Owning a PS4 has been personally one of the best consoles and gaming experiences I could ask for during the 4th gen of consoles. But this time Sony really outdid themselves. In both physical and in its graphics capabilities, the powerful new PlayStation 5 console towers over its predecessor. 10.28 teraflops vs. 1.84 teraflops in the original PS4 which is processed by the AMD-powered GPU.
This console is tall, like very very tall. In its vertical position, it stands 16 inches. Inferring from the front of the box and the promotional art of Sony, that’s how the company wants you to use it. Fortunately, there is a plastic dual-use stand included in the kit to help safely place the console in vertical and horizontal positions.
The PS5 is powered by AMD components. In this case, it’s a custom eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU and a GPU based on AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture. The key takeaway is both new PlayStation and Xbox systems are built on very similar platforms. Both also offer default solid-state drives for storage compared to the hard drives of the 2013 PS4 and Xbox One and that makes for a huge improvement in loading times. Technically, the PS5 has a higher output speed from its SSD than the Xbox Series X, but then again, the Xbox GPU can, by specs,carry out more operations per second.
The perception of the game console is so uniquely related to game apps, social and web tools and media services that it is difficult to judge accurately in a pre-release environment. Many of the online and media capabilities of the PS5 will not be finalized until the day of sale, and then we will have to see how the PlayStation Network keeps going online under the pressure of endless Day 1 customers and struggling to play, connect and download all at once.
A New Take on DualSense
With the retro-futurism of a Space: 1999 prop combined with a killer-robot Ghost in the Shell vibe, the DualSense controller is brazen yet minimalistic. Although the current Xbox controller is a modestly updated take on the original Xbox game pad, in both architecture and features, the PS5 controller has developed well beyond the PS4 iteration.
The adaptive buttons, built-in microphone and improved haptic responses are the main changes.The larger central touchpad could have more opportunities for games and applications to be useful. The power connection on the back is a USB-C plug. It even has a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The interface is very similar to the PS4, A long horizontal line of square icons, each adding contextual info below, with a a background behind it.
The PS5 is available only in a white variant at $499 (standard), $399 (Digital Edition).
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Last modified: April 14, 2021
