The Portal: A Game-Changing but Flawed Accessory

The Steam Deck's Portal is an interesting accessory that offers a unique gaming experience, but it also has its fair share of flaws. The overall build of the device is impressive, with a sleek design that makes it comfortable to hold and use. The screen facing the user provides an immersive experience, and the portal tilts backwards for optimal viewing. However, I do wish it came with a case, as it feels more fragile than my Steam Deck.

One of the standout features of the Portal is its motorized haptic feedback system, which provides an impressive gaming experience. The smart Rumble Motors constantly adjust to provide a unique tactile sensation that immerses the user in the game. However, this feature can be distracting at times, making it feel like a generic poor-quality controller when not used effectively. I often find myself turning up the volume on my headphones to mask the sound of the motors, which is a shame as it's supposed to enhance the gaming experience.

Another issue with the Portal is its lack of Bluetooth audio support, which is frustrating for those who prefer wired headphones. The 3.5mm Jack on the back is a welcome feature, but it's tucked away in a way that makes larger plugs difficult to fit. The overall design feels like it could be built for a charging dock or other accessory, rather than being a standalone device.

The Portal's experience can feel disjointed at times, particularly when pairing with the PS5 controller and switching between the tablet and handheld modes. This is due in part to the lack of a unified interface, with different devices having separate power and pairing buttons. When trying to turn on the controller, it often says that it has lost connection with the PS5, which can be confusing and frustrating.

The worst part about the Portal is its poor battery life. It drains abysmally quickly while in standby mode, making it difficult to use as a handheld device. This is particularly concerning when compared to other gaming devices like the Nintendo DS, which has held charges for years with minimal effort. The PSP batteries, on the other hand, have all swollen and busted out of their shells over time.

I understand that the Portal may not be perfect, but it's clear that PlayStation missed the mark in many ways. One of my main concerns is that this device cannot provide a consistent experience to all users, particularly those with poor Wi-Fi connections. This is something that consoles typically do well, where you know what to expect from your gaming session.

Despite its flaws, I must admit that I love the Portal. It's an innovative accessory that offers a unique gaming experience, and I appreciate the effort that went into creating it. However, I wouldn't recommend buying it at its current price of $200, as it feels rushed and lacks polish in many areas.

I do hope that there will be a Portal 2 that addresses these issues and improves upon the first device. PlayStation may need to come out swinging with their next iteration to salvage this disappointing accessory.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthese are the links I went through to play Xbox 360 in high school when my parents had the Family TV occupied we had one good TV in the basement and it was the Family TV that my parents frequently had occupied I typically wasn't allowed to move the console or at least the Xbox specifically at this point cuz it was our nicer newer console but I had just gotten my first Xbox Live gift card and I wanted to try playing Halo 3 online for the first time at least at home so I lugged my 360 up to my baby sister's room the modem was under crib connected up the Xbox and used my 3-in GameCube portable screen in my lap to play I never stopped playing Halo 3 C I would have killed for something like the PlayStation portal all throughout my childhood it's why I loved gaming on game boys and DS system so much and dreamed of having a PSP at the time console like experiences in the palm of my hand whenever I wanted huge all the music you're hearing in this video is from our new synthwave Christmas B backing track album it features some dopee covers some really neat original tracks and it's all to get you in the Christmas spirit it's now streaming on all streaming platforms downloads available at backing track. I also wanted to let you know all of my major assets my OBS course my VHS resolve pack that is used in this video as well as my classic YouTube after effect pack are 50% off with coupon code holiday 50 atg glitch.mob my shop up there get my OBS course half off holiday 50 at checkout the PlayStation portals announcement was met with a flood of people asking who is this even for but having grown up dreaming of something like this and now being able to being in the opposite position I guess as a dad whose kid uses our nice TV all day and I can't just you know sneak out to the studio to game instead of being a a parent the portal is a perfect idea idea I love this thing most of the time it delivers exactly what I had hoped for as a baseline but there's a massive list of glaring issues and it's just plain too expensive I got to borrow a PlayStation portal from a friend for a couple weeks which wound up coinciding with my kiddo getting six so it was kind of the perfect time to catch up on my neglected PlayStation 5 using this thing it's been fun the portal has been talked to death so I'll try not to rehash what everyone has already said too much so let's start with