Pros: Gorgeous LCD; Fun games; Ability to play music, photos and movies
Cons: Price, MemoryStick Duo, Slow screen refresh, Short battery life
The bottom line: If you have even the smallest penchant for games, the PSP is a must buy for you. The extra stuff like movies, photos and music are gravy.
I have been mobile gaming since the original Gameboy Advance. Yes, that’s not a long time ago, but it gives you a history on my mobile gaming. I “upgraded” to the Gameboy Advance SP when it came out, but it really wasn’t much of a change for me since it was the same hardware, in a different form factor. As much as I liked playing games on the GBA SP, I wanted more. I wanted something that resembled the gaming on my PS2, Xbox and Gamecube.

See, I only played my GBA SP when I was on the road. When I got home, the GBA SP went back on the shelf and I gamed on my consoles – I never felt an overwhelming need to play games on the GBA SP when I was home because it never was up-to-par with my home consoles. Then I got wind of the new Nintendo DS and the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP). They were going to be released within a year of each other. The benefit of the DS was that it could play all of my old GBA games. The benefit of the PSP? Oh, there are so many to list – as I will in my review. I stayed away from the DS and on March 24, 2005 I picked up my own PSP.

The Box

The box that the PSP comes in is quite small, and when you first pick it up, it almost seems too small to have a PSP inside. When I opened the box, I was surprised by the efficiency of how well the package is put together. The PSP itself sits very secure between two pieces of cardboard. Also inside is a very thick manual that covers the PSP in three languages, Spider-Man 2 (the movie) on UMD (which is limited to the first million PSPs), a sampler disc, a remote control (that is strangely reminiscent of the iPod control wheel), some white earphones (uh, strangely reminiscent of the iPod earphones), a 32MB MemoryStick Duo card, a battery, a micro-fiber cloth and a white leather wrist strap (more on this later).

It is strange that Sony chose to use white accessories with a beautiful black PSP. It is as if Sony was trying to cash in on the whole white headphones fad that Apple has set with the iPod. I wish that they didn’t. The remote is usable and quite nice; I wish it were black though, to better match my PSP. If you have an old MD player, don’t bother trying to use the old remote (which may have a cool LCD) with the PSP. The MD remotes have four pins whereas the PSP remotes only have three pins. Now, about that white wrist strap: It is just wrong. Take it out of the box and throw it away. Not only is the leather too hard, but also the thing is white and is an eyesore. For such a beautiful piece of hardware, it’s hard to fathom why Sony would bundle such a terrible wrist strap.

The Hardware

The PSP is a piece of art. The black facia, clear buttons, and slight touches of metal had my jaw dropped – I have not seen such an aesthetically pleasing piece of industrial design since the iPod. Sony and Apple, both have got the sixth sense when it comes to making beautiful looking hardware. After seeing the PSP out of the box, I dropped in the battery, which has a residual charge on it. I fired up the PSP and that is when I knew this was going to change the portable gaming world. The screen means some 4.3 inches and is brighter than anything I have seen. In addition to the brightness of the screen, I noticed that the viewing angle of the screen is tremendous. The only problem that I have with my screen is that I have a small piece of dust under the screen and on certain bright screens the dust is noticeable. There have been complaints about dead pixels and dust under the screen, which seem like a somewhat “normal” thing.

When I had my original Gameboy Advance, I remember having to go buy a Wormlight for it because the screen was not lit at all. I could hardly see the game I was playing if I weren’t in some bright environment. Nintendo front-lit the GBA SP and that helped a lot, but the screen was always washed out because of the front lighting. I don’t know what Sony did, but the screen on the PSP is perfection. The screen is not only bright, but it is sharp and the colors are so vibrant! The colors are so vibrant that when looking at photos on the screen, they almost seem, as they are print photos and not digital photos. The screen is what is going to impress most people when they first see the PSP turned on. I don’t care how many screens the DS may have, but none of them compare with the PSP’s screen.

The controls are laid out like a Dual-Shock controller, almost. The D-pad and four control buttons are where they are on a Dual-Shock controller. There is only one analog stick on the PSP and it comes as a dime sized “nubbin” right below the D-pad. There are only two shoulder buttons instead of four. The only complaint I have about the analog controller is its placement. It is a bit uncomfortable to use the analog controller on the PSP since it is placed so low and close to the edge on the left hand side. Along the bottom edge of the PSP are seven buttons: Home, Vol-, Vol , Screen Brightness, Music Setting, Select and Start. On the left side of the PSP is a switch for turning on and off the 802.11b wireless. On the right side of the PSP is the power/hold switch. On the top of the PSP is the switch to open the UMD door, a USB port, and IRDA port. On the back there is the battery slot and a MemoryStick Duo slot.

