does a lot
to make games look so much more realistic.
He doesn't stand out because he's all white and blue
or whatever he blends in naturally to the environment.
And I think that's just a little taste
of what ray tracing can deliver
by not necessarily making the graphics higher resolution
or anything like that,
but just making everything feel more grounded in reality,
when it comes to playing these next-gen games.
Another game I wanna give a shout out to is 'Demon's Souls".
Now this is of course a remaster of a PS3 game,
but they've done a really good job
of not only looking great. I mean,
you've got stuff like those reflections,
you've got the quick load times in fact, actually,
that's one of the main differences,
but what really jumps out to me on this one
is the way it takes advantage of the DualSense controller.
When playing Spider-Man,
it feels like I'm just using a DualShock 4.
You get a little bit of rumble, but it's not anything crazy,
but "Demon's Souls" takes it a step further.
Not only do you get a lot of audio
from the speaker inside the controller,
but the vibration feels much better.
Like every step you can kinda feel left versus right,
as you sort of clash swords, it's nice.
"Dirt 5" also takes advantage of the DualSense controller.
Now it's a little bit early,
I'd say the support is a touch rough,
but you do get a little bit of a sense
for what things are going to feel like.
So for example, the right trigger
as you're driving with the throttle.
You actually feel a lot more resistance
because they've sort of tuned that into the controller.
And it's nice that games have that full capability
of changing the way the now you have the resistance,
but the rumble, the feel
you've got a lot of the stuff that
makes the DualSense feel kind of next gen.
Now, especially as more and more racing games
are gonna take advantage of this.
I love the idea that as I sorta jump on the brakes,
I can feel like the ABS pulsing or something.
We've got a little bit of a sense for that
with the Xbox One controller,
but those impulse triggers were never really implemented
and they certainly don't have the same fidelity
in that experience that the DualSense has.
So early days, but you're starting to really kinda see
the wheels turn, I'm like, "Oh, wait a minute."
This is really something that feels next gen
in a way that you won't ever notice
by watching YouTube gameplay.
You notice it when the controller's in your hand
and you feel the brakes lock up
or you feel the backend come around as
you get on the throttle too quickly,
it's a unique experience.
Now, if you've been eyeing that PS5,
you might be interested in the sponsor of today's video.
SteelSeries brand new Arctis 7P headset.
Now the Arctis 7 was already the best wireless headset
in the game. And now the 7P
is all about that brand new PS5.
So not only does it match and it is super comfortable,
but on top of that, it supports all of the audio features
of the PS5 with it's super low latency,
2.4 gigahertz connection.
On top of that it also has a Discord Certified microphone,
excellent audio quality, 24 hours of battery life,
which is probably more than you wanna game at one time.
And it does support also the PS4 as well as most devices
via the USB-C dongle which comes included in the box.
You've also got full controls built into the headset,
and I've gotta say, this is one of the most comfortable
gaming headsets that I've ever worn.
So if you wanna go check out the Arctis 7P
you can find it at steelseries.com
or at the link in the description.
And of course, huge shout out to Steelseries
for sponsoring my PS5 coverage.
Now, the looks of the PS5 might be a little bit polarizing.
I'll say I like it,
although I do think that the digital version
looks a little bit nicer,
especially when you have it sitting by itself.
This sort of disc tray bulge looks a little bit strange,
but I think they've done a good job of the overall design.
And there are a couple of nice little features.
So in addition to three USB-A ports,
you also have a USB-C port up front,
something I wished the Xbox had.
You also have things like Wi-Fi 6 built in
where of course you could plug it into ethernet if you want,
but I've seen really good download speeds,
taking advantage of that Wi-Fi 6 network.
And when you put it all together
with what you get in the box,
you don't really need a lot of extra stuff for it, right?
I mean, that stand, like I said, comes included.
And while the size is going to be a problem for some people,
I generally like a lot of the little hardware details
they've done. I mean, if you look really up close
to the little bit of texture on the inside,
it's a bunch of the PlayStation symbols.
I mean, there's just a lot of little Easter eggs
that make this thing
a little bit of a cut above that PS4 hardware
specifically from the style perspective.
Now on the flip side,
especially after we'd done the tear down,
I have an appreciation for the way they've designed this.
So I'm gonna be quiet for a second, okay?
You hear anything right now?
My microphone is two inches away from the exhaust
of this console and it is almost entirely silent
and I'm not just sitting on a menu, right?
This game has been running for over 45 minutes now.
And the PS5 has not gotten louder in the slightest,
that I think is a big win for Sony this time around
because look, the PS4 was a great console,
but sort of the noise, maybe not its strongest suit.
So while yes the PS5 is large, it is large for a reason.
They've done a lot of work
to make sure this thing runs quiet and cool.
It absolutely does that.
There's also a side benefit of that
in that the PS5 takes advantage of boost clocks.
So essentially the quieter
and specifically the cooler it runs
the better performance you can get,
still might not be quite as powerful
as something like the Xbox Series X,
but quiet, cool, high-performance
are all great things in my book,
as long as you have a very, very hard space to store it.