the good stuff the things I really like about it pairing is super easy easier than any other remote play set up for PS5 though a lot of the time when I wake up from sleep it takes a very long time to get going again in this case it's CU my PS5 shut down cuz our power went out so I need to go address that but otherwise the pairing is dead simple the screen is really great honestly it's only 1080p it's only 60 HZ it's not OLED it's not even HDR but it gets stupidly bright but it's clean and clear and crisp I honestly thought this was a much higher quality screen than the specs Le on before seeing the specs just due to the clarity and the size that it displays at when you're not looking at compression artifacts it's a beautiful view sure OLED and high refresh rates might seem nice but I think it's perfectly fine for what it is the overall gaming experience is honestly great here I played everything from Spider-Man Miles Morales to dead cells to sefue to even Destiny 1 hell I even tried a little Call of Duty full Modern Warfare remastered here for a bit yes the input latency is not ideal for FPS scenarios I'm super sensitive to it and it isn't how I'd play them most of the time but I was equally impressed that it wasn't worse than it is it's got better feeling input latency than trying to play OG Cod 4 on my parents old 55in plasma TV back in the day that thing made me motion sick from the input latency and frankly those of you without TVs with game modes or without it on or whatever may not even notice the difference I haven't used them a ton due to playing around my kid or in bed and thus needing to stay quiet but I've been content with the speakers on this thing too honestly like they're not amazing but they're pretty solid the weird thing is I don't have a great Wi-Fi network set up and I'm certainly not under ideal gaming conditions here my PS5 is hooked up in my garage Studio on the opposite end as far away from my primary Wi-Fi Point as it can be though I do have a puck in here I'm using the old Google Wi-Fi Puck system and when it when it comes to our phones or our TVs on our second floor the Wi-Fi is not great my network is a mess and I constantly have issues with other devices I didn't even plug ethernet into my PlayStation 5 for this and yet outside of the first day in an occasional moment the streaming experience has been kind of rock solid far better than my prior attempts at playing on my phone I had a backbone I hated the experience I hated playing on my tiny phone screen I just hated all of it it was a waste of money for me this is pretty neat the first day I hooked this up however even the main menus were blurry and blocky and everything was compressed to hell and stuttery but since then it's run mostly fine I rarely see any compression artifacting whatsoever that's like blatantly obvious and youall know my main job is literally analyzing video quality the stuttering is kind of Hit or Miss con constantly like it's always just dropping frames every once in a while rarely is it a huge deal but it's one of those things where I'm constantly seeing a drop frame here or there throughout all of playing that can be kind of distracting but I don't think most people would honestly mind that much but otherwise the video tends to be crisp and clear like I said the screen and presentation is great when the compression is working but when it's not working it's an odd mess like the other day my wife was downloading a balers Gate 3 update on their PC their PC and the portal was completely unplayable if I were streaming something from the internet that might make sense I have gigabit fiber but steam updates do tend to tank your network without throttling but here my wife's wired PC downloading from Steam should not have any impact on my wireless streaming from my PS5 to the portal the network pads are entirely different it was it was super weird but audio was super glitchy and it was just unplayable the input latency was wild there'd be like speed up and slow down moments it was super crazy there have been other small moments where the audio just glitches out or that there's a brief bit of stuttering and input lag where I miss a web web swing in Spider-Man or just have to give up on trying dud cells for a little bit but despite my honestly horribly configured Network I've had a grand time with this thing streaming wise I was not sold on Remote Play being viable at all since like the PS VA and obviously the Wii U tablet that everyone keeps comparing to I haven't tried doing it at someone else's house yet though but this has sold me on at least playing it remotely in my house the portal appears to be using hvvc video encoding as that's what the PS5 uses for all remote play if this Reddit thread is anything to be believed it's limited to just 7 megabits per second encoding but as standard Remote Play averages around 15 and I personally don't have much compression artifacting when I'm playing so I'm not sure that that's accurate uh but no one really knows yet and I can't inspect it on the device device itself there's a lot of good to be said here and honestly if this thing was like $100 I'd buy it without question the backbones are that much $50 I'd be grab grabbing it at some point too but 200 it's just too much for the limitations why can't we stream any media apps why can't it directly stream PS Now games why no Bluetooth audio why no web browser or ability to sign into public Wi-Fi why no PSP or Ps spe a game support just as a throwback to reward players