Saturday, January 27, 2024

PS5 - A Casual Review

 I got a Sony PlayStation 5 here and it's a fat version (because there's a slim version now) with disc drive. I got this gaming console as a wedding gift from my wife.



PACKAGING


The box is big and pretty simple. At the front, you can see the console and the controller partially visible with the PS5 logo. I didn't notice that this can do 8K? Sorry, I'm waaaayy outdated when it comes to consoles and some tech. My last gaming console was a PS3 and I skipped PS4.


At the back another product image of the console and controller is shown. The console is shown on a horizontal orientation.


Here's the PS5 console and the DualSense controller unboxed and shown in its full glory.


In the packaging you get this USB-A to USB-C connector for connecting and charging the controller.


The HDMI cable is included too. It's kinda short in my opinion. I can't properly set the PS5 on the left hand side of the TV because we got a huge TV and its TV's HDMI port is located on its right hand side. I think the HDMI cable should be twice as long.


Here's the power cable, it got that square plugs and it's length is good enough.


Manuals and Quick Start guide is included. I bet you didn't bother reading any of these, like me.

The box also includes a display base that can place the console in either horizontal or vertical orientation.

THE CONSOLE

The PS5 is Sony's 5th console and it's also a 9th generation console. It's a huge console and looks like our air purifier especially the colors. Jokes, aside, this is a panda colored console and it's design looks futuristic.

The PS5 features removable faceplates. The default color of the faceplates are matte white and can be easily removed and swapped with different colored faceplates.


The front is pretty simplistic. I really like the curves. The console have a light strip at both edges of the black middle area. And it have a nicely designed air intake vents.


Here's a closer look on the front side of the console. It got a USB-A port for charging the controller, a USB-C port and Power and Eject buttons. My gripe on this console is that there are no light indicators for the power button and eject button. If it's your first time using the console, it's difficult to see these black buttons especially in the dark. This PS5 is a disc version because I love collecting physical copy of the games and I still prefer loading the game disc instead of downloading the game which takes time.


Here's the back of the console. It cot a large vents where the hot air gets out from the console.


The back have two USB-A ports, ethernet port, HDMI port and power cable port.


This is the left hand side of the console. You can see the PS5 logo on this side, it's not a sculpt or a sticker, it's a hole.


The right side is just plain white a little bit wider than the left because this is a disc version.

THE CONTROLLER

The PS5 have a new and awesome DualSense wireless controller. It's design and colors is consistent to the console.


The controller looks really good and the button, bumper and trigger buttons and analog stick placements still remains consistent to the older generation of Sony controllers.


The topside of the controller have the usual bumper and trigger buttons and a USB-C port for charging. This is a rechargeable controller with an internal battery. The battery life of this controller sucks especially if the vibration is strong, the mic and RGB light indicators are turned on. Better configure the settings of this controller first and turn off some useless features and lower the vibration strength for longer battery life.


This is the bottom part of the controller. It got a standard headphone jack and some copper plate ports for wireless charging.


The D-pad looks nice and it's transparent with directional indicators seen at the bottom. The D-pad feels nice but not that great if you prefer using D-pads on fighting games.


The face buttons are transparent with visible icons. I haven't tried if these buttons are pressure sensitive, but I feel they're not.


The bumper buttons feels nice and the trigger buttons have a new feature that can tighten depending on the game's mechanic. You'll know what I mean if you played shooter games.


These are the twin analogue sticks. I don't have any complaints using them. The middle part of the controller have a speaker grill, home button, mic button and microphone.


The controller also have a touchpad. A very nice addition first appeared on PS4's controller. It's like a laptop's touch pad and it's clickable. Located at the left and right side of the touchpad is the Share and Options button respectively. Gone is the days of having Start and Select buttons.

This controller also have gyro control, by the way.

THE USER INTERFACE

The PS5 have a user-friendly interface and looks similar to PS4's UI but this one lacks the Theme option, that sucks. By the way, you need to configure a lot of stuff before using this console for the first time. It felt tedious to me especially that I'm excited to play games on this console.

I'm only going to show the basic areas of the UI.


This is the home screen, if you're connected to the internet you'll see more information here. The home screen also shows the recently opened games and features.


This is the Game Library where you can see all the games that you have on the disc and/or in the consoles hard drive.


The Media Gallery shows all the screenshots and videos you took and record from the game. The game automatically saves a screen shot and/or video when you got an trophy in the game.

SOME THINGS TO NOTE WHEN USING THE PS5

- The PS5 have an M.2 expansion slot for storage expansion.
- You'll need a PS+ subscription if you want to play online multiplayer
- You can play offline, but you will have less features
- PS5 is backwards compatible with PS4 games
- Games still have region compatibility (you'll know what region the game is when looking at the game's cover)
- Your PS3 and PS4 trophies are still in your PS account and can still be viewed on PS5.
- You can play VR games (if you have the Sony's VR headset)
- No need to download Netflix, YouTube or any apps in the PS5 if you have a smart TV

CONCLUSION

Well that concludes my casual review of the PS5. It's a powerful and good-looking gaming console that can play games with high graphics. I really like the controller but it's battery life sucks. The user interface is clean and easy to understand and there are so many features it's almost overwhelming for a simple guy like me. The price of the console is pretty low now as of this post and there's a new smaller console but have the same power and features, PS5 slim. Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna play some games.

Cheers!

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