I was debating if I want to buy one, but after trying that remote play worked well with a tablet on my home wifi, I took a leap of faith and ordered one of the last ones nearby. Picked it up yesterday.
Key points:
-Very satisfied with the performance so far, no noticable lag on home wifi. Finished Spider-Man 2 and beat the final boss on it, also tried some shooters, no issues with lag in single player games on my 500 Mbit network (meaning: maybe a partial second of stutter every 5-10 mins).
-So much smoother experience than using e.g. my tablet with a controller. Just pick it up, press 2 buttons, and you can play in a few seconds.
-The screen is also better than expected. 8 inches is super big for a handheld, around the size of the iPad mini. Very immersive, when playing. Colors are also great, and I’m saying that as an owner of an LG OLED TV. Of course an OLED screen would have been probably better, but also more expensive, and the resolution is still better than most handhelds giving us a great picture.
-The controller grips are very comfortable for even a longer session. The haptic feedback and trigger resistance feels just like the controller we are used to.
-The missing BT is annoying if you have a good headset (I don’t), but I understand the concerns with delay, though I have no personal experience on that.
-The only time connection became bad, is when downloading a game/update on my PS5 while playing, it even completely dropped once. Very annoying if you want to run an update in the background, but also not a dealbreaker, you can just run updates in rest mode.
-The price is fine, payed 219 EUR for it. I would like it a bit lower, but still okay with it (understanding the privilege that I can waste this money on something that is far from a necessity). I would not want to pay the price of a “proper” handheld for a controller with a screen.
Yes, you can use it on any wifi (CNET even did it on mobile hotspot, but that depends on your provider). It works best though on the same wifi as the PS5.
Tbh I was also very skeptical, it just seems like such a weird solution compared to other handhelds, but it works very well.
I use it as an alternative screen option for my PS, so I can play in a different room, can do it while lying in bed, or in front of our TV while my wife watches smg else. We don’t have kids, but I imagine it’s even more useful then.
I understand not everybody has this use case, but after sitting 8+ hours in front of my laptop, I often don’t want to keep sitting to play, this is just so much more flexible and convenient.
I didn’t know that and it now makes more sense for people traveling a lot or having a TV possessive partner.
Luckily, my girlfriend only watches TV with me, so there is no screen fighting.