there's just no end of missed opportunities here it's understandable that people asked who is this for because PlayStation has limited their potential buyer pull here for the portal by leaving out so much basic functionality that would make it more usable to just about everyone rather than some super limited group of homebound kids and dads it's nice to see the r/ PlayStation portal subreddit full of other holiday dads enjoying their portal like me too that that's been kind of nice but it could be a lot more people one big limitation that I really feel missed the Mark here is the lack of support for PlayStation 4 at all you can only use this with the PlayStation 5 even though both Generations have very similar Remote Play configurations redditors have theorized that it's because the PlayStation portal is configured only to decode that hvc video stream and the PS4 uses h264 for remote play but I don't think the hardware would only be limited to HC acceleration like that's usually not a thing it would also have h264 support so I'm not sure that I believe that that's the reason these are limitations that are honestly insane of PlayStation to not have fulfilled but my real issues with this thing are all physical the whole thing is just built super weird to me like think about how you hold a controller hold it in your hands with the portal the screen is on the face of the controller but the curve of the controller handles hasn't changed so you hold if you hold the controller like normal the the screen is basically facing the ceiling not not you so then you have to awkwardly tweak your wrists towards you to see the screen it's weird it feels way worse than other handhelds because of the curve of the handles kind of driving your hand the opposite direction which given this isn't an exact dual sense controller split in half it does have smaller joysticks and stuff like that it could have been fixed without needing to do crazy design adjustments I would think the screen also sits too low on the controller I want it kind of to be in the middle to be more in line with the buttons and sticks for me but that's just me size-wise I don't have much complaint people keep saying it's too big but it's like the same overall kind of footprint or silhouette as my steam deck and I don't really consider that a problem I just wish they shipped it with a case or sleeve or something like with the steam Deck The Curve means that it's comfortable to hold it like this and the screen is facing you the the portal tilts it backwards I don't know but yeah I do wish it shipped with a case it feels more fragile than my steam deck but then there's also polish you can hear the vibration Motors and the smart Rumble Motors or whatever constantly adjusting for your smart triggers which should never be heard in the first place but you can constantly hear them and it's distracting like it feels like a generic poor quality controller if I don't have the volume loud enough to mask it so I I don't get it some moments in dead cells and swinging around and Spider-Man just have them constantly just adjusting it's it's it's weird the overall build is interesting obviously the lack of Bluetooth audio support is frustrating but as a wired headphones guy I'm glad the 3.5 millimeter Jack is on the back here although bigger plugs won't fit super easily because the way they kind of tucked it in don't know why they did that the whole thing just looks like it could be built for a charging dock or something which is kind of neat but eh but the experience is a tad I guess disjointed it's clearly a PS5 controller paired with a tablet you only control the portal itself from the tablet with its own power and pairing buttons and then the controls are only accessible from the touchcreen for the the actual portal then you you you boot the tablet with its own power button and then you have to press the PS button to turn on the controller and pair it and when it says it's lost connection with the PS5 which it does every time I turn this thing on you cannot control that menu with the controller which is always confusing every time I turn it on I go to you know press the button on it you have to use the touchcreen it's like they're wholly separate devices aside from the fact that the touchpad is being emulated by hotspots on the tablet itself which holy cow is the worst thing about the portal it just flat out doesn't work most of the time which is a huge problem in some games this can be fixed in software updates and Imo needs to be their top priority here but it's really bad real bad the second worst thing is the battery life it's abysmal for raw playtime it's probably fine but it drains absurdly quick while in standby mode with no real off mode available meaning if you turn it off to stop playing and you come back later it's going to lose way more charge just overall battery just kind of sitting there than it probably did while you were playing I don't know how they thought this was except able it needed more battery but it's not a useful handheld if it can't manage standby power well and has poor battery life and this thing has both of those issues this is one of my big issues with the steam deck and something that Nintendo actually kind of nails with all of their handhelds My Game Boy Advance SP and my Nintendo DS both hold charges for years while off Meanwhile my PSP batteries have all swollen and busted out of their shells ouch I know it's really popular to dunk on the portal right now and anyone I see speak