News News Official
PlayStation finally puts a price on its first wireless desktop speakers
Sony Interactive Entertainment showed Pulse Elevate nearly a year before telling players what the speakers would actually cost. The missing numbers are now in place: preorders open September 1 and the first PlayStation-developed wireless speakers launch November 12 for $219.99.
By Maëlle 
Midnight Black will be the broadly distributed version. White is being handled more selectively through PlayStation Direct and participating retailers, with availability varying by country.
Pulse Elevate extends a hardware family that previously consisted of things worn on the head. The same PlayStation audio group produced Pulse Explore earbuds and Pulse Elite, and several of their technologies have been moved into a pair of desktop speakers.
PlayStation is building for the monitor desk now
Sony's rationale is tied to where people are using the PS5. Product development VP Edwin Foo said earlier this year that PlayStation had seen a growing number of players move away from the traditional television-and-couch setup and toward monitors and personal desktop spaces.
That leaves an obvious weak point. Gaming monitors are plentiful, but many have no speakers at all and others include audio mostly as a convenience feature.
Pulse Elevate gives each channel a planar magnetic driver plus a separate built-in woofer. Sony is taking technology associated with its Pulse headsets and using it to produce a conventional left-right sound field in front of the player.
Supported PS5 games can also feed the system through Tempest 3D AudioTech. Sony has not published detailed output-power figures, driver dimensions or a measured frequency-response specification yet.
The wireless link is more important than Bluetooth
A USB-C PlayStation Link adapter ships in the box. Sony specifies lossless, ultra-low-latency wireless audio across PS5, PC, Mac and PlayStation Portal.
Bluetooth serves a different purpose and can run at the same time. A player can keep game audio on PlayStation Link while receiving music or a call from a phone over Bluetooth rather than constantly re-pairing the speakers.
EQ, volume and microphone controls integrate with the PS5 interface. PC customization is also planned, with some software options scheduled to roll out after launch.
The right speaker replaces the boom mic
Voice chat is handled by a microphone built into the right speaker. AI-enhanced noise rejection is supposed to distinguish speech from the game audio coming from the same desktop.
In Sony's June hands-on demonstration, music was played loudly through the speakers while a person spoke during a call recording. The processed recording largely isolated the voice.
A controlled demo cannot answer how well that works with keyboards, cooling fans, reverberant rooms or multiple people talking nearby. It does show that the microphone is not a token addition for occasional calls; headset-free chat is part of the product design.
Twelve hours off the dock makes the pair unusually portable
Each speaker includes a rechargeable battery and its own charging dock. Sony rates off-dock use at up to 12 hours.
That allows the pair to move with a PlayStation Portal or to become Bluetooth speakers for another device. The enclosures can also be tilted toward the listener or repositioned to spread sound more broadly across a room.
They remain a two-speaker system rather than a single portable box, which makes the travel pitch more specialized than Sony's marketing might initially suggest.
Pulse Elevate launches November 12 at $219.99 in the US, €219.99 in Europe, £199.99 in the UK and ¥37,980 in Japan.