Official Sony PS5 rental service goes live in UK starting at £11/month
Sony has partnered with tech leasing service Raylo to offer the PS5 consoles, the PlayStation Portal and the PS VR2 headset on a rental basis in the UK.
In terms of what’s in the box, you get the standard retail package. The PS5 Slim Digital Edition is available with either one or two DualSense controllers, but for the PS5 Pro and Disk Edition, you’ll have to rent extra controllers to go multiplayer.
Here are the rates for the three PS5 models:
PS5 Digital Edition (single controller)
- 36 months: £10.99/mo
- 24 months: £11.99/mo
- 12 months: £16.49/mo
- Monthly rolling: £21.95/mo
- 36 months: £11.99/mo
- 24 months: £12.95/mo
- 12 months: £17.99/mo
- Monthly rolling: £23.59/mo
- 36 months: £18.95/mo
- 24 months: £20.99/mo
- 12 months: £26.99/mo
- Monthly rolling: £35.59/mo
The service seems to make good sense if you only need a PlayStation for a short period, but otherwise don’t see yourself using it very much afterwards. Or, if you’re really unsure about buying one of the devices on offer.
Outside of these scenarios, the issue is that even though the rates go down with longer lease terms, the total cost of renting also starts approaching the cost of simply buying a new console. In fact, renting the PS5 Digital Edition with one controller (curr. $459 on Amazon in the US, and £386.45 in the UK) on a 36-month plan becomes costlier in the 32nd month itself.
While this isn’t the case for the other models, it does get close enough that it just makes more sense to buy, with the added possibility of reselling it later and recovering a good chunk of that cost.
You get 14 days to cancel the subscription, after which there’s a cancellation fee. Raylo also has a reasonable wear-and-tear policy. Minor scratches, dents and discolouration are forgiven, but anything more significant like a crack or other damage will incur repair costs.
The rental service is available to UK residents from PlayStation and Raylo's website. Those interested could also consider clubbing it with a third-party game rental service like Boomerang Rentals in the UK, which offers physical game rentals by mail.
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