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Consoles and handhelds · Sony PlayStation Portable

Sony PlayStation Portable PSP

13owners with an opinion
55%of verdicts positive
6/5positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for design and performance; criticized for reliability and build quality.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like it
Would love the idea in Ireland as we are flooded with vape selling and repair shops on every street. Fixed Dyson v11 twice now and I wish there was a place I could come to get someone with experience to help I broke PSP in attempt to fix it and had to rely on repair shop for broken button on steam deck
Likes it
It's just not the same. I made games for the PSP and Vita and it's "different" than making games for Windows or Playstation/Xbox. There's something about seeing your creation on a tiny handheld. I guess maybe nowadays we got desensitized to it because our phones are actual supercomputers which can run Fortnite without breaking a sweat, but making a device with 2MB of ram play your game as you imagined it is just hyper cool and (for me personally) is incredibly satisfying.
Likes it
1. When you're browsing your phone but you're not having fun, stop. Try to distinguish "I am genuinely interested in that thing on the screen" vs "I'm just doomscrollig". 2. Try to replace parts of your smartphone with other things. Buying a clock helped me fix the habit of "I just opened my eyes, time for phone". I found my old PSP and I'm planning to run some emulator on that instead of phone to play some minigames. 3. I have my phone always completely silent. There's literally no notification that cannot wait until I decide to check the phone. 4. I sometimes turn off the data transfer in my phone. First, I get less notifications. Second, it's yet another barrier and it gives me a second to ask myself "do I really want to play with my phone now".
Neutral
I had a PSP long before a cell phone, and the built-in browser was like a peek into the future. It really was janky, and could only scroll a page at a time, like an e-reader, but back then web pages didn't need a top-of-the-line computer with gigabytes of ram, to display text and the occasional image, so it was extremely useful when a laptop wasn't available. The button mapping was pretty good, and navigated similar text-based browsers like Lynx, but with the benefit of seeing images.
Likes it
Same reason I listen to music or podcasts in the car. I am very lucky to live in a city/country where risks of theft from my person is low - even when I lived for 20 years in London I never once felt unsafe listening to music. The closest was two young men got very close to me on the tube, when I was playing on my brand new Hong Kong imported PSP - but I just took my headphones off and held on to it all the tighter. I think they were just interested as most people hadn't seem one in the flesh yet. I can't say I know of anyone personally who suffered theft or accident /caused/ by them listening to music on headphones. When I cycled a lot, I had a small speaker strapped to my handlebars rather than wearing headphones, as I liked being able to hear cars around me - but when I was younger I regularly cycled in headphones, and was still able to hear enough of the road around me to not feel that I was missing anything. Remember, we don't make drivers drive around with no music and their windows open, so that they are better able to hear cyclists...
Likes it
Absolutely love the PSP - it was such a mind blowing piece of hardware at the time. The portables in my life were an iPod and a Game Boy Advance. Then a buddy of mine showed me the model he had just imported from Japan running Wipeout - it was hard to believe my eyes. It truly felt like the future in a way very few pieces of tech have managed to pull off since. One of Sony’s peak accomplishments.
Neutral
I feel like with sleep mode on the DS, PSP and later handhelds that became mostly moot anyways. There are still great OG Game Boy games I probably wouldn't want to play in the grocery store line (e.g., Link's Awakening) but with sleep mode it doesn't really matter. You just stop whenever, pick up whenever. Arguably the PSP suffered from not going all in on console style gaming with just a single analog stick. SO many games on there suffered from that. The PSP was definitely more complicated, and perhaps more fragile but it felt incredibly futuristic in early 2005. Graphics basically as good as my home PS2, you could watch really high quality movies, music on the go, browse the web.
Doesn’t like it
I preordered a Vita back in the day and when I got it I immediately fell in love with it. It fits in a pocket and it has way better analogue sticks than that garbage the PSP had. I still use it to this day because I can't fit my Steam Deck in my pocket. And I concur that its potential did kinda go to waste. Imagine if we had Shadow of the Colossus and Demon's Souls available on it.
Doesn’t like it
calling the PSP nub an analog stick is almost an insult to the Vita. It was this flat protrusion that you can switch out caps on, and you move it around like some thinkpad nub for analog movement. It made sense for the time, but I still ponder why they never added two of them. Held back so many potential games. And yes, I still consider the Vita the last true "portable". potability in my mind implies pocketability, and the Switch and every other non-phone went beyond that. Devices like the Ayaneo Air do give me hope that that "pocketable" market may make a comback sooner than we think, though.