Come pixel-peep what the PS5 Pro can maybe actually do

I think Sony might have made a mistake.

Not by pricing the PS5 Pro at $700 or ditching the optical drive — it can always drop the price or bundle — but by trying to showcase the PS5 Pro’s graphical improvements using a bandwidth-limited, compressed YouTube video.

I say that because I’m currently looking at a native 5.3GB video file of Sony’s presentation right now, on a 4K OLED screen, and I think corporate can genuinely tell the difference in some of these games. That wasn’t necessarily true on YouTube.

But I don’t want you to take my word for it. I want you to download the lossless PNG screenshots I just captured, so you can decide for yourself.

Important note: Do not right-click to download the images you see below, do not even left-click them — they’re just visual aids so you know which image you’ll get. Left-click the link in each caption to load the pictures, then download them; each should have a filesize well over 4MB. Optimally, you should then display them on a big 4K screen, like the one you might use with the PlayStation.

The above examples are the PS5 Pro compared to the original PS5’s faster-framerate “performance” mode, and they’re designed to show how you don’t have to sacrifice graphics for smooth 60fps speeds. But if you’re willing to tolerate the lower framerates of “Fidelity” mode, the advantage isn’t as clear-cut:

Sony didn’t offer comparo images for every title, but here are pictures from other games it used to represent the PS5 Pro’s graphics, too:

If you’re really dedicated, I suppose you could even try to find the same moment in the same game on your own PS5, grab your own screenshot, and use Nvidia’s ICAT tool to peep pixels like a pro.

Is it ridiculous that we’ve come to this? Maybe! But I don’t want you to think there’s no difference between PS5 and PS5 Pro graphics at 60fps:

There’s absolutely a difference — just perhaps not one that’s worth $700 to you.