positively about it has been Mass shunned but I love this thing but I would not buy it for $200 and I think PlayStation missed the mark in many ways for getting better adoption for it but ultimately it's the console accessory that can't at all provide a consistent experience to all users in a way that consoles typically do and that doesn't really make sense to most people you buy a PlayStation you're supposed to get the same performance and whatever as other PlayStation users you can't guarantee that with a Wi-Fi based device most households Wi-Fi suck and this kind of device isn't going to play nicely with that that's going to reveal that fact but it's the near perfect idea for what I need in order to keep gaming when gaming can't be my primary focus I just hope that there's a portal 2 that does everything better but I'm not sure there will be PlayStation needed to come out swinging here and they may have well just shot themselves in the foot it seems rushed as it does seem like it was designed with bigger aspirations in mind see the airplane mode included on it and had to be limited before launch PlayStation rarely seems to miss IMO but this was a for sure I don't know what happened but I'll be grabbing this the second I find one for like 50% off if you enjoyed this review be sure to go check out my lost saves Channel where I've got a Lial musings gameplay commentary series if you like watching gaming videos I've got videos on preserving your game cartridges and your old saves all sorts of good stuff over on Lost saves and remember to Be Kind Rewindthese are the links I went through to play Xbox 360 in high school when my parents had the Family TV occupied we had one good TV in the basement and it was the Family TV that my parents frequently had occupied I typically wasn't allowed to move the console or at least the Xbox specifically at this point cuz it was our nicer newer console but I had just gotten my first Xbox Live gift card and I wanted to try playing Halo 3 online for the first time at least at home so I lugged my 360 up to my baby sister's room the modem was under crib connected up the Xbox and used my 3-in GameCube portable screen in my lap to play I never stopped playing Halo 3 C I would have killed for something like the PlayStation portal all throughout my childhood it's why I loved gaming on game boys and DS system so much and dreamed of having a PSP at the time console like experiences in the palm of my hand whenever I wanted huge all the music you're hearing in this video is from our new synthwave Christmas B backing track album it features some dopee covers some really neat original tracks and it's all to get you in the Christmas spirit it's now streaming on all streaming platforms downloads available at backing track. I also wanted to let you know all of my major assets my OBS course my VHS resolve pack that is used in this video as well as my classic YouTube after effect pack are 50% off with coupon code holiday 50 atg glitch.mob my shop up there get my OBS course half off holiday 50 at checkout the PlayStation portals announcement was met with a flood of people asking who is this even for but having grown up dreaming of something like this and now being able to being in the opposite position I guess as a dad whose kid uses our nice TV all day and I can't just you know sneak out to the studio to game instead of being a a parent the portal is a perfect idea idea I love this thing most of the time it delivers exactly what I had hoped for as a baseline but there's a massive list of glaring issues and it's just plain too expensive I got to borrow a PlayStation portal from a friend for a couple weeks which wound up coinciding with my kiddo getting six so it was kind of the perfect time to catch up on my neglected PlayStation 5 using this thing it's been fun the portal has been talked to death so I'll try not to rehash what everyone has already said too much so let's start with the good stuff the things I really like about it pairing is super easy easier than any other remote play set up for PS5 though a lot of the time when I wake up from sleep it takes a very long time to get going again in this case it's CU my PS5 shut down cuz our power went out so I need to go address that but otherwise the pairing is dead simple the screen is really great honestly it's only 1080p it's only 60 HZ it's not OLED it's not even HDR but it gets stupidly bright but it's clean and clear and crisp I honestly thought this was a much higher quality screen than the specs Le on before seeing the specs just due to the clarity and the size that it displays at when you're not looking at compression artifacts it's a beautiful view sure OLED and high refresh rates might seem nice but I think it's perfectly fine for what it is the overall gaming experience is honestly great here I played everything from Spider-Man Miles Morales to dead cells to sefue to even Destiny 1 hell I even tried a little Call of Duty full Modern Warfare remastered here for a bit yes the input latency is not ideal for FPS scenarios I'm super sensitive to it and it isn't how I'd play them most of the time but I was equally impressed that it wasn't worse than it is it's got better feeling input latency than trying to play OG Cod 4 on my parents old 55in plasma TV back in the day that thing made me motion sick from the input latency and frankly those of you without TVs with game modes or without it on or whatever may not even notice the difference I haven't used them a ton due to playing