PlayStation 5 Portal: Cutting out the lag

I bought a PlayStation Portal in July 2024 and it solved a particular problem. You see I hardly ever get to use our main TV as someone else in the family always seems to be camped in front of it. This situation has severely limited the amount of time I get to spend using my PlayStation 5 and I have built up a large back catalogue of games as a result. 

To remedy this situation I bought a Portal so I could access the console from other areas of the house. Setting up the device was quite easy and once I established a wired connection from my router to the PlayStation 5, I could play games with only occasional connection issues. I managed to finish a couple of long RPG games and began to look forward to my PS5 having a new lease of life.

And then I upgraded my broadband connection to full fibre and everything went wrong.

You see the fitter placed the router for my new super-duper fibre connection a long way away from my console and I was forced to revert to a wireless connection for my PS5. The end result was that the Portal became completely unusable as the connection constantly dropped and the lag could be measured in minutes. 

Whilst the console said it had a downstream connection of 55 Mbps and upstream of abut 10 Mbps this didn't seem to be nearly enough bandwidth. Having tried unsuccessfully to make few tweaks to my set up I became resigned to not being able to use the Portal ever again.

Then one day I was idly flicking through the network set up of my PS5 and I noted it was connected to my 2.4 GHz wi-fi band. A flash of inspiration suddenly stuck me and I swapped to the 5 GHz band. I tentatively fired up the Portal and to my joy I discovered everything worked perfectly again. So if your Portal is giving you some hassle and you cant make a wired connection to the console make sure you try the 5 GHz band - it might just save your Portal from the scrapheap.