PS5 Pro Review | Trusted Reviews

Introduction

The PS5 Pro is the flagship console in Sony’s incredibly popular range, bringing a beefier GPU and some AI graphics upscaling tech to the console battle.

This nearly £700/$700 machine is the mid-cycle upgrade for the PS5, coming a year after the Slim model replaced the lumping beast of the original. It’s also the most expensive PlayStation console ever.

The PS5 Pro plays all the same games as the PS5, although developers can choose to update their titles with various Pro optimisations, ranging from improved graphical settings to more stable frame rates.

The big question is – is it worth the wallet-busting initial outlay? Or is the standard PS5 model a better buy? I’ve spent the past month throwing every game possible at it to see.

To get a deeper look at the console UI, PSVR 2 and Dualsense controller – see our in-depth PS5 review.

Price

The Sony PS5 Pro is an expensive bit of kit whichever way you look at it. It retails for £699/$699 and as a result is the priciest Playstation ever. The PS5 Slim, for comparison, starts at £389/$449 for the Digital Edition and £479/$499 for the disc version.

What makes the price more egregious is that the PS5 Pro comes without a disc drive. If you want to play discs, it’ll be another £99/$79 – bringing the console package closer to $800/£800. It’s a seriously large outlay for a home console and has me worried for the pricing structure of the PS6 when that arrives.

Design and Connectivity

• Ports on the front and back
• Only comes in white
• Visually the most appealing PS5 iteration

The PS5 Pro takes the essence of the original console and its slimmer successor and tweaks it slightly. It still fits in very well with the rest of the series, plus the myriad of accessories, including the Portal.

For me though, it’s easily the best-looking of the trio of PS5 iterations. The body has more of a matte finish, meaning dust doesn’t cling quite as much, and I am a fan of the thick black strip that runs across the middle.

If you weren’t a fan of the original PS5, not enough has changed here to warrant a huge shift in opinion. This machine stands out, whereas I’d prefer my console to have a little more subtlety and blend into my existing TV setup. Whether it’s standing up or lying flat, the PS5 is always obviously there.

The original PS5 was lambasted for its size, while the mid-cycle Slim refresh shrunk things down a little. The PS5 Pro is about as large as the first PS5, although as there’s no disc drive, it’s a little more svelte. 

Shipping the console without a disc drive is an odd choice by Sony, especially for a console that’s supposedly your flagship item and sells for a seriously high price. As with the other PS5 models, you can slap on a drive if you want – though they can still be hard to find, and this will add another £100/$100 to the price. 

If you’re the sort of person looking at a console like this, I’ll wager you’ll want the disc drive too. Not only does it allow you to play disc-based games (still the most economical way to play) it also lets you watch 4K Blu-rays. If you’re solely into digital media and streaming, then yes – you can live without the drive.

Another thing you’ll have to buy separately is a stand if you want to sit the PS5 Pro up vertically. If you prefer to have it horizontally – my preferred method – then there’s a little plastic set of legs in the box that clip in.

The PS5 Pro comes in a single white colour scheme. However, like other PS5 models, the side plates are removable and can be swapped out for different colours. Sony doesn’t sell any of these yet, and side plates for the Slim console will not fit due to the slightly different dimensions. 

Taking the four side panels off is very easy. Just pull at them with a firm grip, and they pop off. Underneath the plates, you can install your own SSD to bulk up the 2TB of internal storage. This process is very straightforward.

The PS5 Pro has ports on both the front and back. The two USB-C ports on the front are handy for charging a controller as it saves you from reaching around the back. Interestingly, one of these ports is a slower USB 2.0 standard. Around the back, there’s the HDMI 2.1 port, two USB-A ports, ethernet and the power plug.

I would have liked an extra USB-C port around the back, but the older-style USB-A ports are good for plugging in an SSD or HDD full of PS4 games without the cable visible.

In the PS5 Pro box, you get an HDMI 2.1 cable, the same white Dualsense as the other PS5 models, a power cable and a USB-C to USB-C cable for charging and connecting the controller upon first boot. There are no Pro-exclusive goodies in the box – no DualSense Edge to ramp up that Pro moniker or a nicer cable. 

Specs and Technology

• PSSR upscaling tech
• Upgraded GPU
• 2TB storage and Wi-FI 7

The reason anyone is going to buy the PS5 Pro isn’t the updated design; it’s the performance gains. This console is solely aimed at someone who wants to get the very best frame rates and graphics possible on PS5 games and has a 4K (or 8K) TV. If this isn’t you, just read our PS5 review and get that model instead.