around my kid or in bed and thus needing to stay quiet but I've been content with the speakers on this thing too honestly like they're not amazing but they're pretty solid the weird thing is I don't have a great Wi-Fi network set up and I'm certainly not under ideal gaming conditions here my PS5 is hooked up in my garage Studio on the opposite end as far away from my primary Wi-Fi Point as it can be though I do have a puck in here I'm using the old Google Wi-Fi Puck system and when it when it comes to our phones or our TVs on our second floor the Wi-Fi is not great my network is a mess and I constantly have issues with other devices I didn't even plug ethernet into my PlayStation 5 for this and yet outside of the first day in an occasional moment the streaming experience has been kind of rock solid far better than my prior attempts at playing on my phone I had a backbone I hated the experience I hated playing on my tiny phone screen I just hated all of it it was a waste of money for me this is pretty neat the first day I hooked this up however even the main menus were blurry and blocky and everything was compressed to hell and stuttery but since then it's run mostly fine I rarely see any compression artifacting whatsoever that's like blatantly obvious and youall know my main job is literally analyzing video quality the stuttering is kind of Hit or Miss con constantly like it's always just dropping frames every once in a while rarely is it a huge deal but it's one of those things where I'm constantly seeing a drop frame here or there throughout all of playing that can be kind of distracting but I don't think most people would honestly mind that much but otherwise the video tends to be crisp and clear like I said the screen and presentation is great when the compression is working but when it's not working it's an odd mess like the other day my wife was downloading a balers Gate 3 update on their PC their PC and the portal was completely unplayable if I were streaming something from the internet that might make sense I have gigabit fiber but steam updates do tend to tank your network without throttling but here my wife's wired PC downloading from Steam should not have any impact on my wireless streaming from my PS5 to the portal the network pads are entirely different it was it was super weird but audio was super glitchy and it was just unplayable the input latency was wild there'd be like speed up and slow down moments it was super crazy there have been other small moments where the audio just glitches out or that there's a brief bit of stuttering and input lag where I miss a web web swing in Spider-Man or just have to give up on trying dud cells for a little bit but despite my honestly horribly configured Network I've had a grand time with this thing streaming wise I was not sold on Remote Play being viable at all since like the PS VA and obviously the Wii U tablet that everyone keeps comparing to I haven't tried doing it at someone else's house yet though but this has sold me on at least playing it remotely in my house the portal appears to be using hvvc video encoding as that's what the PS5 uses for all remote play if this Reddit thread is anything to be believed it's limited to just 7 megabits per second encoding but as standard Remote Play averages around 15 and I personally don't have much compression artifacting when I'm playing so I'm not sure that that's accurate uh but no one really knows yet and I can't inspect it on the device device itself there's a lot of good to be said here and honestly if this thing was like $100 I'd buy it without question the backbones are that much $50 I'd be grab grabbing it at some point too but 200 it's just too much for the limitations why can't we stream any media apps why can't it directly stream PS Now games why no Bluetooth audio why no web browser or ability to sign into public Wi-Fi why no PSP or Ps spe a game support just as a throwback to reward players there's just no end of missed opportunities here it's understandable that people asked who is this for because PlayStation has limited their potential buyer pull here for the portal by leaving out so much basic functionality that would make it more usable to just about everyone rather than some super limited group of homebound kids and dads it's nice to see the r/ PlayStation portal subreddit full of other holiday dads enjoying their portal like me too that that's been kind of nice but it could be a lot more people one big limitation that I really feel missed the Mark here is the lack of support for PlayStation 4 at all you can only use this with the PlayStation 5 even though both Generations have very similar Remote Play configurations redditors have theorized that it's because the PlayStation portal is configured only to decode that hvc video stream and the PS4 uses h264 for remote play but I don't think the hardware would only be limited to HC acceleration like that's usually not a thing it would also have h264 support so I'm not sure that I believe that that's the reason these are limitations that are honestly insane of PlayStation to not have fulfilled but my real issues with this thing are all physical the whole thing is just built super weird to me like think about how you hold a controller hold it in your hands with the portal the screen is on the face of the controller but the curve of the controller handles hasn't changed so you hold if you hold the controller like normal the the screen is basically facing the ceiling not not you so then you