On paper the PlayStation Portal sounds like a great idea — it allows you to play your PS5 anywhere with a solid, stable Wi-Fi connection. Unfortunately, that theory of a perfect, lag-free experience dissolves pretty much immediately when you put its promises to the test in a real-world environment.
Even a year after my original review, I'm still having issues with the device. Framerate has improved since the device first came out, but it's still dropping frames compared to playing a game natively on the PS5. Because of DRM content restrictions, there's still no way to stream content from services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, and while a recent update adds the ability to stream games from the PlayStation Network, only around 120 games are currently supported and you're required to have an active PlayStation Plus Premium membership ($160 a year).
