when it was first announced in SeptemberTHE PlayStation 5 Pro (out Nov. 7) left a lot of people scratching their heads. Modern consumers are no strangers to frequent hardware updates throughout the life cycle of the technology they buy – Apple taught people a long time ago that any iPhone model you own will be immediately followed by an upgrade “S” or “Pro”.

gamesit is no different. From the Game Boygamers longed for incremental updates to the same product: a smaller frame, a color screen, backlighting – all just to play the exact same games.

But as refresh cycles became the norm, so did the general acceptance of getting less for more. As laptops moved from hard drives to internal storage, people found they were paying the same (sometimes more) for the same product with fewer hardware features. Then less ports. But the promise came with more efficient software and upgraded features.

The PlayStation 5 Pros don’t bother with any of that. It’s an exercise in giving less for more, and what it does offer will only appeal to a very select group of people. It also costs $700 – $200 or more than the existing one PS5 models.

What’s new on PS5 Pro?

On the outside, the PS5 Pro looks very similar to the original bulky PlayStation 5 released in 2020, but with a shark fin-like stripe down the middle that resembles the modular case of last year’s PS5 “Slim”, the first hardware refresh of Sony’s console . While the Slim (an unofficial name) is simply a smaller version of the OG PS5 with the same capabilities, the Pro has upgraded hardware that affects its performance.

Among the key changes is an improved GPU that, teraflops and technical jargon aside, makes the console’s computing speed much faster (45% according to Sony’s estimates). What exactly does this do? It means games render faster, making them run smoother, textures appearing less noticeable, and moment-to-moment gameplay less jarring when there’s a lot going on at once.

There is also “advanced” ray tracing, a buzzword of recent years in the industry. Ray tracing is basically a tool that allows for natural lighting in the game world, with realistic reflections on surfaces like glass and water and strong refraction. It’s something that a lot of people don’t really notice, especially when games aren’t running at higher resolutions, but it’s what puts a lot of the wow factor into today’s most beautiful releases.

Finally, there’s AI (of course). In this case, it comes in the form of “AI-driven upscaling,” a feature officially titled PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). It’s a mouthful of a name, but it has a big impact on the PS5 Pro’s overall appeal, allowing games to conserve processing power by being rendered at a lower resolution, then scaled up using AI to look better. In short, it allows games that used to look good but are now underperforming to perform and look better.

Combined, these three features are the whole thing PlayStation 5 Pro has to offer: making the games you already own or plan to buy look and feel a little better than on a PS5 base.

Does the PS5 Pro live up to its promise?

Yes, with caveats. The ultimate selling point of the Pro is that it delivers the technology promised by the original PS5. This console was expected to make a leap into 4K resolution gaming with ray tracing and smooth frame rates. And it was, to an extent.

As a simple rule of thumb, games should run at a certain frame rate to look good. 30 frames per second (fps for short) is acceptable and the baseline for modern titles, and 60 frames per second is ideal when things start to look extremely smooth, with less choppy action or forced motion blur for to fill in the gaps. At the top end, there’s 120 fps and more, but that’s a level of performance expected only for super-expensive PCs.

Using a basic PS5, players usually have the option to open a game’s menu and select how they’d like it to run visually, which boils down to some version of choosing between “Quality” or “Performance” mode. For quality, that usually means running at 4K resolution and 30fps; Performance is 1080p or higher, sometimes 1440p (2K) and a smoother 60fps. These, of course, are all targets that a game cannot meet.

What the PS5 Pro offers is an enhanced version of this option, in many cases literally called “Quality Pro” or “Performance Pro”, options that only become available after a software update for existing games – which Sony says will be over 50 titles nearing release. While some games simply omit the previous options for Pro versions, others still offer the full spectrum, running 5 to 6 options from Basic Performance to Pro Quality.

So it’s really just a sliding scale. Quality Pro now targets 30fps at high 4K resolution with full ray-tracing power; The Performance Pro targets 60fps, but uses that fancy AI-based PSSR to upscale the resolution from 1440p or lower to a faux 4K. It’s the same bargain as the PS5, one looks better and runs worse, one runs well and looks good. Except now, the basic performance mode is the way the players probably hoped Their original PS5 looked like it out of the box.

Like the PS5, the Pro also improves the performance of PlayStation 4 games, although the ceiling on how much better these games will perform has already been limited.

Rolling Stone tested over 20 games with Pro, incl Horizon Zero Dawn remastered, West Horizon forbidden, The Last of Us Part I, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War: Ragnarök, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Star Bladeand Dragon’s Dogma 2. Most PS5 games tested have already been patched to take advantage of the updates, though those that haven’t are enjoying Star Wars Outlawssure felt as if they ran better.

But maybe it’s a placebo.

Who is the PS5 Pro for?

The real question isn’t whether the PS5 Pro does what it advertises, because the short answer is that it does. Games look and play better on the updated console. The real question is whether you’re the kind of player who cares.

It’s been a topic of discussion for years, but the generational leap in gaming technology has pretty much stopped in the last decade. Think about the 11 year difference between Super Mario Bros. (1985) and Super Mario 64 (1996). It was earth shattering. From 8-bit pixel art to fully realized 3D worlds. In the same window, from 2013 to 2024, we went from a great game like The last of us to a slightly prettier version of the same game.

As the visual fidelity of games approaches hyperrealism, the differences become less noticeable to the average eye. And while tech heads and hardcore gamers May do you see or feel the difference (I do), it just doesn’t feel like enough.

Take for example the improved resolution and frame rate options. Anyone who has dropped a lot of money on a modern TV or monitor with an HDMI 2.1 port has had the option of using a mode called Variable Refresh Rate (VRR). What this does is boost the image refresh rate to 120Hz (up from around the standard 60Hz), making games look smoother in motion. Sometimes it also allows an unlocked frame rate, which means that even in Quality mode, certain games might get close to the higher frame rates promised by Performance. Not everyone has that, but if you do, you’ve already lived with what the PS5 Pro has to offer.

Switching back and forth between different visual modes to spot the differences can be a headache, especially when the changes feel so superficial. But the problem is not only the superficiality of what is offered, but what is demanded. The PlayStation 5 Pro’s base price is $699.99, but it doesn’t even come with a disc drive — which is now sold separately for an extra $80. So to upgrade your existing PS5’s internal hardware and match its overall capabilities to Blu-rays would be around $780 (before tax). That’s $280 more than the base PS5 with a disc drive is now.

For the tech-obsessed and hardcore gamer, the PlayStation 5 Pro could be just what they’re hoping for. And if they came for consumption, great. For everyone else, the PlayStation 5 Pro doesn’t do anything new beyond what’s likely to be seen as an incremental, potentially imperceptible difference in image quality and feel, all at a premium.

If Sony dropped the price of the base PS5 and made the Pro the better deal at the current entry point, it would be a hit. But given the cyclical trends of the industry, we’re probably only a few short years away from the PlayStation 6 anyway. Might as well wait.