have to awkwardly tweak your wrists towards you to see the screen it's weird it feels way worse than other handhelds because of the curve of the handles kind of driving your hand the opposite direction which given this isn't an exact dual sense controller split in half it does have smaller joysticks and stuff like that it could have been fixed without needing to do crazy design adjustments I would think the screen also sits too low on the controller I want it kind of to be in the middle to be more in line with the buttons and sticks for me but that's just me size-wise I don't have much complaint people keep saying it's too big but it's like the same overall kind of footprint or silhouette as my steam deck and I don't really consider that a problem I just wish they shipped it with a case or sleeve or something like with the steam Deck The Curve means that it's comfortable to hold it like this and the screen is facing you the the portal tilts it backwards I don't know but yeah I do wish it shipped with a case it feels more fragile than my steam deck but then there's also polish you can hear the vibration Motors and the smart Rumble Motors or whatever constantly adjusting for your smart triggers which should never be heard in the first place but you can constantly hear them and it's distracting like it feels like a generic poor quality controller if I don't have the volume loud enough to mask it so I I don't get it some moments in dead cells and swinging around and Spider-Man just have them constantly just adjusting it's it's it's weird the overall build is interesting obviously the lack of Bluetooth audio support is frustrating but as a wired headphones guy I'm glad the 3.5 millimeter Jack is on the back here although bigger plugs won't fit super easily because the way they kind of tucked it in don't know why they did that the whole thing just looks like it could be built for a charging dock or something which is kind of neat but eh but the experience is a tad I guess disjointed it's clearly a PS5 controller paired with a tablet you only control the portal itself from the tablet with its own power and pairing buttons and then the controls are only accessible from the touchcreen for the the actual portal then you you you boot the tablet with its own power button and then you have to press the PS button to turn on the controller and pair it and when it says it's lost connection with the PS5 which it does every time I turn this thing on you cannot control that menu with the controller which is always confusing every time I turn it on I go to you know press the button on it you have to use the touchcreen it's like they're wholly separate devices aside from the fact that the touchpad is being emulated by hotspots on the tablet itself which holy cow is the worst thing about the portal it just flat out doesn't work most of the time which is a huge problem in some games this can be fixed in software updates and Imo needs to be their top priority here but it's really bad real bad the second worst thing is the battery life it's abysmal for raw playtime it's probably fine but it drains absurdly quick while in standby mode with no real off mode available meaning if you turn it off to stop playing and you come back later it's going to lose way more charge just overall battery just kind of sitting there than it probably did while you were playing I don't know how they thought this was except able it needed more battery but it's not a useful handheld if it can't manage standby power well and has poor battery life and this thing has both of those issues this is one of my big issues with the steam deck and something that Nintendo actually kind of nails with all of their handhelds My Game Boy Advance SP and my Nintendo DS both hold charges for years while off Meanwhile my PSP batteries have all swollen and busted out of their shells ouch I know it's really popular to dunk on the portal right now and anyone I see speak positively about it has been Mass shunned but I love this thing but I would not buy it for $200 and I think PlayStation missed the mark in many ways for getting better adoption for it but ultimately it's the console accessory that can't at all provide a consistent experience to all users in a way that consoles typically do and that doesn't really make sense to most people you buy a PlayStation you're supposed to get the same performance and whatever as other PlayStation users you can't guarantee that with a Wi-Fi based device most households Wi-Fi suck and this kind of device isn't going to play nicely with that that's going to reveal that fact but it's the near perfect idea for what I need in order to keep gaming when gaming can't be my primary focus I just hope that there's a portal 2 that does everything better but I'm not sure there will be PlayStation needed to come out swinging here and they may have well just shot themselves in the foot it seems rushed as it does seem like it was designed with bigger aspirations in mind see the airplane mode included on it and had to be limited before launch PlayStation rarely seems to miss IMO but this was a for sure I don't know what happened but I'll be grabbing this the second I find one for like 50% off if you enjoyed this review be sure to go check out my lost saves Channel where I've got a Lial musings gameplay commentary series if you like watching gaming videos I've got videos on preserving your game cartridges and your old saves all sorts of good stuff over on Lost saves and remember to Be Kind Rewind\n"