New for PS5 Pro are a couple of unique software additions and a beefier GPU to ensure everything ticks along as it should. There’s a lot that’s still the same – this is certainly not a PS6. Aside from patches for some titles enabling the newer features, the games remain the same, and it’s still using the same AMD Zen 2 CPU.

So, what is different? At a hardware level, the PS5 Pro comes with 2GB of extra DDR5 memory and a 62% faster GPU packing 16.7 teraflops of graphical power. There’s also a 2TB SSD inside, which is more than double the 825GB SSD in the original PS5.

Having a 2TB SSD is great, especially as game installs are always getting bigger. I filled up my original PS5’s SSD with just a few games – that didn’t happen here. Plus you can pop another SSD in the free internal bay to increase it further. If you’re upgrading from a previous PS5 model and you already have an SSD full of games, you can transfer that directly across and save yourself redownloading everything.

The PS5 Pro supports Wi-Fi 7, which is a bonus for anyone who has invested in a capable router. I have been testing the Pro alongside the Wi-Fi 7 capable Orbi router from Netgear, and there is a noticeable improvement in both the download speeds and the reliability of the downloads compared to the original PS5.

These hardware upgrades power the PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) AI upscaling tech, which is the star of the system. It’s this that allows supported and updated games to run at higher frame rates and graphical settings.

If the dream was to get rid of those ‘favour performance’ or ‘favour graphics’ options in games, then the PS5 Pro is a bit of a miss. Those options very much still exist – as you’ll see in the section below – they’re just slightly different in what they can offer.

Graphics and Performance

• Optimised games look great
• Improvements in both graphical details and frame rates
• Ray tracing can be better implemented too

The PS5 Pro is the best way to play optimised PS5 games. Every title with a Pro patch either offers better frame rates, better graphical options or a combination of the two.

That’s far from the whole story though, and whether the improvements will be worth it for you depends solely on what you value. Games played on the PS5 and PS5 Slim still look great – even amazing in certain instances – and the fact the Pro exists takes nothing away from that.

Even though the PS5 Pro has been out for a few months now, there hasn’t been a standout new title built for the system. I’m eagerly anticipating titles like Ghost of Yotei and Naught Dog’s upcoming Intergalactic in the hope they’ll be built especially for PSSR and really show what this system can do.

Until those titles arrive, the PS5 Pro relies on existing games updated with support for the console. There are lots of these games available, including those from Sony’s own studios and third-party developers.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a gorgeous game on the PS5, but I have played it from start to finish again on the PS5 Pro because it just looks so good. There are two settings available here – Fidelity Pro and Performance Pro – and both are stunning. 

The Fidelity Pro mode offers up a very sharp image with ray tracing support, while Performance Pro takes the Fidelity mode from the standard PS5 version and ups the frame rate to a stable 60fps with the help of PSSR.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that both Last of Us Remastered games also look downright stunning. Naughty Dog knows how to rinse the most performance from a console, and if you’re looking for a true visual feast on the Pro, this is where to start.  

A Pro mode available in both of these games uses PSSR to hit a 4K resolution and 60fps, creating the very best way to play both of these games. There’s a noticeable upgrade in detail over the PS5 versions and no need to sacrifice frame rates.

Impressive updates aren’t just reserved for games from Sony’s stable of studios. F1 2024 has an 8K mode – if you have a supported TV – and a 4K 120Hz mode that looks unbelievable with fabulous detail and lighting across the board.

Alan Wake 2 focuses on upping the amount of detail and improving ray tracing. I don’t think the results are quite as dramatic here, but it still adds a little more shine to an already very visually impressive game.

For games that are not optimised for the Pro, the extra graphical power should offer up some improvements – though this will vary by title and isn’t as easy to spot. For PS4 games, there’s an enhanced option in the Settings menu, although again picking out true improvements here is difficult.

It’s worth noting that PS5 Pro remains very quiet during gaming. Anyone who upgraded from the PS4 to the PS4 Pro will know that the mid-cycle refresh sounded like a plane taking off during gaming.

So, the question is – is it worth it? While I appreciate the improvements, these games already look great, and the PS5 Pro simply makes them look and run a little better. There’s nothing revolutionary here, at least not yet.

If you have an eye for detail, the Pro does offer some improvements, but if you’re not fussy about resolutions or frame rates, you’ll struggle to find an obvious reason to choose this model.

Should you buy it?