Unlike the DS, the PSP feels solid with no noticeable squeaks or creaks when twisted. It feels like a piece of electronics rather than a plastic toy.

Yes, above I mentioned that the PSP has 802.11b wireless capabilities. This allows for both ad-hoc (PSP-to-PSP) and infrastructure (PSP-to-Access Point) modes. The configuration of the wireless was pretty pain free. I was able to get it going within a few minutes. The security setting only supports WEP, which is weak, but better than nothing – it’s too bad that WPA is not supported. In infrastructure mode, the PSP has a function that allows it to check to see if there is any updated firmware. That is a nice feature – don’t worry for those of you without a wireless access point, you can still download firmware, drop it onto your MemoryStick and then update your PSP that way. Don’t expect to play PSP via infrastructure mode on many public access points just yet though. There is no web browser built-into the PSP (though there are rumors that it is coming). With most public access points, you get “captured” into a captive portal where you have to agree to the terms of service before you are given access to the Internet – without a browser, you won’t be able to accept the terms of service. Though, I hear that Apple Stores offer unencumbered WiFi access, so if you really need to update your firmware, go to an Apple Store and use the WiFi connection there to update your PSP.

The use of a MemoryStick Duo card is a blessing and curse at the same time. It is a blessing for us that have MemoryStick cameras or whatnot. But, on the other hand it is also a curse because MemoryStick media costs a lot more than comparable SD media. On Amazon, one can get a 512MB SD card for as low as $40. A MemoryStick Duo at the same capacity costs $99. Included in the package is a 32MB card, which will do just fine for most gamers since saved games are under a megabyte apiece. But for those geeks out there who want to take advantage of the music, photos and movie aspect of the PSP, you’ll need to spend the extra cash on a 512MB or 1GB MemoryStick Duo card. I will talk about the music, photos and movie aspect in the software section.

Battery life on the PSP depends on what you’re doing. But if you’re playing games it will be somewhere between three to four hours. The one great thing about the PSP is that the battery is user replaceable. So, if the battery ever goes dead or stops holding a good charge, just cough up $50 and get a new battery. My co-workers have second batteries as is so that they can play the PSP during transcontinental flights.

I won’t bother to retype the hardware specs of the PSP, you can find them here:

http://www.us.playstation.com/consoles.aspx?id=4

The Software

The PSP runs its own OS and the user-interface is quite intuitive (something that Sony UI is not generally known for). The background, if you don’t already know, changes color with every month. The month of March is green, next month it will be pink – and so on. That is a nice touch. The UI is very minimal, but very well done at the same time.

The PSP has a USB port on the top and that can be used to connect the PSP to your personal computer – Windows, Mac, Linux or whatever other OS you use that supports USB Mass Storage devices. When plugged into a computer, the PSP (with a MemoryStick Duo in the slot) shows up as a standard removable storage device. I am so glad and happy that Sony went this route instead of forcing users to use some silly software to access the PSP. This opens up so many avenues of uses for the PSP. So, plug in the PSP and copy over music, photos and movies over to the preconfigured directories – well, music and photos are preconfigured, for movies you’ll have to make a folder named MP_ROOT in the root directory of the MemoryStick Duo, then create a folder named 100MNV01 inside of MP_ROOT. To save some headache though, Mac users can get a program named PSPware (http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/pspware) and Windows users can get a program named PSP Video 9 (http://www.pspvideo9.com/). Both programs allow you to manage the content on the PSP and also make it really easy to get video transcoded into the MPEG-4 format that the PSP plays.

Playing movies on the PSP is quite cool. I watched some of the Spider-Man 2 UMD movie on my PSP and was surprised at how well the video looked on the screen. There was slight ghosting, but otherwise it was as if I were watching a DVD. I don’t quite see a market for UMD movies at this point though – why would I buy a movie on UMD when it only plays on my PSP? I’d rather get it on DVD. I hope that there will be UMD movie rental places though, I can see a strong market for that – come on Netflix, can you hear me on this one?

Playing photos on the PSP is an experience. The photos look so nice on the PSP that it is incredible. The photos literally pop off the screen, the colors are so vibrant, the brightness is blinding and the contrast exuberant. I keep some pictures on my memory card, but not that many. I don’t know if I’ll actually use the photo aspect of the PSP that much, but it is nice to have photos on the card to show off the PSP screen.

