With the release of the latest PlayStation, 4K console gaming is upon us - but is it worth coughing up the extra bucks for?
Sony has just delivered a one-two punch in home entertainment - last month they dropped PlayStation VR, this month it's the PS4 Pro.
If you haven't yet made the leap to current-gen consoles and want to, look no further than this one. Getting it over an original PS4 is a no-brainer.
If you have a 4K television at home, this is an awesome way to make use of it that should be very enticing indeed.
But, if you already have a PS4 and don't have a 4K TV, maybe just relax for a while. Your games will run faster and look better on the Pro, but it's when you get your next TV that it'll be more essential.
This is a powerful machine that presents a striking leap forward in visual fidelity, albeit with a few frustrating limitations - but I'll get to those later.
"Why didn't they just call it the PS5? That's quite an upgrade," said a computer geek friend who understood the unit's tech specs when I showed him.
Some of the numbers on the PS4 Pro's list of tech specs are higher than the PS4, of course, but there's one in particular that tells you all you need to know.
The graphics processor is capable of 4.2 teraflops, versus the original PS4's 1.84.
Using a PS4 Pro on a 4K TV, when you zoom in on a distant sniper in Battlefield 1, all those extra flops make a glorious difference. It's way easier to see your enemies and hence, easier to vanquish them.
Mint.
The visual upgrade is immediately noticeable and surprisingly strong. It's not as big a jump as the PS3 to the PS4, but it's very impressive.
The PS4 Pro runs games faster in general, with fewer framerate tears in the more rigorous games, thanks to the extra power under its bonnet.
Some games are also HDR enabled, such as Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us Remastered, two of the finest games money can buy. The extra layer of visual oompf HDR layers on already gorgeous games is stunning.
Virtual reality is slightly improved on the PS4 Pro too - but not by much.
The PS4 version of Battlezone is rendered at 1512p, while the PlayStation 4 Pro update renders the game at 1890p, for example.
Further down the track when developers are more familiar with both the PS4 Pro and the VR tech, this difference may be bolder, but for now it's pretty subtle.
My one gripe with the machine is the hard drive - it's only one terabyte.
Consoles these days are always downloading stuff. Getting into a new game is almost never, ever done without a download of some sort.
The original PS4 had just 500 GB, which meant a lot of deleting stuff to make room for new. But thankfully, Sony allowed a fairly easy manual upgrade that didn't void your warranty.
So I bought a 2 TB hard drive, as a lot of folk probably did, and hence the PS4 Pro is a downgrade on this front.
Said drive can just be pulled out and chucked into the Pro, but still, 2 TB as a standard would've been nice.
The push to move from HD to 4K in home entertainment has felt more like it's come from the industry rather than the consumer - generally a flashing red warning sign for new consumer tech.
But it's far more prevalent now than it was a few years ago and 4K TV prices are getting low enough to make it a very viable upgrade option.
But gaming aside, will the PS4 Pro be your 4K media player?
Probably not.
It can stream 4K YouTube and Netflix content, which looks absolutely astounding, sure. But not everyone can stream 4K content, which is very demanding on your internet connection, and most modern TVs will have their own YouTube and Netflix apps anyway.
If you want to watch 4K content on-demand instead, the PS4 Pro is annoyingly specific about what video files it will play.
Even the ones it can play can be a pain to even get connect it to and you'll more than likely have to stream them from a computer anyway - in which case, you can bypass the console and stream straight to the tele, if you have a 4K graphics card.
I know how prehistoric I may sound by not wanting to stream everything, but I'd love to enjoy video with 4K's full 3840 × 2160 pixels of power with stuff that I have sitting at home rather than coming through the pipes as I watch it.
Which brings me to my next point...
Unbelievably, the PS4 Pro doesn't play 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs.
Way back in the mid-2000s there was a tech war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The PS3 was hugely influential in the former's victory, a Trojan Horse that put a Blu-ray player in millions of homes faster than HD-DVD could compete with.
That Sony is now not taking the logical next step for the format with its first 4K capable unit is just plain weird.
Standard Blu-ray discs play fine in the PS4 Pro and look magnificent on a 4K TV, but I was really hoping to see David Bowie's Labyrinth costume in higher definition than ever before with the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.
No can do.
I guess the move to all-streaming-everything is inevitable, but Sony's implicit surrender to that notion with this hardware exclusion is disappointing.
Video stuff aside, this is a gaming unit and playing 4K games through it on a 4K TV is simply amazing. It's the best way to game.
So long as you can afford the upgrade and aren't expecting the PS4 Pro to be your primary media player, you'll be stoked with the next-level gaming thrills it brings.
The PlayStation 4 Pro is on sale now.
Newshub.
