- The PlayStation 5 Pro is essentially a $700 GPU upgrade over the PS5 Slim.
- Most people won’t notice the difference when they’re playing.
- You’ll need to buy an external reader if you have game disks.
Sony’s PS5 Pro is here, and it looks pretty good. But given that almost every potential customer probably already owns the plain old PS5, is it worth the upgrade?
The short answer is, “It depends.” The differences are at the same time, huge and small, plus there’s one huge downside if you prefer to buy your games on disks. Anyone who already experienced the PS4/PS4 Pro upgrade will be familiar with what Sony is doing here—the biggest addition is a better GPU for improved visuals.
“I don’t believe most PS5 owners need to upgrade to the Pro model yet based on the info released. The PS5 is an incredibly capable console on its own and will run new games well for years,” Saumik Tiwari, founder of decentralized GPU company PoolCompute, told Lifewire via email.
What Does ‘Pro’ Mean?
Let’s get straight to the main differences between the 5 and 5 Pro. The Pro version gets a much more powerful GPU, which allows the other two big additions. One is advanced ray tracing, which Sony says can cast rays at 2x or 3x the speeds of the PS5,
The other addition is “Spectral Super Resolution,” which is what Sony is calling its upscaling feature. This uses machine learning to add detail to existing titles, and display them at up to 8K, if you happen to have an 8K TV sitting around.
Sony also says that the new console can “boost” around 8,500 PS4 titles, which is neat, we guess, but the real point here is that gamers can play their existing games—and any new ones, with better performance.
And then we get to the downsides. One is that this costs $699. The other is that there is no version with a disk reader. If you want to use your already-purchased physical copies, you’ll need to buy an external drive. Oh, and the Pro is a little bigger than the regular Slim, as you can see in the first photo.
Pricey Upgrade
This means that you’re essentially paying $700+ for an upgrade to the console you probably already own. If you’re buying your first PS5, this makes more sense as an alternative to the PS5 Slim, which you can get from $450 at Best Buy, for example, or $500 for the version that takes disks.
But let’s say you’re a super gaming fan and that all your PS5 purchases are digital downloads. What differences will you see?
Our first piece of advice is to not bother checking out the YouTube comparisons of the video quality between the two consoles because YouTube’s video compression essentially destroys the difference. Instead, take a look at this article by The Verge’s Sean Hollister, where he has put hi-res screenshots from both consoles side-by-side. The difference is clear, but the fact that you have to zoom in to see it means that you may not even notice it in the heat of fast-moving play. Are you going to admire the more-detailed texture on Spiderman’s costume while swinging from a web down a New York street?
And the ray tracing? Also noticeable, but also maybe not worth paying $700 for.
The most noticeable change, then, will probably come from being able to maintain a 60fps frame rate at all times, even in graphically intensive scenes. You will no longer have to choose between the Performance and Fidelity modes because you’ll be able to have both.
“PC has had the problem for years now, and you’ll only really notice a difference in image quality if you know what to look for. To a normal person, it’s going to be very hard to see the difference between a PS5 and a PS5 Pro, especially if they’re both at 60 FPS. The Pro is designed for people who already have a pro setup and want to take full advantage, not the normal consumer with a budget 4k/60 panel,” gamer UnicornsRule said in a comments thread on The Verge.
The Expensive Future of Gaming Consoles
Games consoles are getting to be a strange proposition. On the one hand, the entire point of a console compared to a gaming PC is convenience and price. You don’t have to worry about compatibility, upgrades, or performance. Every generation you buy a new machine, and keep playing out for years and years until the next one comes along.
But now, with what is essentially a $700 spec bump for an existing console, that has changed. These are no longer affordable impulse buys for fun. They’re expensive, serious gaming machines. They’re still not close to expensive PC gaming rigs, but they’re leaving a big gap at the low end, where right now Nintendo is cleaning up.
But one thing might eventually force you to upgrade even if you don’t want to. While many existing games have already been enhanced for the new PS5 Pro, they still run perfectly on the older console they were designed for. But with the extra power in the Pro model, how long before developers push things so hard that the old model can no longer keep up?
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- Should You Ditch Your PS5 for the New Pro Version?
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