PS portal on black friday | ps5 | best buy walmart target #ps5 #psportal #blackfriday #playstation
Unboxing the PS Portal in 2025 — right before Black Friday — has to be one of the most interesting gaming tech moments of this year for me. I decided to pick up the PlayStation Portal exactly one week before Black Friday because the deal was too tempting to ignore. I managed to grab it for $189 including tax, while the official retail price is still $210, and honestly, this deal is wild considering how unpredictable Black Friday discounts can be. Now the real suspense begins — how low will the PS Portal fall on Black Friday 2025? Will the 10% discount remain the best offer? Or will Sony slash prices even more? That uncertainty and curiosity is exactly why Black Friday gaming deals always generate massive hype. When the PS Portal was first launched two years ago, it created an unbelievable amount of excitement in the gaming community. Everyone talked about how PlayStation was finally entering the handheld gaming conversation again, even though the PS Portal isn’t exactly a traditional handheld like the PSP or PS Vita. But over time, the excitement faded a little — partly because the device at launch didn’t offer as many features as fans expected. It required your PS5 to be powered on, it needed strong WiFi, and you couldn’t truly travel and play unless your PS5 was still connected somewhere. The idea was great, but the execution was limited. Fast forward to 2025, and Sony suddenly drops updates that completely change what the PS Portal can actually do. These updates should have revived the hype completely, but surprisingly, they didn’t trend as massively as expected. So many people don’t even know that the Portal now supports features that everyone originally begged for — and that’s exactly why I made this unboxing video. The world needs to see what the PS Portal is now capable of.The biggest upgrade? You no longer need a PS5 to use the PS Portal This is one of the most shocking updates that still hasn’t gone viral. If you have a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription, you can now stream PS5 and PS4 games directly on the PS Portal through the cloud. That means new gamers who don’t own a PS5 can finally enter the PlayStation ecosystem using just the PS Portal. This completely changes the value of the device, especially for travelers, students, casual gamers, or anyone who wants a portable PlayStation experience without spending hundreds on a home console. WiFi anywhere — use it on vacation, hotels, or different countries Sony also updated the network features so the PS Portal now works much more smoothly on external WiFi networks. You can take it with you on vacation, use any stable public or private WiFi, and access your PlayStation library or cloud streaming games. This was impossible during the early days when the PS Portal was freshly launched and extremely dependent on your home WiFi setup. Now, even if you’re across the world — different city, different country — as long as you have a decent connection, you can still play. For people who travel a lot, especially international students, content creators, remote workers, or gamers who stay between different homes, this feature alone makes the PS Portal worth buying. And with cloud gaming + PlayStation Plus Premium, the Portal becomes a true standalone portable PlayStation device. So why is the interest lower now? Some gamers feel the PS Portal didn’t live up to the original hype because it arrived in a generation where everyone expects handhelds to run games natively like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, or Nintendo Switch. People expected the PS Portal to be a portable PS5, but Sony positioned it differently — as a streaming companion device. Because of this mismatch in expectations, the hype slowed even though the updates improved everything dramatically. But honestly, now in 2025, the PS Portal has reached its true potential. It’s finally the device Sony should have launched two years ago. And that’s why this unboxing is so special — I'm experiencing a product that has matured, updated, evolved, and improved beyond what the early reviews mentioned. Price Breakdown & Black Friday Speculation I bought the PS Portal for $189 after tax thanks to the early Black Friday deal. The original price remains around $210, depending on the region. The real question is whether Sony will drop the price even further during the official Black Friday weekend. Right now, the demand is slowly rising again because: More people are realizing the Portal can function without a PS5 via cloud streaming Travelers want a lightweight gaming device for vacations The holiday season always boosts gaming interest YouTubers and TikTok creators are making PS Portal videos again The supply issues from the launch era are no longer a problem If the Portal drops below $180 or even hits $169 on Black Friday, it will instantly become one of the hottest gaming deals of the year. Many people who were on the fence will finally buy it.