Seven hundred pounds. That is what Sony wants for the PlayStation 5 Pro, and it is the number that will define whether this console is a success or an expensive footnote. The hardware inside is genuinely impressive. The value proposition is considerably harder to defend.
The PS5 Pro is not a new console generation. It is Sony’s mid-cycle refresh, following the playbook Nintendo established with the New 3DS and what Microsoft never quite managed with the Xbox One X. The question is not whether it is faster than the standard PS5. It clearly is. The question is whether it is fast enough, in ways that actually matter to enough people, to justify the premium.
Build and Design
The PS5 Pro is physically identical to the slim PS5 in dimensions, which means it remains a large machine but not the absurd monolith of the original launch model. The white-and-black finish continues, with the same detachable side panels. It looks exactly like a PS5 because it is essentially a PS5.
There is no disc drive in the box. Let that sink in: £699 for a console that cannot play physical media without purchasing a separate disc drive attachment for an additional £99. That is not a small thing to overlook. Sony sells the disc drive as an optional add-on, which is a philosophically reasonable position in a streaming-forward world, but it makes the headline price deceptive. If you want full console functionality including physical games, you are looking at £798.
There is also no new controller in the box. You get a DualSense, same as always. The haptic feedback and adaptive triggers remain excellent. Nothing has changed here.
The GPU and PSSR
The meaningful upgrade in the PS5 Pro is the GPU. Sony has engineered a custom chip delivering 33.5 teraflops of GPU performance, compared to the standard PS5’s 10.28 teraflops. That is a substantial leap on paper, roughly tripling the raw compute.
In practice, what this translates to is better ray tracing, higher framerates in Performance modes, and support for PSSR: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution.
PSSR is Sony’s answer to Nvidia’s DLSS. It uses machine learning to upscale lower-resolution frames to 4K output, theoretically giving you image quality close to native 4K while the console is actually rendering at a lower resolution internally. The technology works. In supported titles, the results are genuinely impressive, with detail retention that holds up on a good 4K display.
The honest comparison with DLSS, however, is that DLSS has had years of refinement and a wider developer ecosystem. PSSR is newer, and its quality varies more noticeably between titles at this early stage. It will improve. Right now, it is good but not consistently at DLSS 3 Quality levels.
Performance in Games
The titles where the PS5 Pro makes a real, visible difference are those that already pushed the standard PS5 hard.
Spider-Man 2 is the clearest showcase. On the standard PS5, choosing Fidelity mode (4K, 30fps, full ray tracing) meant sacrificing frame rate. On the PS5 Pro, you can have Fidelity-level visuals running at 60fps. That is a transformative upgrade for a game where the web-swinging and combat benefit enormously from higher frame rates. If Spider-Man 2 is in your library and you play on a 4K television, this alone demonstrates what the hardware can do.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart similarly benefits from the improved ray tracing pipeline. The reflections and lighting in this game were already extraordinary on standard PS5; on the Pro, they run more consistently at higher frame rates.
Beyond these headline titles, the situation is murkier. At launch, the catalogue of “PS5 Pro Enhanced” games is limited. Many of your existing PS5 library will run exactly as they did before, because developers have to specifically patch their games to support the Pro’s additional capabilities. This will improve over time as more patches roll out, but buying an £799 (with disc drive) console for day-one library enhancement and finding that most of your games are unchanged is a legitimate disappointment.
Spec Overview
| Specification | PS5 Pro | Standard PS5 |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | 33.5 teraflops (custom RDNA) | 10.28 teraflops |
| CPU | AMD Zen 2, 3.85GHz | AMD Zen 2, 3.5GHz |
| RAM | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Storage | 2TB SSD | 825GB SSD |
| Upscaling | PSSR | None native |
| Disc Drive | Not included | Included (standard) / Not included (slim disc-free) |
| Price | £699 (no disc drive) | £449 (disc edition) |
Worth Knowing
- No disc drive is included. The separate attachment costs £99, bringing full functionality to £798.
- The number of PS5 Pro Enhanced titles at launch is very small. Most of your existing library will not look or run differently.
- PSSR upscaling works best on a 4K television. If you are playing on a 1080p or 1440p display, you will not see the headline benefits.
- The storage upgrade from 825GB to 2TB is genuinely useful and often overlooked in coverage.
- No new controller is included. The DualSense remains unchanged.
- The CPU is only marginally faster than the standard PS5. This is a GPU-focused upgrade.
- If you already own a PS5 and play primarily on a 1080p display, there is almost no practical reason to upgrade.
Who Is This For
The PS5 Pro makes most sense in two scenarios.
First: you do not own a PS5 yet and want the best version of Sony’s current hardware. In that case, the Pro is the definitive PlayStation 5. More storage, better GPU, PSSR upscaling. If you are going to spend £449 on a standard PS5, spending £250 more for the superior hardware is at least a coherent argument, provided you have a 4K display to take advantage of it.
Second: you own a standard PS5, you play on a 4K television, and you have specifically noticed frame rate issues in Fidelity mode games. Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet and Clank are the strongest cases here. If those titles and others like them are your primary games and the 30fps cap in their best visual modes bothers you, the Pro genuinely solves that problem.
What it does not make sense for: upgrading from a standard PS5 because the marketing sounds exciting, when you play on a 1080p TV, or when your primary library consists of games that have not received Pro Enhanced patches.
Verdict
The PS5 Pro is not a bad piece of hardware. The 33.5 teraflop GPU is a real upgrade, PSSR works, and in games that have been patched to support it, the performance improvements are meaningful and visible. Spider-Man 2 running at 60fps with Fidelity-level visuals is exactly what this console was designed to deliver, and it delivers it.
The problem is the price and the caveats that come with it. £699 with no disc drive, no new controller, and a launch catalogue where the vast majority of games are not yet Enhanced is a hard ask. Sony is charging for potential as much as current reality.
If you are new to PS5, this is the version to buy if you can stretch the budget and have a 4K display. If you already own a PS5, think carefully. The upgrade is real, but unless you are specifically hitting the frame rate ceiling in graphically demanding titles on a 4K screen, it is difficult to recommend spending this much.
Score: 7/10 - Good
