When you go to a store looking to buy a current-gen PlayStation 5 console, you’re faced with two possibilities: the base PS5, or the PS5 Pro. At least, in theory. The PS5 Pro has been very hard to find in stock lately, unless you turn to the resale market.
Besides the promise of more horsepower, it can be hard to suss out exactly what makes the PS5 Pro so different, especially with its hugely inflated price tag. With the promise of an enhanced Grand Theft Auto VI experience, though, many are wondering if they should bite the bullet and pick up Sony’s most powerful console. Let’s dive into the key differences between the base model console and its professional counterpart.
PS5 vs. PS5 Pro: Price
The first and most important thing we need to discuss regarding Sony’s two PS5 consoles is the price. Neither of them is cheap, but one of them is clearly a better value at this point in time.
That would be the base PS5, which starts at $599. It will play all of the same games as a PS5 Pro, including nearly every game released for PS4, and the controller is no different, either. We’ll delve into some of the other differences in a bit, but you definitely shouldn’t think of this as a last-gen console.
Now for the tough part: The PS5 Pro starts at a staggering $899, and that’s just the MSRP. Because of the ongoing PS5 Pro shortages, you will likely have to pay even more on the secondary market.
PS5 vs. PS5 Pro: Storage
Credit: Dustin Drankoski / Mashable
Now we’re going to move on to the areas where the PS5 Pro has an unambiguous advantage over the base model. After all, they aren’t charging you $899 for no reason.
One of the biggest reasons to get a PS5 Pro? It comes with 2TB of built-in storage, compared to just 1TB on any base PS5 model. Considering some games like GTA 6 can take up more than 200GB of storage space by themselves, a 2TB starting limit is a huge benefit for the PS5 Pro. You might think 1TB is a lot, and it’s certainly adequate if you’re really careful about deleting games you’re done playing, but that base PS5 drive can fill up quickly.
To be clear, there is always the option to buy a base PS5 and expand the storage yourself, but that requires buying another SSD. I don’t know if you’ve seen how much memory costs these days, but that could be a boondoggle in and of itself.
PS5 vs. PS5 Pro: Visual features
While expanded storage is nice, the real selling point of the PS5 Pro is that it’s a more powerful console than the PS5. Again, it’s not a full generational leap, and both consoles play the exact same games, but the PS5 Pro has access to more horsepower than the base model PS5, and there are some real benefits to that.
For starters, the PS5 Pro has access to PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR. This is an AI upscaling feature that can make supported games look substantially sharper than they would on a base PS5. There are also a bunch of games that have enhanced performance on PS5 Pro, and in some cases, you even get access to new graphics modes that enable perks such as 60 frames per second and ray tracing (which can also be improved on PS5 Pro) at the same time. Ghost of Yotei comes to mind as a recent example of that.
However, the onus is on developers to specifically add support for these special PS5 Pro features, meaning that the list of PS5 Pro-enhanced games is in the dozens, not the hundreds. In the rare instances when Sony decides to actually release first-party exclusives, you can usually count on those to have some kind of PS5 Pro benefits, but otherwise, most games are going to be roughly the same across both consoles.
PS5 vs. PS5 Pro: Physical media support
Last but definitely not least, the PS5 Pro does not come with a disc drive at all. Neither does the $599 base model console, for that matter. If you want a PS5 with a built-in disc drive, you need to spend $649 for a base model with one. Given Sony’s recent disdain for physical discs, the inconvenience here might be by design.
That doesn’t mean starting-price PS5 or Pro owners have no options, though. You can always buy the official disc drive attachment…for an additional $80. Aside from costing more, it also juts out from the console in a somewhat unpleasant-looking way. None of this is ideal, frankly, but that’s what you need to do if you want to keep buying physical games or Blu-ray discs as a PS5 owner.
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