PlayStation Portal Audio Options: I Tried Them All!

So, you have one of these, a PlayStation Portal, and you love it. You play games on the couch, on the toilet, on the porch, but every now and then you run into this scenario when you want to get in a little bit of late-night gaming, but even on the lowest volume setting, it still proves too much for your significant other. Yikes. So naturally, you look for options to alleviate the situation, and those options are Sony's proprietary Link technology, Bluetooth dongles, or just good old-fashioned wired headphones. I tested out all these options, so you don't have to. So what do we have here? We have the PlayStation Pulse Explore Buds that are purpose-built for the Portal. We have two USB dongles, a cheapy, cheapy one and a slightly more pricey one to see if there's any discrepancies there. And we have a pair of cheap House of Marley wired earbuds. Together, we're gonna see what's what with the pros and cons. When it comes to ease of setup, I think you won't be shocked that the wired earbuds are the easiest by a mile. You just plug in and play. With the Pulse Explore, you have to open up the case and hold down the pairing button for at least eight seconds. As an aside, the Pulse Explore Buds come with a USB dongle that slots into the back of your PS5. So if you put on your earbuds and you hear audio from both the buds and the external speakers of your Portal, that means you're actually connected to your PS5 rather than the Portal. Finally, with the Bluetooth dongles, it's just a case of putting both them and your buds of choice into pairing mode at the same time. All light should stop blinking once a connection has been established. Off the bat, there is a lot to love about the Pulse Explore Buds. They look big and bulky, but they still sit comfortably in the ear. The sound you get out of them is great. Playing games like Tekken 8, you get a real sense of impact from every punch, and the engine rumbles and Gran Turismo 7's sound amazing as well. The added 3D audio support and those planar magnetic drivers put you right in the cockpit and you hear in which direction other cars are trying to overtake you. It's wild. And when it comes to latency, it's damn near negligible. You may notice a millisecond of lag when navigating the main menu, but it is far from a deal breaker. But one feature I didn't realize I'd love as much as I actually do, is the fact that once you're paired with your Portal, you can then pair to another device via Bluetooth. I'd love getting into a longer GT7 racing session and putting on a podcast. Of course, this feature works best if both audio sources aren't heavily speech-based. Too many things to listen to at once, you know? If there were any downsides, it would definitely be the price. At 200 bucks, the Pulse Explore are the same price as the Portal. And if you get both of those, it's 100 bucks less than the full PlayStation 5. That is kinda hard to swallow when considering the Portal itself is an accessory and then the Pulse Explore are an accessory to the accessory. So I feel like this is the option for someone who is, you know, got a suitable amount of disposable income. Now, there's not a lot to say about using wired headphones or earbuds, but you would think the better the quality earbud, the better the overall experience, right? I've been using these House of Marley earbuds alongside the Sony WH-1000XM5 and with the over-ears, they sound a bit fuller than the earbuds, but generally speaking, there wasn't a great deal of difference to my surprise. The main downside to wired earbuds is obviously being tethered to your Portal and maybe on more than one occasion, I have accidentally forgotten that fact and set the Portal down yanking them out of my ears, because I'm so used to just using wired headphones and earbuds. Now, as I mentioned near the top of the video, I have two Bluetooth dongles, one a little cheapy and one a little pricier, so they're on opposite ends of the price scale. This generic one you can get for around 10 bucks, but sometimes you can find it for as low as five or six. And this more pricey Aventry Relay, you can get closer to 40 bucks. Starting with the cheaper one, the design almost feels like it was purpose-built for the Portal, as when you plug it in, it sits nicely in the recessed section of the device, leaving the charging port free to use. The more expensive Aventry Relay has a wired connection that will leave it dangling off your Portal in the most ungraceful fashion, but if you have a bit of tack or sticky tape, you can easily stick it to the back of the Portal, no problem. Now, when it comes to audio quality and latency, there is a noticeable difference. The cheaper receiver lags maybe over half a second between your input and the sound, whilst the Aventry Relay maybe shaves a few more milliseconds off that. You won't be able to hear it, but I think I can show you the levels of latency between all these options by scrolling through the crossbar menu and tapping my finger once I hear the sound register. And that should give you guys a sense of how much latency there is between all of them. Moving on to sound quality, and the cheapy receiver is okay-ish. Sound quality isn't stellar, but it is usable, but there is this noticeable noise when there isn't any game sound to mask it. The audio floor is not that clean, so there's like some kind of static or just like little artifacts, like audio artifacts that you can hear while it's connected. The Aventry does sound a bit better and doesn't have that noise the cheaper one has in quieter moments of gaming. I think if you're looking for a wireless solution and you don't want to fork out all the money for the Explore Buds, I would say it's worth spending a little bit more on the more pricey dongle, the Bluetooth dongle, just so that you get a little bit better latency and quality in sound. Okay, what have we learned? Well, I guess you could say every audio option for the Portal has its foibles. The Explore Buds are genuinely a great accessory for the Portal. Great sound, great latency, but costing the same as the Portal make them the option for the more ardent Sony fan or a gamer who doesn't mind spending that kind of money. The Bluetooth dongles offer a much cheaper alternative, but you do sacrifice latency and with certain games, I'm not sure if it's worth that sacrifice. Really and truly, the wired option may be the best option because you get great sound, you get zero latency, and you don't have to break the bank trying to spend a lot of money on over-ear headphones because the more affordable, cheap earbuds seem to work just as well. Obviously, you might have better drivers, but all in all, I feel like the wired way is probably the best way if you don't mind being tethered to your Portal. So, those were my thoughts. Now, I want to hear yours. Do you own a Portal? And if so, what is your preferred audio solution? Drop them down in the comments and don't forget to leave a like and subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much for watching and catch you on the next one.