If you’d have said two years ago that the PlayStation Portal would be one of my favorite gaming accessories of the decade, I wouldn’t have believed you. Back when the Portal launched in late 2023, I wasn’t convinced of its value. The handheld’s requirement to be tethered to your PlayStation 5 at all times just smacked of ‘who is this for?’
Now it’s 2026, and the PlayStation Portal has received a handful of vital updates. General improvements to streaming aside, the Portal can now stream games in your library – or the PlayStation Plus catalog – without needing your PS5 to be switched on. As a result, the Portal has evolved from a simple remote play device into a very capable cloud streaming machine.
Remote played
I was initially skeptical about the PlayStation Portal. I just didn’t think a remote play device that could only operate over the internet to my home console or even in the same vicinity as my PS5 had much of a use case. Certainly not compared to the Nintendo Switch 2, which, obviously, isn’t bound by such restrictions. If I wanted to play my PS5 in my house, I would simply go upstairs and boot the console up.
I still mostly feel this way for remote play specifically. It’s a ‘nice to have’ feature that means I can essentially bring my PS5 playtime into the lounge if the mood strikes me. And the quality of the connection is generally very strong – the PS5 dashboard does look a bit low-res and out of focus, but gameplay largely holds up most of the time.
However, it’s the addition of cloud streaming via PS Plus Premium that’s really changed the way I think about the PlayStation Portal. Not only does this add some much-needed value to the highest tier of the subscription service, but it means you don’t need your PS5 to be switched on in order to make use of the Portal wholesale. It’s definitely my preferred way of playing titles on the device.
Head in the clouds
You’re now able to stream games in the PS Plus game catalog, or select titles that you own, and that’s brilliant.
I’ve been loving PS Plus’s classics output of late. Having Soul Calibur 3 – arguably the best fighting game on the PS2 (sorry, Tekken 5, I do love you, too) – playable on an official portable device with shockingly crisp image quality almost feels like wizardry.
I’ve been playing a ton of Ridge Racer Type 4, too, as well as the incredible Tomb Raider Anniversary port which runs at a clean 60fps. Older greats like this just feel superb to play on a handheld device, and much more suited to the Portal’s smaller screen as opposed to being blown up on a 4K display.
It’s not just old-school titles I’ve been putting the Portal’s paces through, though. I got mine around the same time as Gran Turismo 7’s excellent Spec 3 update dropped, and chipping away at races in the new Power Pack DLC – whether just before bed, waiting on a delivery, or while cooking – has been a delight.
Cloud streaming on PS5 has come a decently long way in the years since the Portal’s release. Picture quality can still greatly vary – I had one instance where the connection even dropped entirely while playing Honkai: Star Rail – but it provides a reliable play experience around 90% of the time in my estimation.
I do still have some criticisms, though; it’s by no means a perfect device. While it’s a lot more comfortable to hold than I thought it would be, it does feel a little slapped together. It both looks and feels like a tablet was hastily wedged in between a torn-in-half DualSense Wireless Controller, which I suppose it is. I don’t think it would pass the most modest of drop tests, either.
Battery life is also a major sore point. Like the DualSense itself, it seems that no amount of charging can give you enough juice for a decently lengthy gaming session. It can vary, of course, depending on the type of game you’re playing, what controller features you have enabled, and the level of brightness on the screen. But I was never able to squeeze out more than five hours before needing to hook it up for charging.
Still, I’m happy that Sony didn’t put the Portal out to pasture in a way it sort of did with PSVR 2. It’s been able to dramatically improve the end-user experience over the last couple of years, and being able to use it as more than just a remote play device has exponentially increased its value in my eyes.
I’ll be looking forward to future Portal updates going forward, especially as PS Plus’s retro game library continues to grow.
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