I’ll stick with my iPod for portable music. Although the music sounds great on the PSP, the facilities for music are pretty minimal on the PSP. There are no playlists on the PSP, just folders. And given how expensive storage is, I think the 40GB of my iPod far outweighs the 512MB of memory I am using on my PSP for photos, movies, saved games and music. The one big problem I have with the non-ability to have playlists is that if I wanted to have songs A, B and C in one list and then songs D, B and E on another, then I’d have to make two folders. In one folder put files A, B and C. In the next folder put files D, B and E. As you can see, there is wasted space because I have to put file B in two places. Maybe in the next firmware upgrade, Sony will implement some sort of playlist capabilities.

The photos, music and movies aspect of the PSP are pretty minimal and even mediocre, but that is not why I bought a PSP. I bought a PSP to play games. When I got my PSP, it was part of a bundle. I received Need for Speed Rivals and Metal Gear Acid as part of the bundle. I quickly peeked at Metal Gear Acid, but put it away for the time being as it looks to be a very time consuming game. I have been playing Need for Speed Rivals for many hours now and it really shows off how good the PSP hardware is. The PSP is not really a PS2 inside a handheld, it is more a PS 1.75 or so. The graphics are great on the PSP, but not as good as a PS2 – though much better than a PS1 and DS. Game play is impressive with Need for Speed Rivals, the game runs smoothly and there are lots of special effects going on at all times. The sound is incredible. The screen on the PSP sucks me into the game and at times I cannot tell that I am actually playing a game, I feel as if I am in the game. Again, like with movies, there is slight ghosting in the games, but it is not that bad.

Miscellaneous Comments

The price of the unit at $249 seems pretty steep until you realize what kind of hardware the PSP is. I mean for $249, I can get both a PS2 and a Gamecube – but not TV to hook them up to. But, when you start to use the system, it feels like you’re getting more than you paid for. The PSP is a bargain when you realize the hardware that is inside of the unit and what it is doing. The screen itself is well worth the money, but then you throw in the memory and CPU, now you can see that maybe Sony is losing money putting the PSP on the market (only to make it up with software licensing fees).

I did not stay away from the DS only because of the imminent release of the PSP. I stayed away (or saved my money) because Nintendo did not have a strong launch line up of games for the DS. There were no games that I really wanted for the DS – Mario DS looked nice, but did I really want to pay money to pay for a port of a Nintendo 64 game? Not really. The only other thing that I would have done with the DS was play my GBA games, but I already have a GBA SP to do that.

Sony did it right, it has a strong line up of launch titles (Need for Speed Rivals, Ridge Racer, WipEout Pure, and lots of others) to support the hardware. It also has a strong upcoming line up of games for the system and this will drive the sales of the hardware. To date, there has not been many games on the DS that I have wanted – well, there is one, Warioware: Touched! but that is not enough for me to drop $149 to get a DS. On the other hand, I am looking forward to getting more games (after I finish my current ones) for my PSP – Ridge Racer and Twisted Metal look good.

The one thing that the DS has over the PSP (other than a lower price) is load times. Because DS games are on cartridges, they load almost instantaneously. PSP games are on UMD optical media, which takes time to spin and read – sometimes it is excruciatingly slow. Thank goodness Sony implemented a sleep mode for the PSP (just quickly push up on the power button) so that you can put your PSP to sleep in the middle of a game. When you wake up the PSP, it’ll be at the point were you were and there is no loading times. The PSP takes about four seconds to cold boot and about two seconds to wake up from sleep.

Just like the iPod, the beauty of the face of the PSP is easily marred by fingerprints. I don’t know why companies continue to make facia that is so attractive to fingerprints and hand oils. That micro-fiber cloth that is included in the package will get a lot of usage (and if you need another, stop by an optometrists office at the local mall and see if they’ll give you a free glasses cleaning cloth). For the screen, you’ll want to protect that from minor scratches and stuff, I recommend the $10 package of two sticky screen protectors from Belkin for this purpose.

Conclusion

If you already have lots of GBA games, you might well do with a DS and be happy. But, if you are like me, you probably wouldn’t be happy with the DS since the PSP has enough power to tromp over the DS without even breaking a sweat. The LCD on the PSP is one of the winning factors of this machine – but it doesn’t stop there because the games are just plain better on the PSP. Kick in the ability to play movies, photos and music on the PSP and that wins things hands down. If you are a gamer and love to play games whenever and wherever, then the PSP is for you. The $249 is a high price to pay for this piece of hardware, but it is well worth it – I now play my PSP at home since it feels like a true console, rather than an underpowered handheld. There are some slight flaws to the PSP (like the use of the expensive MemoryStick Duos, dust under screens, and slightly slow screen refresh rates) but those flaws are all wiped out by the sheer fun factor of the machine.

If you are interested in a PSP vs. iPod comparison, then you can check out my article on that here:

http://mookiesplace.org/PSPvsiPod

Thanks for reading!

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