This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Sony PS4 Pro

After months of hype and online word, the PS4 Pro debuted this morning. A number of outlets take already published reviews of Sony's new console, and the overall feedback is positive. Whether the PS4 Pro is a must-accept upgrade over the standard PS4, however, will depend on which games you play and how quickly you intend to upgrade from a 1080p goggle box to a 4K or 4K+HDR screen.

We've rounded upward reviews from CNET, Eurogamer, IGN, and PCMag, and they all generally agree. The PS4 Pro is a meaningful and significant comeback over the PlayStation iv, with its expanded GPU, increased CPU and memory clock rates, and significantly improved power consumption compared with the launch model from 2022. (The PS4 Pro does use more power than the PS4 Slim released earlier this twelvemonth, however).

What the PS4 Pro gets correct

The good news is this: If you lot own a 4K Boob tube, particularly ane with HDR support, you can meet big gains playing on a PS4 Pro compared with the original PS4. Digital Foundry has run multiple games through their paces and came away impressed. The video below shows Rising of the Tomb Raider running on both a PS4 Pro and the latest Nvidia Titan X.

At that place is, to be sure, nevertheless a small advantage to the PC side of things. Simply the PS4 Pro's new checkerboard rendering really does look exceptional, at least in this title, and the frame rate is every bit smooth on both platforms. That'south no hateful feat, because that the PS4 Pro is just $400, while an Nvidia Titan 10 volition run you iv figures for only the GPU. Under the correct circumstances, the PS4 Pro offers a meaning leap forward for older titles, with improved antialiasing, higher frame rates, HDR support, and college resolutions. If you like to stream games from your PS4, the Pro offers the ability to stream and share 1080p content, whereas the PS4 topped out at 720p. It too ships with a Netflix 4K client, as well as a YouTube app that's both 4K and HDR-capable. UHD Blu-ray playback (4K Blu-ray) is, of course, missing, but we've known that would be the case for quite some time.

Sony has promised that we'll see 45 games patched for PS4 Pro support past the stop of this yr, and while that's a fraction of the full games released for the PS4 to date, it's more than enough to cover the best-selling and most-played titles. If y'all already own a 4K Television receiver with HDR support, the general consensus is that the Pro is a no-brainer purchase if yous're buying your first PS4 this generation. Most reviewers likewise establish the PS4 Pro an easy upgrade to justify if you already own a PS4 with a 4K or 4K + HDR screen every bit well. It's worth noting, yet, that different reviewers seemed to perceive different levels of comeback in the games themselves — CNET ranked Infamous: Starting time Low-cal as not offer much in the way of an HDR implementation, with a toggle for higher resolution and detail, while Digital Foundry notes that its own tests show Start Light running much more smoothly. Even on HDR-enabled televisions, there'south some implication that your mileage will vary depending on which HDR TV you have.

If you lot haven't already pulled the trigger on a 4K screen or don't plan to in the immediate future, the upgrade question is more complicated. Right now, almost of the available titles don't offer big jumps in 1080p quality. Rise of the Tomb Raider and Titanfall two apparently look dramatically better thanks to supersampling support at 1080p. Other titles see pocket-size-to-no improvement. In full general, all of the games that were upgraded with PS4 Pro support look at least a little better. Be brash, however — different the Xbox One S, which does run some games at least somewhat faster compared with its predecessor, baseline performance on the PS4 appears identical to the PS4 Pro. Don't buy a Pro thinking y'all'll get improve out-of-the-box performance on any game — unless the title is specifically patched, you lot won't.

And what it doesn't

Where the console comes in for criticism is in how it communicates game improvements (or, rather, completely fails to do so). Here'southward IGN on that problem:

That's the big outcome here: fifty-fifty with the games that leverage the PS4 Pro well, the lack of consistency and clarity regarding what enhancements you are getting from game to game, and even from style to manner, shakes my confidence. Some games let you alter video settings on the fly, others don't. Some offer high frame rate options while others stick to enhanced visuals or college resolution. Where higher resolution games are concerned, it's unclear what resolution they are really rendering at and what type of upscaling they might be using. Mordor in high resolution mode supersamples on 1080p TVs for a smoother image; do other games exercise that and just not mention it? I don't know, and neither volition you, which is a real problem. Y'all tin can read articles, check patch notes, and read selection descriptions, just most of the time you just don't know what you're getting until you start playing – and sometimes not even then. Even Phone call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which is one of the first games to launch with Pro support baked in from day one, doesn't indicate the Pro benefits in-game or even on the back of the box.

As of today, Sony appears to have made no provision for games to communicate how they are improved by the PS4 Pro — you'll have to launch each championship and check its video options to detect this data. That'southward a significant discoverability issue, but it's likewise something Sony can patch at a later engagement. The visitor is walking a careful line with this launch as is; information technology wants to encourage users to upgrade (and new customers to buy in), just information technology also doesn't desire to alienate existing customers.

Because the degree of comeback is championship-specific and not easily predicted, it's difficult to forecast how much added value a current PS4 owner with a 1080p HDTV will encounter from the PS4 Pro. To some extent, this was inevitable: We're in the early stages of a new resolution rollout, and Sony is trying to straddle that gap. But that uncertainty also makes it hard to unilaterally recommend the PS4 Pro equally an firsthand upgrade.

The situation isn't as well dissimilar from the rollout of a brand-new console generation. New consoles typically aren't a bang-up value on launch day, and it's a rare launch title that's still considered i of the all-time games released on the platform 4-five years later. Given the price cuts on previous-gen hardware that typically go far with next-generation launches, one could argue that the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 striking their best values on the mean solar day the PlayStation 4 and Xbox Ane debuted. That final bit, at least, isn't truthful — Sony hasn't announced any kind of price cutting on the vanilla PS4 — simply the situation is non dissimilar.

Luckily, we'll be able to evaluate a much broader range of titles in fairly brusk society. By the stop of this twelvemonth we'll have a much more comprehensive picture of what advantages the PS4 Pro delivers at every resolution.

At present read: The best free games on the PS4