Will you need a new television to play PS5 games?

With every new console generation comes a visual upgrade and often that means that you’ll need to upgrade your television. The Playstation 5 (PS%)is no exception.

However, up until now there hasn’t been a lot of talk about exactly what this will mean for new PlayStation 5 owners on launch day. We might finally have the answer.

New PS5 console, new 4k TV, who dis?

One of the most asked questions on the internet about the new PlayStation console is: “Will I need a new television to play games on the Playstation 5”. The short answer is “yes”.

Yes, unfortunately, you will need to upgrade your television to take advantage of the Playstation 5’s next-generation graphics fully. The long answer is that you probably shouldn’t be upgrading your television prior to launch day.

That is, unless you have a very generous budget or you currently only have an HD television and are okay with potentially upgrading again in the near-ish future.

The reason for this is that one of the big upgrades coming from the next-gen console’s increased power is the ability to play in 4k at up to 120fps. The only problem is that you won’t be able to do that with most current 4k televisions.

PS5-ready TVs

In order to run your games in 4k at 120fps, you’ll need a television designed to do it this will mean that it will have to have an HDMI 2.1 port and the set itself will need to be capable of running at that resolution and speed.

Sony also released the latest Bravia televisions that are PlayStation 5 ready. Except they hadn’t actually enabled the features on their sets at the time of release. We are now seeing firmware updates being pushed to Bravia televisions in the US and Europe.

These updates enable 4k120 Hz support, and Sony promised that other HDMI 2.1 features such as VRR (variable frame rate) and ALLM (auto low latency mode) are on their way to their Bravia sets in the coming weeks too.

The good, the bad and the pricey

The bad news is that HDMI 2.1 televisions are not going to be easy to find as there are only a few models available locally, and the ones you will find are not going to be cheap.

The good news though is that HDMI 2.1 is likely to become the standard for televisions in the coming years and the prices are likely to become more reasonable though getting a 4k120 Hz panel will probably still come at a premium compared to current displays.

If you managed to get your hands on a pre-order for the Playstation 5 and you currently have an HD television, you’d need to start looking to get your hands on a 4k television.

How else would you truly experience the benefits that your new-gen console brings graphically; bearing in mind that you’ll have to think about upgrading to an HDMI 2.1 model again at some point in the future?

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