How Suitable Is A PSP For Traveling?

The Sony PSP is designed to be a mobile game console. It is slim, light, very handy and just looks cool. The size along with its powerful audio and video features make it the perfect mobile entertainment device that you would love to put into your bags when you are traveling. But how about traveling with a PSP?

You need to take several things into account:

The batteries of a PSP normally only lasts for around 2 hours. This is for a normal 3D-game using medium brightness when loaded from the UMD.

On a long-distance flight this is not really fun. What you might want to do is try to save power. You can do this by lowering the brightness of the display (using the small +/- buttons on the lower side of the display).

You should listen through earphones. Not only will this let your neighbor sleep better but earphone will save plenty of power since less power is needed to power the earphone than the internal speakers.

Also consider to store your games on your memory stick and not load them from the UMD. This saves power because the PSP does not need to spin the disc all the time which needs lots of power. This also gives you another advantage: You can story three or more games on your memory stick and you don't need to take the discs with you. This will also keep them from getting lost or damaged.

However for this to work you need a memory card with plenty of free space (5 Gigabytes or more) and a software to transfer the games to your PSP memory card.

Consider that the PSP contains a wireless network device which is now allowed during take-off and landing. This means you need to turn off your PSP during these two phases of the flight.

Watching movies on the PSP can be a great alternative to the on-board movies. The screen might be small but since it is much closer to your eyes you will have the same quality - probably better than you have with the onboard movie. Also you can stop and rewind any time you like.

When it comes to listing to music the iPod is still a better choice since it is able to store more music and the batteries lasst much longer.

However, when it comes to mobile games and movies the PSP is my number one choice - even on a long-distance flight.