The most useful thing to know about the PS5 Pro in late 2026 is a setting most owners never had to touch. Since a system update reported in September, the Pro's upgraded upscaler switches itself on for every game that already uses PSSR. The console Push Square called "an impressive yet inconsistent upgrade" at launch has, in my view, quietly become a better one, and almost nobody had to do anything to get there.
That matters because the Pro's case at launch was never about raw power alone. It was about whether Sony's AI upscaler could deliver sharp 4K images without making you choose between looks and frame rate. Two years on, the upscaler has had a proper second pass. The price has moved too, in the wrong direction.
A note on method: Xarmo hasn't tested a PS5 Pro. This review assesses what has been published, namely Sony's own PlayStation Blog post on the upgraded PSSR and coverage and reviews from Push Square, Engadget, Video Games Chronicle, TechRadar and GamesRadar+, and draws a verdict from that evidence. Judgements quoted below belong to the outlets that made them.
What the Pro was at launch
The PS5 Pro arrived in November 2024 as an upgraded PS5 rather than a new generation. Push Square's review, by Aaron Bayne, lists it at $699.99 or £699.99 with a 2TB drive and no disc drive in the box, which you buy separately. The pitch was an upgraded GPU, better ray tracing and PSSR, Sony's AI upscaler, working together so you could have 4K and higher frame rates at once.
Bayne's verdict was that it "only does that some of the time, resulting in an inconsistent experience that both impresses and underwhelms." First-party games did best in his testing: he singles out God of War Ragnarok, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and among third-party games Lords of the Fallen and The Crew Motorfest. Elsewhere the gains were thin. Dragon Age: The Veilguard showed no notable improvement, Alan Wake 2's quality mode still ran at 30fps, and the boost for PS4 games was minimal. Pro options also varied from game to game: Bayne notes some games had a single Pro mode, while Spider-Man 2 and Hogwarts Legacy offered Quality, Balanced and Performance.
His conclusion was blunt: "The PS5 Pro is a niche product for the tech enthusiasts out there with the best displays to play their games on." That's a fair line to hold the 2026 version of the console against.
What the upgraded PSSR changed
The big shift came in February 2026. In a PlayStation Blog post, PS5 and PS5 Pro lead architect Mark Cerny announced an upgraded PSSR with a different neural network and algorithm, which he says stems from Sony's Project Amethyst partnership with AMD. Resident Evil Requiem was the first game to use it, with existing PSSR games upgrading from March. Cerny's post also says PSSR had lifted the effective resolution of more than 50 titles by then.
The clever bit is the override. Players could select "Enhance PSSR Image Quality" in Settings to apply the new upscaler to games that support the original PSSR. Reporting in August on a beta firmware for Beta Programme members, Video Games Chronicle said the option applies the newer version even when a game doesn't natively support it, and that more than 100 games supported the original PSSR. VGC also recalls an earlier complaint: players said Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Silent Hill 2 and Alan Wake 2 looked worse with the original PSSR than on the base console.
Then Sony made it the default. Engadget reports that system software 26.06-14.00.00 turns Enhance PSSR Image Quality on automatically. Engadget lists the gains Sony describes as clarity of fine detail, image reconstruction and stability in motion, and says developers reported less flickering and fewer afterimages. You can still switch it off under Settings, Screen and Video, Video Output.
Two caveats from Engadget are worth keeping. The update doesn't add AI upscaling to every game, only to those already using PSSR, and not every game with a "PS5 Pro Enhanced" badge uses PSSR at all. It also notes that Sony didn't explain why making the setting the default took about six months.
Where the case is still weak
Price, mostly. In the US, Sony has raised it twice. TechRadar reported the first rise, from $699.99 to $749.99 on August 21, 2025, with Sony citing "a challenging economic environment". GamesRadar+ reported in March that the US price would rise from $749.99 to $899.99 and the UK price from £699.99 to £789.99 on April 2, 2026, with Sony's Isabelle Tomatis citing "continued pressures in the global economic landscape". That's US$200 more than launch, before a disc drive.
The other weakness is the one Bayne found in 2024. By Engadget's account, better PSSR only helps games that use PSSR, so my inference is that a game with a thin Pro mode still gets less from the extra hardware. I couldn't find a 2026 hands-on review that retests the Pro across its library, so the case for the upgrade rests on Sony's and Engadget's descriptions rather than fresh measurements. The upgraded upscaler should improve the Pro's best case; there's no evidence yet that it makes every game a showcase.
The verdict, and who it's for
My read: the PS5 Pro in November 2026 is a better console than the one reviewers met in 2024, and a worse deal. The upscaler that was its main selling point has had a genuine second generation, and Sony's move to switch it on by default means owners get the benefit without hunting through menus. That's the kind of quiet improvement I wish more platforms bothered with.
But Push Square's line still fits. If you play on a big, high-end TV, care about image quality, and mostly play the first-party and big third-party games that get proper Pro support, the Pro now makes a stronger case than it did at launch. If you're on a modest screen, happy with a standard PS5, or watching every dollar, the higher price has pushed it further out of reach, not closer.
Already own one? Check that Enhance PSSR Image Quality is on, and use a Pro or Quality mode where the game offers it, as Engadget advises. That's the cheapest upgrade the console has had.
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