Why the new $1200 PlayStation might be worth it

Four years after the introduction of the PlayStation 5, there aren’t many people loudly complaining that the system isn’t powerful enough. Yet the state of high-end, high-budget video games has progressed, with the latest PC hardware producing visuals beyond what the standard PS5 is capable of. And so, Sony is releasing a PlayStation 5 Pro.

At $1200, the system is both wildly expensive for a game console in 2024 (it’s more than a $500 upsell on the standard PS5) and competitively priced against the kind of PC you’d need to build to achieve similar results. Is this a required or expected upgrade for current PS5 owners? Absolutely not. But owners of 4K TVs who like their games running at the highest possible frame rates will see some incredible improvements.

Though the regular PS5 is capable of running games at 4K and 60 frames per second or higher, most current big-budget games are too graphically complex to actually achieve that. Many offer players a choice: run the game in a “fidelity mode” to prioritise graphics but at a less-smooth 30 frames per second, or run in a “performance mode” that significantly cuts the resolution and advanced effects to achieve a better-feeling 60. In my pre-release testing of the PS5 Pro, its most attractive selling point is its potential to offer the best of both worlds.

This is something you will have heard before, with every new system since the mid-2010s promising to remove compromises before games gradually became more demanding over time. So, right now, can the PS5 Pro actually deliver performance-mode smoothness at fidelity-mode visual quality? The short answer is yes. If you’re a stickler for 60 frames per second, you will get sharper, more detailed games on this machine. But the long answer gets complicated.

Under the hood

For starters, it doesn’t take much calculating to realise that going from 30 to 60 frames per second with the same graphical fidelity would require at least a two-times increase in graphical power, which the PS5 Pro does not have. Sony says it’s more like a 45 per cent increase, thanks to a beefed-up CPU and GPU, plus more and higher speed memory. But that’s not the only thing the Pro has going on.

Ray tracing is a big deal in high-end PC gaming, simulating very complex movement and refraction of light for shadows, reflections and materials that look more realistic. It also takes a lot of power to pull off, meaning that on a console, you generally only get it in the fidelity modes. But the PS5 Pro has improved ray tracing tech that can cast the light up to three times faster, so it’s less of a burden.

Game console tech basics

• Resolution: the number of individual pixels drawn. Modern games can be run at essentially any resolution and then upscaled to match the TV’s native resolution (1080p or 4K).
• Framerate: The number of times an entire image can be drawn each second. Usually 30 or 60, to match the TV standard refresh rate of 60Hz. New TVs with 120Hz can handle a wider range.
• Ray tracing: A technique that models how light behaves. It can provide a more realistic image compared to older lighting methods, but requires a lot more processing power.

And vitally, the PS5 Pro supports Sony’s own brand of AI super-sampling, which is another technology that has taken off on PC with Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX. Called PSSR here (for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution), the technology has games run at a lower resolution to allow higher frame rates and heavy graphical effects, then has AI clean up and sharpen the image, inferring detail to create something that approximates native 4K. It’s not dissimilar to how a TV might upscale an HD Blu-ray to 4K, except it has to happen much faster for games.

The result, in games that have been built or updated to support PS5 Pro, is truly impressive: solid 60-frames-per-second performance with none of the usual compromises. No overall blurry pictures, no artefacts that look like fuzzy halos around characters, no shimmering edges or weird cross-hatching. And best of all, no going back and forth between modes to evaluate the trade-offs. In all the games I put a good amount of time into (around 10), none of the performance modes made me feel like I was missing out. In many of them, that means I was playing in 60 frames per second, where I would have compromised and gone with the 30 frames fidelity mode on PS5.

The PS5 version of The Last of Us Part II introduced new graphical features for its 30-frames-per-second fidelity mode, and those features remain for the 60-frames-per-second PS5 Pro mode.

In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s Pro-specific performance mode, you can see the pores on characters’ faces and distant details of the open world, which was previously only possible in 30 frames per second. The overall blurry presentation of the previous performance modes is completely gone.

In Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the Pro performance mode has full ray-tracing and a high-resolution presentation that matches the old fidelity mode exactly, just at double the frame rate. Other Sony-published games are similar; I played the latest versions of both The Last of Us games and both Horizon games on PS5 (fidelity mode) and PS5 Pro (performance mode), and there’s simply no visual indication of AI trickery behind the scenes. It looks like the exact same game, performing at double the frame rate. An obvious limitation here, though, is that existing games need to be specifically upgraded to take full advantage. The PS5 Pro can mildly help struggling frame rates and dynamic resolutions of non-optimised PS5 games (and can improve old PS4 games with a bit of upscaling), but it can’t fix a blurry performance mode without a Pro patch.

Different trade-offs

But you’re not buying a console exclusively to play smoother versions of games you’ve already played. Going forward, when a developer implements AI super-sampling, ray tracing and high frame rate modes for their PC builds, they’ll be able to bring more of that across to PlayStation 5 Pro. And although this all means much cleaner visuals at 60 frames per second, the AI can actually introduce different artefacts of its own if you look closely.

Dense and intricate objects like hair or foliage tend to appear jagged or pixelated in PS5 performance modes, whereas they’re sharper and more detailed on Pro, but you might notice them become blurry as they move. Certain elements, like water effects or distant crowd detail, can also take a split second to resolve properly when they’re revealed, for example, if you rotate the camera so that a pond appears behind a foreground building. These visual imperfections are not present on the standard PS5, but to be clear, they’re significantly less distracting than the ones that are. I bring them up to reinforce that what you’re getting here is a superior set of trade-offs rather than no trade-offs at all.

And developers being developers, there’s no way to stop new graphical features and techniques arriving that use up all the extra processing headroom, rather than simply playing the standard PS5 games at a higher spec. I don’t have access to the Pro build of Gran Turismo 7, but the developers are including four distinct graphics modes: one with full ray-tracing that will even reflect cars in other cars during races, one that prioritises frame rates, one that’s 4K 120Hz, and one that will upscale to a full 8K on compatible televisions.

When I installed Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a brand-new game that’s optimised for Pro, I was immediately asked to choose between a performance mode at 60 and a fidelity mode at 30. And there are still differences in graphics between the modes (I noticed the characters’ hair and clothes move more realistically in fidelity mode, foliage is denser, and distant detail is sharper), so you still can’t technically have it all, even if Dragon Age’s Pro performance is a significant leap over that of the standard PS5. Sony’s Spider-man games on Pro also offer a 30 frames mode, with experimental new ray-tracing features, though I couldn’t tell much difference.

Overall, when playing big-budget, high-end games on a 4K TV, I think I’m safe to say the upgrade from PS5 to PS5 Pro is not essential, but it is significant. Early adopters who play a lot of these games may feel the itch to upgrade after four years with the base PS5, and I think they’ll be satisfied here. Newcomers to the platform could also be sold on paying more in the name of future-proofing.

It is worth noting that although the PS5 Pro has increased the size of the included storage drive to 2TB, it has ditched the disc drive entirely. If you want to play games (or watch movies) from discs, you’ll have to buy an optional drive for around $160 once they’re back in stock. A vertical stand to prop the console up is also sold separately for $50, meaning people who want both can effectively price the PS5 Pro at $1410.

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