The PS5 is here, offering gorgeous 4K graphics with ray tracing, smooth frame rates, and the amazingly ingenious DualSense controller. But the real killer feature of this system is the 825GB SSD, which loads games almost instantly, making long loading screens a thing of the past.

But how much faster can the PS5 load games than the PS4? We tested Sony's next-generation console against a standard PS4 and a variety of upwardly backward-compatible games and noticed an across-the-board improvement in loading. While some speedups were subtle, the PS5 was able to reduce load times by as much as 50% on certain top titles.

Let's start with "Spider-Man: Miles Morales," which is a PS5 launch title and also available on PS4. The game's main menu takes only two seconds to navigate to the vast open world of Manhattan in the PS5 version, while the PS4 version has a loading screen that lasts about 20 seconds before play.

However, this is a game optimized for the PS5 separately from the PS4 version; the most dramatic improvement was seen in the hit action game "The Last of Us Part II" (The Last of Us Part 2), released earlier this year on PS4, which took 15 seconds on PS5, double the time on PS4. The game launched, and while it takes a minute for gameplay to load on PS5, the PS4's load time was reduced by nearly 30 seconds.

"Star Wars Battlefront II" showed similarly significant improvements, with startup times that took over a minute on PS4 reduced to about 33 seconds on PS5. In addition, loading to missions is now twice as fast.

Other improvements in load times were more subtle, but still noticeable. In "God of War," the PS5 was able to enter gameplay about 13 seconds faster, and in "Mortal Kombat 11," the PS5 was able to start combat in just 10 seconds, compared to 18 seconds on the PS4.

The PS5's comprehensive backward compatibility is one of its greatest features, allowing users to play almost any PS4 game immediately. Not only can you misplace your PS4 (with a few exceptions), but load times for many of the PS4's best games have been greatly improved. More PS5-optimized patches will be available for more PS4 games in the coming months, and we look forward to seeing more of our favorite PlayStation titles on Sony's new hardware.