4 Cons to Know Before Buying a PlayStation 5

There’s arguably never been a worse time to be a PlayStation fan or buy a PS5, with systems more than half a decade old costing more now than when they were released. RAMageddon is preying on tech fans everywhere, and Sony seems determined to burn through the goodwill it’s built up. We’re in a particularly bad situation to invest in a gaming console.

While the PS5 and upgraded PS5 Pro are great systems, neither represents good value for money at the moment, especially when we have no idea when a PlayStation 6 will launch.

Sony will no longer put games on discs starting in 2028, meaning that when the PS6 comes out, it will no longer support physical games. Sony appears to be doubling down on efforts to eliminate disc-based media in the future, says Flat screensHD reporting that the UBP-X700/K will be the last 4K Blu-ray player made by the company.

So, from 2028, Sony will end the legacy of the PlayStation as a true multimedia hub. This is frustrating given how many previous consoles have made strides in this area. The PS2’s DVD playback was a large part of its enormous popularity, while the PS3 was one of the most affordable Blu-ray players of its time. I stood in line to buy a PS2 on November 24, 2000, not just to play EA’s snowboarding classic. SSXbut also because this system allowed me to play my brand new DVD copy of Jurassic Park for the first time. Discovering the chapter breaks and DVD extras on what remains my favorite film of all time was an awesome moment.

All this will soon be gone. GTA VI will just be a code in a box if you buy the “physical” version for example. Soon, it will no longer be possible to lend games to friends or take advantage of in-store sales.

I take part of the responsibility in the transition to digital. During this generation, the only PS5 games I’ve purchased on disc, among my 36-title PS5 library, are The souls of demons, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarök And Saros. That means I’ve purchased only 11% of my PlayStation 5 games physically in the six years I’ve owned the console, which strikes me as a self-proclaimed advocate of physical media.

Not only are the two launch models, the supercharged Pro and the svelte PS5 Slim, not cheap, but all four machines are significantly more expensive than when they initially launched. In past generations, consoles became cheaper the longer they remained on the market. But in an era of extreme RAM shortages, where Sony is forced to increase hardware costs because memory and SSD prices have never been higher, gamers’ wallets are taking a hit.

When the original PlayStation 5 disc player and the cheaper Digital Edition launched in North America on November 12, 2020, their respective prices of $499 and $399 were pretty reasonable, especially considering the PS4’s $400 launch price and the PS3’s infamous $599 from 14 years prior.

Want to buy the PS5 disc drive or discless version now? It’ll cost you $649 for the disc-equipped system, or $599 if you don’t care about physical games. This means that the PS5 is now 30% (disc) and 50% (digital) more expensive than in 2020. Ouch. At least the disk model has 1TB of storage, down from 825GB at launch, although the Digital Slim has fallen to the lower storage amount again.

Unsurprisingly, the PS5 Pro saw its own increases. When the beefed-up console launched on November 7, 2024, it cost $699. Now this will significantly reduce your bank balance by $899 – if you can find one. We’re in the middle of a PS5 Pro shortage because people desperately need a mythical one GTA VI 60fps performance mode which neither Rockstar nor Sony have confirmed before launch. Still, that hasn’t stopped Amazon’s cheeky third-party sellers from trying to charge $1,449 for a used PS5 Pro. But hey, at least the optional Slim/Pro disc drive still costs the same $79 as when the upgraded console arrived.

The PlayStation 5 Pro is the most powerful video game console of all time. Yet as impressive as the Pro’s specs are, it can’t compete with the most powerful gaming PCs. Even though it packs considerably more graphics horsepower under the hood than the standard PS5, one key component is somewhat holding back its full potential.

On the CPU front, the PS5 Pro’s CPU upgrade over the standard console is modest. Both consoles use eight-core/16-thread AMD Zen 2 processors. The Pro upgrade is that its chip is clocked at 3.85GHz compared to the standard PS5’s 3.5GHz clock. In real terms, this is only a 10% upgrade; such a bump is likely why we’re not seeing 90fps modes in CPU-intensive PS5 titles like Cyberpunk 2077 And Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the Pro.

From a GPU perspective, the PS5 Pro’s specs seem much more robust next to those of the vanilla PS5. The Pro’s graphics solution produces 16.7 TFLOPS of GPU computing power, compared to the base PlayStation 5’s 10.3 FLOPS (still respectable). This represents a 45% increase for the polygon. The GPU compute unit count is also heavily in favor of the Pro, with the newer system having a 60-36 advantage over the standard PS5.

PSSR 2.0 scaling technology also enables Resident Evil Requiem And Saros look amazing on the Pro. Yet with Sony bringing AI upscaling to the base PS5 – in the form of Quick Spectral Super Resolution or “QSSR” – the gap between the two consoles has narrowed.

A few of my friends who hadn’t played since the PS2 era all bought PS5s during the pandemic, but none of them are proudly showing off their OG launch model. I’m sure a lot of this is due to their loved ones all seeing Sony’s latest console for what it is: an eyesore. My friends’ PS5s are all stored away in entertainment cabinets so their better halves don’t have to look at them.

I can just about tolerate my PS5 Pro placed in an upright position (thanks to its optional stand). Then again, I’m a single gamer with very little sense of design who built my living room around a 77-inch OLED TV and a cliché recliner. I think each version of the PS5 looks even more offensive when placed on its side, as it looks like warped Blu-ray players.

For people with spouses and kids, I completely understand why the bulky PS5 would look terrible. All those protruding lines and the protruding disc tray are not pleasant to look at. This is slightly better for the disc-less PS5 Digital Edition and the fact that you don’t need to connect a drive to either the Pro or the PS5 Slim, as the shapes of those consoles are a bit more uniform. Either way, no member of the PS5 family is an objectively beautiful piece of technology.