The PlayStation 4 Pro is almost 3 years old since launch, and there are quite a few consoles available in the market. But I picked this console especially for some key features.
With a lot of consoles to choose from is this the best out there? Marking the PS4 as the best is not as simple as just looking at specifications anymore and Microsoft’s Xbox one x is giving it some serious competition, considering it has more raw processing power.
There are also the PS4 slim and the standard PS4 available, so what does the pro model bring? Well for starters we have 4K and HDR support, which is a plus over the 1080p resolutions the standard ps4 and the slim run at. 4k Tv’s are becoming cheaper so being able to push all those pixels is a significant upgrade.
I found this PS4 Pro on Amazon, and what I found surprising was that at the price where we get only one controller and no game this one had two games and also two controllers. And a plus was that there was a 4k discount on the price during the Amazon Sale.
But there is a catch, being an imported model there would be no warranty as this one is meant to be sold in Malaysia. But this combo was too good a deal to miss, so snagged it at once.
As visible the packaging is very well done, and the main box has another box within?
Opening that up we have the controllers, two in number as promised in the listing. A mono headset, which I’m never going to use. At this price a stereo headset should be standard.
A HDMI cable, and power plug which is meant for Malaysia.
If you have a surge protector, most support all plug types. My Belkin surge protector does, so I had no problem. And Malaysia also has the same 240 V as in India, so no problems there. But If you’re getting one from America, you will need a step down transformer as the US has 110V mains power.
Here’s the PS4 pro, the console is the largest of the three between the ps4 slim and the original ps4.
The cardboard protectors are high quality, nothing’s going to damage this during transit. Open up the flaps, and out it slides.
Let’s get the protective cover off. And here it is . I really like the Matte finish of the device. It can be identified easily as a PS4 Pro via the three-tier design.
The games included in the box are God of war and The Last of Us remastered edition.
The logo on the center of the device is the only shiny element on the top.
On the front we have the power and eject buttons, which are accessible enough. Also present on the front are two USB ports.
On the back, we have the power port, HDMI out, USB, optical audio out, another USB and an ethernet port.
There’s also a small plastic cover that comes off providing access to the hard drive. There’s already a 1TB hard disk inside, but if you want to upgrade to an SSD you can.
So, in the box we have two controllers, the two games god of war and the last of us. God of war is an exclusive to the PS4. Detroit become human is another great ps4 game, which is yet to be ported to the XBOX ONE.
Another title I wanted to play is Horizon: Zero Dawn, it looks fantastic, but before we can play, we need to setup the ps4 pro.
So I connected it to a monitor via HDMI, and powered it up. We have the PS4 logo appear on screen. The monitor is the LG 29UM59, which is a 2560×1080 ultra-wide monitor, which won’t be able to take full advantage of the 4K power of the PS4 pro, but i’m temporarily setting it up here on this as my son has his exams and I don’t want him playing right now.
Setup a controller but attaching it to the ps4 pro via the provided USB cable. This cable also charges the controller. I’m glad you don’t have to run around purchasing batteries for the controller.
This is how the controller looks, it’s the DualShock 4 variant which have a slew of new features.
Going through the installation, connect to your Wi-Fi, install software updates, create a player profile. You can also transfer data from an existing ps4 by connecting them together using the Ethernet port.
If you want to play online, you can pay for a PlayStation plus subscription, I opted out. You can still purchase games to play offline via the PlayStation store, but the console won’t sync your save data to the cloud.
This is how the online store looks, you can search through the titles available and even pay via the console. You will need to setup a credit card and a password for payments. There’s a lot available online.
Ok, now what I’ve been waiting for, let’s start up horizon: Zero dawn. Insert the disc, and it starts copying the data onto the internal hard drive, 17 gb, that’s a lot, and this is done to make the games load faster. Upgrading to a SATA drive would make games load even faster.
Set the screen size, that covers most of your monitor and accept.
Here’s the game, in all its glory. Remember I had said that the monitor is only 1080p, the ps4 pro has options to select if you want higher resolution or higher framerate.
At a higher resolution even if you’re using a 1080p monitor the game renders in 4k and super-samples it, giving sharper and more detailed graphics.
The Blue ray drive can also play Blu-ray, not that I purchase any anymore ever since streaming services like Netflix, prime-video etc which also run on the Ps4 pro as apps you can download.
This does play Blu-ray disks, but it cannot play 4K Blu-ray disks.
So, if you are looking for a 4k Blu-ray player this will not, but 1080p Blu-ray works.
I have only one set, the Spiderman trilogy, but I won’t be purchasing any more Blu-ray disks, so this doesn’t interest me. So unless you have a collection of 4k Blu-ray disks, and don’t like to use online streaming services , this should not concern most users.
This feature missing on a Sony product is quite surprising, Sony being the ones that made Blu-ray mainstream with the ps3. But Sony’s excuse is that no one would use it, which is kind of true in my case. I can stream 4k content off the internet, so why purchase a Blu-ray disk?
Next, we have God Of war, wow, this looks great, and imagine this is on a console. We used to expect this quality only on PC’s but games are getting more and more cinematic on consoles too.
Next is Detroit become human, again the game is at par to playing within a movie, with it waiting at times for our input. I’ve always loved point and click adventure games, but this takes it to another level.
Ok so this console supports 4K so let’s check it out on my 4K TV. Notice that it’s loading up at 3840×2160 on the right. So, it’s booting up in 4K.
Let’s run horizon zero dawn on this TV.
Wow, looks great, yes, I have recorded at 1080p, so sadly you will not be able to see the quality I’m watching it at, but trust me, it looks great. Gameplay is also smooth, really responsive.
Detroit become human is the next title, looks great. Do note, not all games support 4K modes, so unless the developer adds the feature in via an update it would only play at 1080p. Detroit become human renders at 4K, so it looks awesome.
The thing about consoles is that everything just runs, you have no drivers to install, maybe the occasional update but mostly everything is just set to run out of the box.
Also, the games on the ps4 are designed especially for it, and it guarantees that it will run smoothly.
And the exclusives, there are games available only on these systems and nowhere else, sometimes only on the particular console so to play the game getting one
is a necessity.
So, consoles in the whole are not going to die anytime soon, even though pc’s have the horsepower, the ease of playing
on a console just trumps it at times.
I think I’m going to be burnt at the stake in the comments below, but these are my two cents. And I still game on the pc so I do have access to the best of both worlds.
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