The CPU performance and screen resolution show their age, and being a SCE product, using it as anything but an appliance for consuming purchased content involves jailbreaking it and then working with a system not designed to be used that way, but the industrial design, as with many Sony products, is beautiful.

I still have my unlocked vita and it's amazing. Crazy how the UI is more responsive and faster than most modern handhelds

PSA for anyone that might have a PSP sitting in a box somewhere:

Go and check on the battery and make sure it hasn't turned into a spicy pillow. Out of a sample size of 3 between mine and a couple friends, 2 of 3 were bursting out of the shell and required disposal.

If your PSP battery is still good, look into charging it and playing some PS1 games on the go. It was the best feature of the console.

Me in 2004: "The PSP 3000 can connect to the tv using HDMI. But who actually has an HDTV??? I have no use for this...."

Me today: "Huh.....I actually DO have an HDTV now. I just don't have a PSP".

Funny how life works....

Ah, the PSP.... First personal device I owned that had a web browser.

So much porn, lol.

I don't know anyone picking up a PSP again in 2026. I also don't know anyone.

I had one. It was great.

I never has an original psp, but I had a psp-go. It was great! I primarily used it to emulate the nes and Genesis. Not many people liked the other slide out screen aesthetic but it was one of my favorite parts of the design. It reminded me of the Motorola sidekick.

@PerfectDark I had the PSP-1001 a few months after launch & felt like a huge tech upgrade over the DS at the time.I was wayyy into modifying it, (just going from memory) downgrading to firmware 1.50 & running games off of the magicgate pro duo to get faster load times & better battery life cuz that UMD drive sucked down juice fast.The modded in web browser was very cool, of course it was basic but neat. Typing was a pain.The custom firmwares were amazing.It was way ahead of its time.👍

I picked one up today and then put it back down. I was cleaning and organizing.

I just sold mine recently.

Steamdeck makes it obsolete.

Also, the psp controls were not very good. The stick is tiring to use, the movement buttons are a bit far apart. I did like the mp3 player when traveling and the movie on a umd gimic was interesting.

I did like it overall at the time, but being able to choose to be not bothered with online services (as the article suggests) is just as viable with a steam deck. Except when I DO want to use an online service such as my plex or jellyfin, I can do that too. Movies on a plane streaming from home, amazing.

PS Vita supremacy

I recently (a year ago) bought my first portable PS system, a Vita. Fantastic console, thriving 'underground' community. Just caught the tail end of all its online services working before they'll be shut down this year.

I just love the PSP. I have a 2000, but I rarely use it. But I use my 1000 quite a bit. Other than being re-shelled, it has a glass lens and an IPS screen. I think I might remove the UMD drive to do a big battery mod. Don't think I've used the UMD drive once since modding it.

Ys Seven and Midnight Club are my faves on the console. But Ace Combat X and Me & My Katamari are also way up there.

Rose tinted glasses. Psp was cool but flawed and completely irrelevant today outside from nostalgia farming.

I love my PSP!

I'm not everyone, it seems.

Now, if I weren't a big retro fan.. but I am. I am also aware that all the Sony batteries turn into spicy pillows, that's why I got rid of them and was happy stuff was re-released on the switch.

Right. I still kept a psp go. And I liked Sonys portables.

Me and my wife both have PSPs, we brought them with us when we got married. We now have steamdecks so the poor PSPs have sat in a box for a few years. Much better battery life than my deck lol

cant remember what ever happened to mine. It was such an amazing device, I remember I had a lot of fun with it as a little kid. idk if its nostalgia but I feel like i would appreciate it even more nowadays if I still had it. :(

Now you made me go and buy an IPS screen for my GBA. Shame on you!

I'm not picking up a psp.

I'm just emulating it on my steam deck.

Everyone? Like even my neighbor?

Yeah... Rrrrrright...

Welp. Time to listen to mezzanine again…

Because they're easily moddable and have a decent screen size?

I recently modded my wife's old 3DS XL, and that's all well and good, but the screen sucks and I found out my MacBook can play 3DS games perfectly (via emulation) so now I've been dumping my carts through the 3DS (which also decrypts them) and just running them on the computer. Funny thing about Animal Crossing in particular, those games will generally ramp up to whatever hardware you have. Why they do this I have no idea since Nintendo hardware is so underpowered. But I have Animal Crossing New Leaf running in 4K (albeit in 4:3 or whatever the top screen was) and it looks almost as good as the Switch version (New Horizons). It's insane how good this old 3DS game from 10-15 years ago looks today on modern hardware. The Switch couldn't make New Leaf look this good if it wanted to. Maybe the Switch 2 could?

Interested to see if I can push City Folk (the DS version) or Wild World (the Wii version) this far.

But yeah, PSP is known to be an emulation beast. The problem was always the UMD drive, it drank battery like a frat guy drinks lite beer from a keg. But a modded PSP doesn't need the UMD drive at all; it loads everything from the memory card. Including ISOs of UMD games. So the battery life goes way up, since the battery was intended to support the UMD drive.