Review: Sony PlayStation 5 Pro

I remember the first time I watched a tutorial on Blender, a 3D computer graphics software, explaining how metal surfaces have colored reflections, while nonmetal surfaces don’t. It was a fascinating art lesson and something I don’t think I ever would’ve noticed if no one had pointed it out. I felt excited to learn about such a cool, if inconsequential detail about how our world looks. While testing out Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro, I experienced that same feeling over and over again.

Generally, video game graphics have reached the coveted point of “good enough.” When Horizon Zero Dawn came out in 2017—years before the PS5 would come out—no one thought its visuals were lacking. Far from it. Yet, when Sony released a remaster of this less-than-a-decade-old game that, arguably, no one asked for, it was … actually pretty good.

The visual comparisons between the two versions of the game highlight what “better graphics” means in the modern era. Rather than focusing on things like adding more pixels or polygons, the current flex comes from either adding more stuff to the game world or getting more frames with the visuals you have. And the PS5 Pro offers a lot more room for both. Whether that makes it worth the $700 asking price is more subjective.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

Better Graphics

In most PS5 games, adjusting graphics boils down to one of two simple options: Fidelity (sometimes called Quality) mode versus Performance mode. The former is focused on getting the best possible picture quality, while the latter prioritizes more frames per second and thus a smoother gameplay experience. The pitch for Sony's latest console is that, with more horsepower under the hood and fancy new AI and ray-tracing features, you won’t have to choose between one or the other.

The reality is more complicated. Much like gases expanding to fill the volume of their containers, video games tend to expand to fill the amount of processing power available to them. This is why, despite some games being capable of running in 4K at 60 frames per second at least as far back as the PS4 Pro, it’s still not the default today. Every console is capable of running Stardew Valley in 4K at 60 fps. But it’s a lot harder to render a photorealistic, foliage-covered, postapocalyptic sandbox.

Developers have to make choices about what to include and what to cut when designing their virtual worlds. Is it important to have more trees and bushes? Or should more people be walking around? What should a player see if they look in the mirror? These kinds of things might seem unimportant until you walk into a bustling space metropolis that feels like a ghost town.

Even More Immersive

While testing the PS5 Pro, many of the games I played felt more lively and full. Not because there were more pixels necessarily, but because developers weren’t budgeting their effects so tightly. In Spider-Man 2, for example, switching from Performance to Fidelity mode on the original PS5 would add more cars on the roads, more pedestrians on the sidewalk, and more trees and bushes strewn about. On the PS5 Pro, however, there were more of all of these things in Performance mode than the regular PS5 had in Fidelity mode.

The result is that New York City felt like New York City, even at 60 fps. Here, for example, are four screenshots from the same street corner of Performance and Fidelity modes on both consoles. Now tell me, which of these feels more like you’re in New York?

Alan Wake II was an even more striking contrast. While the PC version of the game supports ray tracing, the PS5 version does not. Until now. On the PS5 Pro, the Performance mode in this game will prioritize hitting 60 fps, but switch over to Quality and the ray tracing powers activate. It’s hard to overstate how valuable ray-tracing can be in a game that relies so heavily on lighting and reflections. Just walking around the town of Bright Falls, I noticed reflections in the window of the Oh Deer Diner or the wide puddles littering the streets that weren’t there on the original PS5 (or Performance mode).

People’s faces even looked more realistic, even though they were the same models. This is, at least in part, due to how light is cast across the minor variations in a person’s face. To oversimplify, the natural creases and folds in human faces cast subtle shadows you might not notice until they’re gone. (It's why non-playable characters in Starfield have eyes that look like that.)

Non-ray-traced engines use a technique called ambient occlusion to help fill in some of those gaps, but it's not a perfect solution. Ray tracing, on the other hand, accurately calculates how light would bounce off of a model's eyes, and renders shadows more naturally.

It might be more appropriate to call the higher-power (and lower-framerate) setting in these games “Verisimilitude mode.” What I found developers choosing to add had less to do with increasing resolution or sharpening the image. Instead, they used the toolkit to sell the illusion of immersion better. They made New York seem more bustling, or made Bright Falls seem more sinister. And that’s more valuable than just “more pixels.”

Clarity in Motion

Sony might be pitching the PS5 Pro as the machine that doesn’t force you to choose between better graphics or higher frame rates, but in my experience, higher quality modes still ran closer to 30 fps than 60 fps. Switching to Performance modes would result in an almost immediate improvement to my game’s motion (and, incidentally, my motion sickness).

That’s not to say the promise is unfulfilled. Performance mode in all the games I tested was still higher quality than any Quality mode on the original PS5. I spent a good chunk of my first weekend with both consoles hooked up to my TV, comparing the same spots in the same games across four quality/device combinations. The best compliment I can pay to the PS5 Pro is that I never had a hard time telling which screenshots came from the new console.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

Sony has made a big deal out of how its new PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaling technique will help with both image quality and frame rate, because games can render a lower-resolution image without sacrificing detail. My nerd brain hears this and assumes it means I’ll see more artifacts and junk in exchange for smoother frame rates, but to my surprise, it was almost entirely invisible. (It's similar to Nvidia’s DLSS technology.)

That clear advantage made me feel more comfortable switching my games to Performance mode. Normally, I’m a quality fiend. I mean, I opened this review by talking about the hue of specular reflections in metallic surfaces; I’m the kind of person who wants to see games in the best visual quality I can get. But it can also be disorienting to swing through the skyline of New York as Spidey on 30 fps.

On the PS5 Pro, I didn’t have to settle. I could get that super-smooth motion without making NYC look like it has the same population as Bright Falls. I felt like I could pick which mode suited each game best—I still tended to prefer ray-tracing in Alan Wake II—rather than feeling myself constrained against the hardware’s limitations.

I think that highlights why mid-cycle console refreshes matter at all. In some sense, all hardware limitations are an illusion. Nintendo’s Tears of the Kingdom won award after award while running on hardware that was outdated when it first launched in 2017. But consoles provide an element of stasis in a constantly evolving hardware landscape. They give developers a baseline they can reliably target. The only problem with this approach is that other platforms can keep moving forward as consoles age. To the point, Alan Wake II supported ray-tracing on PC from launch. Mid-cycle refreshes give consoles a chance to catch up without breaking compatibility or risking the loss of developer interest.

From that perspective, the PS5 Pro demonstrates its value—and why Sony thinks it can charge $700 for it. Nintendo is (we hope, we pray) expected to announce the successor to the Switch soon, but it’s incredibly unlikely that it will be more powerful than any current-gen console, refresh or not. Microsoft hasn’t even bothered with a proper mid-cycle refresh.

The PS5 family.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

That means the PS5 Pro is the most powerful gaming hardware you can put in your living room (designed to be there, anyway). There’s nothing you can buy that renders more realistic, vivid, or fully-lived-in game worlds than the PS5 Pro. You also get two terabytes of storage for all your games, but it's a shame Sony doesn't give you the “pro” DualSense Edge controller to match the PS5 Pro experience. Instead, you get the same original DualSense controller.

Does that mean you need to upgrade if you already have a PS5? Probably not. Especially if you have a nice collection of physical games, because the PS5 Pro doesn't have a disc drive. (You can add one later, but it's an extra $80 and frequently sold out.) If you’re happy with your games where they’re at, you’ll probably continue to be happy for the rest of this console generation. But if you’re planning to buy into the ecosystem for the first time now—or if you’re just chasing the best visual quality, like me—that extra $200 gets you a lot more than just a few extra pixels.