Setting Up a PS5 Pro with Minimal Setup In Mind
I set up a PS5 Pro for a friend recently who had this weird idea that he needed every peripheral on his shelf at once. We ended up spending three hours moving things around just to get the thing to stand upright. That was before we even figured out the actual configuration. The whole thing takes about twenty minutes if you know what you're doing. Here's what you actually need. The console itself, one DualSense controller (it comes with one), your TV or monitor with an HDMI 2.1 port if you want to take advantage of 4K at high refresh rates, and a broadband internet connection. That's it. Everything else is optional and honestly most of those extras are just ways Sony gets you to spend another hundred dollars you don't need. The HDMI cable that ships with the console is fine. Don't bother buying an expensive one unless you're doing something very specific with HDR calibration. I tried a $40 cable once thinking it would make a difference and it made exactly zero perceptible difference. Save your money.
For storage you'll want to think ahead. The PS5 Pro ships with an 825GB SSD but the actual usable space is closer to 667GB after the system software. A single modern game like Spider-Man 2 or Final Fantasy XVI takes up around 100GB. You'll fill that drive faster than you expect. I run a secondary M.2 SSD in mine because I kept running out of room. A 1TB drive runs about $80 these days. Not cheap but not terrible either. The vertical stand comes with the console but you can use it horizontally too if your space is tight. The thing is heavier than it looks and the horizontal position actually gives it slightly better airflow. I put mine flat against the wall behind my desk and it pulls air from below instead of struggling through that tight vertical gap. Sound is another area where people overspend. The console outputs audio fine through HDMI to any decent TV or soundbar. If you want a headset you can pick up a cheap USB dongle headset or use the 3.5mm jack on the DualSense. The mic quality on the controller headset is terrible but it works in an emergency. I learned that the hard way during a call with customer support when my Bluetooth headset failed.
USB accessories matter more than you'd think. The PS5 Pro has three USB ports on the front. One of them is USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) which you should use for external storage if you add one later. The other two are Gen 1. Don't plug your external drive into the slow ports and then complain about load times. Network setup is worth getting right. I spent months troubleshooting lag in competitive games before I realized my console was on a shared Wi-Fi connection that my roommate used for everything including 4K streaming. Switching to a wired Ethernet connection dropped my latency from 45ms to 18ms consistently. If your router is more than twenty feet away and you can't run a cable, get a powerline adapter. They're cheaper than you think and they work reasonable well. Not perfect but better than fighting with a weak Wi-Fi signal. Software-wise the only thing I'd recommend right out of the box is turning off the automatic rest mode downloads if you have limited bandwidth. The PS5 will download updates and games in the background while it's in rest mode and it doesn't care that you're also trying to stream or game at the same time. Go into settings and power save features and change that. Takes thirty seconds.
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Also worth noting: the PS5 Pro's upscaled performance mode isn't as clean as Sony makes it sound. The PSSR upscaling is good for some titles but in others you'll notice softness or edge artifacts that weren't there on the base PS5. I had to turn it off in Returnal because the upscaling made the visual noise in the game's particle effects look worse. Check each game individually. The settings menu lets you toggle PSSR per title so do that. If you're going truly minimalist stop there. Don't buy the extra controller. Don't buy the media remote. Don't get PlayStation Plus just for the online functionality unless you actually play multiplayer. The core experience works fine with just the console and one controller. Everything else is just adding complexity you probably won't use.
