Favorite Games: Demon's Souls, Ghost of Tsushima, Astro's Playroom, Dark Souls series, Horizon Call of the Mountain, more to come!
First of all, this is the biggest console I have lying around! It's the biggest PlayStation Sony ever made, but not the heaviest one, the PS3 Phat weighs more. I love the unusual round design on this thing, and even more, the material used on the inside and on the controllers! They are very small prints of the PlayStation button shapes! This is an awesome 4K Blu Ray player, in fact its the first one because the PS4 models do not support 4K UHD Blu Ray discs. It has a lot of streaming services for movies and is very simple integration for video recording, it as simple as pressing a simple button just like on PC or the Nintendo Switch. It comes with. It's almost 100% perfect, there were three flaws I experienced while playing on this console.
The first is missing UI customisation. There are no themes, nothing available for the device. All PS5's are the same due to this.
The second being boot from rest mode time, it does not instantly turn on when I press the Playstation button on the controller. My Switch turns on immediately from sleep mode when I press the power button.
The third being the low amount of storage (storage usable is lower than advertised). I already bought an 2TB Pcie 4.0 SSD for this device knowing that the default storage will most likely become full if I didn't.
It's completely silent (unless you decide to use the disc drive which makes a lot of noise), my model has a small amount of coil whine when heavy games are being played, this does not happen when PS4 games are played.
The controller however is the best one I've ever used. It's thicker and heavier than the DS4 and matches the PS5 style. But man this piece of hardware has such a good precision. Compared to the DS4 controller, this one definitely made change in my performance in FPS games. It sits well inside your hand and it has a microphone which can be used in playstation parties and for voice control. You can also use the controller's gyroscope for text input. It has the almost useless (some games make good use of it, and on PC this is very handy) touchpad on top of it, a better speaker compared to my DS4 controller experiences (not sure if they were changed) and what's most impressive are the adaptive trigger buttons, some games make really good use of these. It's a very innovative piece of hardware that has been released in the gaming market. This is currently my most favorite controller. The one that came with my console did have an issue though, the R1 button doesn't feel like the other button which is feels fine. After reading some reviews on the internet, this controller seems prone to breaking. Some buttons would stop working or the adaptive triggers would break. It's not 'Nintendo Quality', but it's the best I've ever used, with the Switch Pro controller being second and the third place being a tie with the DS4 and Wii U GamePad. It's also the first PlayStation controller that would keep some of its features (adaptive trigger, speakers functionality) when connected to PC (with cable) in games without the need of extra software.
Interesting to see, is that it supports Ray Tracing, although on paper, far from powerful as the PC cards. And also 8K output, but only very few games utilise this resolution. The 120Hz support unfortunately doesn't work with PS4 releases and only PS5 games, and most games running at 120Hz do not run at 2160p (4K Ultra HD) but at lower resolutions such as 1080p.
The SPDIF port has been removed which prevents me from connecting it to my Z906 speakers for digital audio and requires a receiver or speaker that accepts this digital audio through HDMI (unless you use a TV HDMI ARC with SPDIF out). It has two USB type A 3.2 ports on the back and a USB type C 3.2 port in front along with a 2.0 type A port which is often used for the charging cable.
It's also very easy to start streaming for friends and allow friends to temporary take control of your game.
Sony released the console in only one color: White. i haven't seen any plans for other colors (aside from some limited edition models), and it probably wouldn't need to because you can buy other color plates made by them officially (or third party ones).
Very unusual is the lack of a directly accessible webbrowser.
(Update 2023-8-21) PS VR2
This is my first time experience with VR headsets (I have only used a Mixed / Augmented reality HoloLens 2 before), The PS5's VR set called 'PS VR2' gave me an incredible experience with VR for the first time, since I've not used any other VR headset before, I can barely judge because of that, but it felt more than premium! The game I was playing is Horizon Call of the Mountain, it came with the headset and so far this has been the best experience I've ever had! Before this I was completely impressed and in love with the Nintendo 3DS 3D screen, but this has now gotten my attention! The feedback the controllers provide is ultra realistic (dual sense level), I could feel the moss in the game as well as plants I touched with my hands within the game. Another unusual thing is that the headset itself vibrates too, in the Horizon game, this often happens when large machines are moving!
Iris tracking works 100% perfect which is incredible, this allows you to select options with your eyes instead of moving your head or pointing your controller to an option. The headset also has a integrated microphone and a headphone jack. Speaking of headphones, it comes with earbuds which sound very clear and can the earbuds can be plugged in the headset featuring seemless wiring and they can be stored in the holes withing the headset, they also come with different size covers. The 4K HDR OLED screen feels incredibly realistic, when the screen is black, it feels like you are watching a move in a (almost) pitch black cinema when there's nothing on screen for a moment. The screen door effect is barely noticable due to the extremely high resolution.
There are some issues though. Any dirt on the lenses can make the screen look blurry which is very annoying, and it sometimes happens that the accelerometer / IR cameras felt like it was broke because it kept making mistakes calculating the position while defining the play zone, this could be due to some brightness issues because I was playing with low light. I also need to adjust everything everytime I put on the headset.
I can definitely recommend this PS5 accessory, I look forward creating a VR game for this device in Unreal Engine 5 some time!
Games
Demon's Souls
A tough and classic souls game which really demonstrates the PlayStation 5's grapical capabilities. A must play if you buy a PS5 and like hard games.
Ghost of Tsushima
Even though this game was released on PS4 too, it makes good use of adaptive triggers and your reflexes and runs in 4K 60 fps without stutters. Another good game I recommend playing, and it's really fun playing with friends!
Astro's Playroom
Another good looking game which reminds me of Mario because of it's platform mechanics and smooth graphics. It's really fun to play and you might learn something more about the PlayStation consoles itself while playing it, it utilises all the controller's features too.
Horizon Call of the Mountain
A VR game with one of the best looking graphics I've seen for the device (along with Demon's Souls), I love the climbing mechanics along with the puzzles along the course and the fights against enemies. Another thing which is lots of fun, is finding the hidden targets around the map and hitting them. This is the most immersive game I've every played!
Should you get this?
Do you want next gen gaming performance? Yes buy this. Go for the digital version if you don't want to use it for 4K Blu Rays and don't collect gaming discs. Make sure to upgrade the SSD.
Do you have a 120Hz TV or a high refreshrate monitor connected? What are you waiting for with that old max 60 fps junk? Go for it! A lot of games support 120 fps on this console (note that performance mode lowers the resolution in most games for the target framerate, there are not much 2160p games with 120Hz support).
Should I upgrade from a PS4? This depends, the console was hard to get in the beginning and the prices have gone up outside the USA... If you own a PS4 or PS4 Slim, the difference is definitely noticable! If you own a PS4 Pro and a 4K 60Hz TV, you'll not likely not see the changes unless you are really familiar with 3D graphics in games.
Does it play all PS4 games? 99.99% according to Sony's database.