Something else which is really striking
about this next generation of consoles
is how fast everything is.
So I spoke a little bit about this
in my Xbox Series X review,
but these consoles are just simply really fast
at pretty much everything.
So from loading games to hopping between menus,
to even firing up for the first time,
they're incredibly snappy.
These things are packed to the gills
with cutting edge technology.
They've got excellent processors
which help with things like moving between apps
and downloading games and multitasking. It runs really well,
but you also have plenty of memory.
You have cutting edge graphics
with literally all of the latest features,
including stuff that came out in graphics cards
like five days ago.
You also have an SSD,
now that I think is probably going to be
one of the most noticeable things
just going between the last generation of consoles
and the PS5.
Everything loads so fast, right?
I mean, you saw with Astro's Play world,
you jump into a level, two seconds later, it's loaded.
You know, the days of waiting
for three minutes for your Red Dead 2 save to load up
are simply gone.
And while yeah, there's certainly trade offs there.
This is an 825 gigabyte console.
Yeah, so out of the box,
you have 667 gigabytes free on the PS5.
And there was only a couple of things installed,
I'm down to 490 gigs. That is certainly a downside, right?
SSDs are expensive and the fact is
you're simply gonna have less space
to work with on these new consoles
and the games are going to be bigger.
Now on the PS5 specifically,
the hardware actually does support you
to upgrade the SSD yourself.
So we've actually done an entire tear down,
which you can feel free to check out,
but it's pretty easy to just slide off the side panel
and install an SSD. The problem is, of course,
those SSDs are going to be expensive
and those SSDs are also not available yet.
Even if you can find one,
it actually doesn't support it. You're got to wait
for a future firmware update.
That being said, though,
the fact that we have super fast SSD storage
really does mean that everything on this PS5
absolutely flies.
I don't wanna give you the wrong idea
while the PlayStation has a ton of strengths,
it is certainly not a perfect console.
So when you line it up beside the Xbox Series X,
you can see that the Xbox
is a little bit more of a technically focused console.
So not only does it have more raw graphics performance,
but on top of that, the Xbox has a lot of functions
and features that just simply are missing on the PS5.
So take, for example, the ability to output a 1440p signal.
If you had a 1440P gaming monitor,
you just simply can't get that resolution out of the PS5
while the Xbox handles it no problem.
Same thing goes for things like auto low latency mode
and specifically variable refresh rate.
You have things like FreeSync built into the Xbox
that simply are missing at least as of right now on the PS5.
Now none of these things are deal breakers,
but the Xbox does a much better job
of handling a wide range of displays
and giving you a very smooth output.
If you plug in your PS5 to a standard 4k TV, this is fine,
but all those weird edge cases,
the Xbox handles much better.
Something else I've been missing coming from the Series X
is full backwards compatibility.
Now I'll give Sony props.
They do finally have PS4 support in the PS5,
So you can play most of the games
you've purchased over the last few years,
but there's no support for the PS1, PS2, or PS3,
which is understandable
when you look at the Xbox side of the house,
which is able to play pretty much every Xbox game
from the original all the way up to the modern titles
on the Xbox Series X, it is a little bit of a miss.
I also really find myself missing quick resume on the Xbox.
So on the PS5, it works just the way that the PS4 works.
So you're playing a game, you wanna play another game,
it quits it, launches the next title.
That's fine, especially with the SSD it's much quicker,
but on the Xbox side,
the quick resume built in means
that you can actually jump to the last handful of games
that you've played.
And they will load in a couple of seconds
to exactly where you were before.
It's a feature that again,
sort of in keeping with the theme of these new consoles
is all about getting you into the game
as quickly as possible.
And it's something that pretty frankly,
I miss coming from the Xbox over to the PS5.
But I'm actually gonna be doing
a much more in-depth comparison
between the PS5 and the Xbox.
So make sure to subscribe, to see my full thoughts,
but there are certainly some trade-offs
on either side at the moment.
At this point, I think it's pretty clear.
I personally think the PS5 is worth it.
This next generation of gaming adds so many new features
with so few compromises,
at what I think at a pretty reasonable price point,
it's hard to go wrong.
Now on top of the PS5,
you also do of course have the PS5 digital edition,
which I didn't really talk about in this video,
but it's pretty much the exact same thing,
but it's $100 cheaper
and you don't have the optical disc drive.
And on the Xbox side of the camp,
they actually do match up pretty well, right?
I think PS5 and Xbox Series X are much closer
than the PS4 and Xbox One ever were.
And if you really wanna go on the budget side of things,
little baby Xbox Series S while it's not as powerful
does offer a lot of these same next gen benefits.
But regardless,
if you can't get your hands on a PS5 right now,
I wouldn't stress on it too much.
Well yes the console is good right now,
there still aren't a ton of games,
and there are a lot of features
that either need to be updated or added in firmware
over the next year or so.
So if it takes you a little while to get your hands on one,
I don't think you're missing out on that much,
but when you do, that next gen is very, very real.
Thank you very much for watching.
Make sure to subscribe to the channel if you enjoyed
and until my next clickbait PS5 video, I will see you then.