PlayStation 5 Console (PS5)

. The PS5 arrived fairly quickly and was in good shape upon arrival.Now, regarding the console itself. The PS5 has a ‘unique’ design and is easily the biggest video game console I’ve ever seen. Due to its sheer size, I’ve had to place it horizontally within my media center where it’s a bit difficult to access the disc drive.The console came with a short HDMI 2.1 cable (capable of supporting 120fps if both your TV and the game you’re playing support it too) and a generously sized USB cable for plugging in the controller or charging it. The game “Astro’s Playroom” comes preinstalled and is an enjoyable, albeit short, game which you can use to familiarize yourself with the controller and console.The console is advertised as having 825GB of storage, but only 667GB are usable so I’d recommend buying either an external HDD or a compatible nvme SSD for extra storage. PS5 games load extraordinarily fast and PS4 games enjoy faster loading times as well. Even XCOM2, which barely chugged along the PS4, runs smooth as butter. That said, install times are still rather long and it takes a while to transfer games to/from my HDD and SSD.Despite claiming 8k on the box, I’m not aware of any games that are capable of natively supporting it. While the console does support 4k resolution and 120fps, you’ll need to find games that do so too. While some games will run at 4k/60fps, others will have resolution vs. performance modes that’ll sacrifice either resolution or framerate to ensure the game runs well.The DualSense controller is appealing to the eye, has an ergonomic design, and the built-in haptic feedback is very pleasing to experience whenever a game supports it. My only complaint is that the battery life is somewhat poor and seems to charge slowly whenever plugged into something that’s not a PS5. As such, I’d recommend charging the controller while playing a game or while the PS5 is in rest mode.The PS5’s Wi-Fi adapter is an improvement over the PS4’s. It supports both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. I’ve noticed my downloads running faster on the PS5 than the PS4 while on the same network.The PS5’s backwards compatibility with PS4 games seems to work pretty well. Most games (especially ones with PS4 Pro patches) run extremely well and you can play them with a PS4 controller if you’d like. The only downside is that installing PS4 games seems to add to the PS5’s “other” storage space. All games now have an install progress bar, and you can now separately delete DLC from games.As far as problems go, I’ve found that the PS5’s UI leaves something to be desired and I’ve occasionally run into small software problems, usually whenever installing, moving, or deleting games. Additionally, when I plugged in my external HDD for the first time, half of its game library was seemingly deleted. I now suspect that it’s due to most of the games not being fully installed, something that I’ve now remedied on the PS5 and have not experienced again.Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with my purchase so far and find it to be a worthwhile upgrade to my aging PS4. If you own physical PS4 games or prefer physical game copies in general, buy the PS5 disc edition. If you go all digital, get the cheaper digital edition. Aside from the presence (or lack thereof) of an optical drive, I’m not aware of any difference between them.