I waited two years to get a PlayStation Portal, and now wish I’d bought one sooner

If you’d have said two years ago that the PlayStation Portal would be one of my favorite gaming accessories of the decade, I wouldn’t have believed you. Back when the Portal launched in late 2023, I wasn’t convinced of its value. The handheld’s requirement to be tethered to your PlayStation 5 at all times just smacked of ‘who is this for?’

Now it’s 2026, and the PlayStation Portal has received a handful of vital updates. General improvements to streaming aside, the Portal can now stream games in your library - or the PlayStation Plus catalog - without needing your PS5 to be switched on. As a result, the Portal has evolved from a simple remote play device into a very capable cloud streaming machine.

So, towards the end of last year, as a couple of my erstwhile TechRadar Gaming colleagues were talking ...