Still, many graphics-conscious console gamers were looking for an excuse to use the extra pixels and HDR colors on their new 4K TVs, and spending hundreds of dollars on a stopgap console years before the PS5 served that purpose well enough.

Basically, if you have a gaming monitor that does G-Sync or Freesync, the PS5 Pro will benefit. The base PS5 does too, but the beefier hardware in the Pro, along with its new PSSR upscaling tech, gives you more options for how you want to apply it.

But the PS5 Pro comes with an extra 2GB DDR5 memory, more than double the storage at 2TB, and — most importantly — a 62 percent faster GPU, with 16.7 teraflops of raw graphical compute. Add an AI upscaling technique called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), and it’s easily the most potent home console yet made.

The launch day results are a mixed bag of impressive and easy to miss, but it’s next year’s games that really matter to the PS5 Pro’s success.

In my week of testing, the PlayStation 5 Pro delivered better visuals than the standard PS5, but it doesn't come cheap.