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Monday, March 12, 2012

PlayStation Vita

The PS Vita is the most powerful, dazzling and impressive handheld games console ever built.

It packs not one but two quad-core processors, a sparkling 5-inch touchscreen OLED display, dual analogue stick controls and games that go way beyond what any other portable device is currently capable of.

That includes the Nintendo 3DS, which may wield 3D optics as its trump card, but nonetheless simply cannot compete with the Vita in terms of graphical fidelity. What the PlayStation Vita offers is more akin to a home console experience on the move, and that puts it in an elite class of one.

Of course, whether or not there is a big market for such a device is an interesting question, and we're in the process of getting some early answers. A sluggish start in Japan has been followed by some less-than-stellar sales figures in the first weeks of its UK and US launch. It doesn't come as much of a surprise.

After all, it's a luxury item launching post-Christmas into a Western world ravaged by financial floundering, and further hindered by Sony's desperate need to make money at a time when the strength of the Yen makes exported Japanese products very expensive.

Features

The PlayStation Vita's immense power is provided by the 32-bit Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU - the same beating heart you'll find in many other devices including the iPad 2. Graphical grunt is thus supplied by the A9's defacto GPU of choice, the similarly quad core PowerVR Series5XT SGXMP+ chip.

That makes the Vita more graphically capable than the iPhone 4 or the iPad 2, despite its far more modest price point.

Memory is provided by 512MB RAM and 128MB VRAM for the GPU. There were rumours prior to launch that Sony was attempting to slash that memory allocation to 256MB in order to save money, but it's a good thing it's been left in.


Of course, the big stand-out feature of the Vita is that incredible screen. It's a real stunner, and discards with LCD tech to jump straight into bed with sexier, brighter and more efficient OLED.

It's a winning feature, and it packs a qHD resolution of 640x960. That doesn't make it the sharpest screen in the business - the iPhone 4S' retina display has a pixel density of 326ppi, while the Vita rocks up with just 220ppi - but it's plenty enough to make Vita's games resonate with graphical beauty beyond anything else on any other portable device.

Features: 4.5/5
Design And Build Quality: 3.5/5
Performance: 4/5
Value For Money: 2/5
Mojo: 3/5

Overall Rating: 3.5/5


 PRICE

At launch the PS Vita will set back UK gamers around £209.99 (RRP £229.99), while the 3G version will launch a little later for £259.99 (£279.99). At the time of writing, the cheapest deal for the PS Vita is £197 at ASDA, while Amazon have matched that price.

There are bundle deals if you shop around, and these include different combinations of PC Sivta with memory cards and games.

Like us @TechGokz for more updates

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