I waited two years to get a PlayStation Portal, and now wish I’d bought one sooner

A genuine surprise

09 Jan 2026, 18:00 · TechRadar

Features By Rhys Wood published 9 January 2026

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If you’d have said two years ago that the PlayStation Portal would be one of my favorite gaming accessories of the decade, I wouldn’t have believed you. Back when the Portal launched in late 2023, I wasn’t convinced of its value. The handheld’s requirement to be tethered to your PlayStation 5 at all times just smacked of ‘who is this for?’

Now it’s 2026, and the PlayStation Portal has received a handful of vital updates. General improvements to streaming aside, the Portal can now stream games in your library - or the PlayStation Plus catalog - without needing your PS5 to be switched on. As a result, the Portal has evolved from a simple remote play device into a very capable cloud streaming machine.

So, towards the end of last year, as a couple of my erstwhile TechRadar Gaming colleagues were talking about their own positive experiences with the Portal, I caved. The device was on sale at PlayStation Direct during the Holiday period, and, feeling like there was no time like the present, I got my order in.

When it arrived a few days later, it became my go-to gaming device of the Christmas period, and beyond.

Remote played

(Image credit: Future/Rob Dwiar)

I was initially skeptical about the PlayStation Portal. I just didn’t think a remote play device that could only operate over the internet to my home console or even in the same vicinity as my PS5 had much of a use case. Certainly not compared to the Nintendo Switch 2, which, obviously, isn’t bound by such restrictions. If I wanted to play my PS5 in my house, I would simply go upstairs and boot the console up.

I still mostly feel this way for remote play specifically. It’s a ‘nice to have’ feature that means I can essentially bring my PS5 playtime into the lounge if the mood strikes me. And the quality of the connection is generally very strong - the PS5 dashboard does look a bit low-res and out of focus, but gameplay largely holds up most of the time.

However, it’s the addition of cloud streaming via PS Plus Premium that’s really changed the way I think about the PlayStation Portal. Not only does this add some much-needed value to the highest tier of the subscription service, but it means you don’t need your PS5 to be switched on in order to make use of the Portal wholesale. It's definitely my preferred way of playing titles on the device.

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