PlayStation 5 Review

The engineering is not in dispute. The custom 825 GB SSD and its dedicated decompression hardware killed the loading screen as a design constraint, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart built an entire traversal mechanic that exists only because of it. The DualSense is the best controller Sony has ever made, with adaptive triggers and voice-coil haptics that convey texture rather than buzz, and it remains strange that years of competitors have not copied it properly.

The 10.28 teraflop RDNA 2 GPU holds 4K60 in most things and Tempest audio does real spatial work through ordinary headphones. What keeps it out of the top tier is the calendar. For three years the flagship exclusives also shipped on PS4, so the machine spent its youth as an excellent way to play old games, and then the price went up rather than down. The launch shroud is enormous and impossible to place in a normal cabinet. This is an excellent console that took most of its lifespan to justify owning one.