I’ve tried Bluetooth on my phone with remote play and it has been a horrible experience with huge audio latency. There is definitely an argument to be made against Bluetooth for gaming. Even on the Switch, which added Bluetooth after launch, has issues. Now what they should have done is support USB-C audio out so that people could use the USB-C dongles that come with many gaming headsets like the Arctis 7. Unfortunately the USB-C port is for charging only.

With all that being said, I bought the portal for mainly use within the house, and I just leave my Arctis 7 USB-C dongle in the actual PS5 and turn the portal volume down to 0. When I establish the remote play connection I just go to audio out settings and tell it to send audio to my headset. Audio has been flawless. If you are looking to game outside the house, you’ll have to go wired or pony up for PS Link compatible headsets. Or just use the external speakers.

To answer some of your questions.

• 1. All current information released as of now says that PlayStation Link is a WiFi connection not dissimilar to how wireless headsets work with USB-C dongles. It’s a form of WiFi direct connection, not to be confused with wifi going over the internet. The difference in latency between Bluetooth and usb-c wireless dongles is significant…as in almost zero with the dongle, and noticeable and distracting to unplayable with Bluetooth. Obviously there are low latency Bluetooth codecs that can work around this, but most people don’t have devices or earbuds that support these.
• 2. It is possible but if they do, they risk consumers experiencing latency with Bluetooth and then blaming the portal for the poor experience, instead of focusing their blame on Bluetooth or the headphones. Until a teardown happens we won’t know if hardware for Bluetooth is missing but the suspected SOC is supposedly capable of it.

If you have any other questions let me know. I have the portal available to test. I have been loving it mainly for the gorgeous screen, ergonomics, and haptics. They do need to allow for higher bitrate streaming to make the stream more fluid, and they need to auto disable 120hz and HDR modes on the PS5. Right now if you leave those modes enabled you get weird frame rate issues that some are confusing with lag, and you get blown out whites and crushed blacks (the same as if you viewed HDR content on a non HDR display). I expect those issues to be fixed in software as third party remote play applications, like PSPlay for Android and Chiaki for PC, don’t experience these issues.