I laughed when I heard that Sony's PlayStation Portable was going to debut with a $249 price tag, which is as much as you'd pay for any full-size game console and more than you'd pay for some. I guess I'd played one too many hard-to-see games on other handhelds made by competitors.

But after seven days with a PSP unit, I'm not laughing. I'm seriously impressed.

And I'm not that easy to please.

This is not the handheld gaming device you're used to. It's the one you've wished someone would make.

The digital picture quality is as good as anything you'll see anywhere. It is, frankly, amazing -- the details clear and crisp, the color outstanding, the games rendered in 3D. The picture's every bit as good as that of the PS2 hooked up to my television.

The sound quality is truly unexpected -- actual high-fidelity stereo quality. And although I have not yet viewed a movie on it, something that's possible thanks to releases in UMD format, I have no doubt when I get around to doing so, it will be a pleasure.

The PSP Value Pack went on sale March 24 and is loaded with goodies. Besides the unit itself, which includes a 32 MB Memory Stick Duo, it includes headphones with remote control, battery pack, AC adaptor, case and cleaning cloth, and a movie, game and music video sampler with some non-interactive game demos. The first million units also shipped with a UMD (more about this in a minute) video release of the movie Spider-Man 2 from Sony Pictures Entertainment.

There are some features I haven't even gotten around to checking out, including the fact that it will let you display digital photos and it supports digital music playback in both MP3 and ATRAC formats. All this in a unit that's smaller than a day planner. That means you can slip the equivalent of a full entertainment center into your backpack or purse and take it with you. It weights a mere .62 pounds.

But there's nothing scaled-down about the gaming experience itself on PSP.

The technical details are listed in the news releases: A 4.3- inch, 16:9 wide screen TFT LCD that displays 16.77 million colors on a 480-by-272 pixel high-resolution screen. It has built-in stereo speakers, exterior headphone connector and input/output connectors that include a USB 2.0 and Wi-Fi wireless LAN so users can connect to the Internet and play online on a wireless network, most likely with some sort of wireless fee.

As many as 16 of the units can be connected to each other directly in "ad-hoc mode" for wireless head-to-head competition. And the wireless capability will also allow software and data downloads that can be saved on the Memory Stick Duo.

As for UMD, it stands for Universal Media Disc and is a "newly developed proprietary, compact but high-capacity optical disc." It's very small, only 60 mm in diameter, and can store up to 1.8 gigabytes of digital data, which is three times the capacity of a CD- ROM. The copyright protection system uses a combination of a unique Disc ID, 128-bit AES encryption keys for the media and an individual ID for each PSP hardware unit.

The controls are simplicity itself, pretty much identical to what you find on the PS2 but smaller. That's not really a problem. Within a few minutes you'll scale down your movements. The only downside is a somewhat tired thumb from moving the analog stick. But you can get that with the regular-size game unit, too.

PSP launched with 24 games available and a bunch more on the way from an impressive number of game publishers and developers.

I checked out a few of the games and was pleased to find a wide variety, so there's bound to be something to please anyone. My personal favorites from the early releases were Ubisoft's "Lumines Puzzle Fusion," which is a Tetris-like challenge, Sony Computer Entertainment America's (SCEA) "Twisted Metal: Head On" and "Spider- Man 2" by Activision.

Sports lovers will undoubtedly be tickled to discover there's a wide range of sports offerings. For instance, SCEA has published "Gretzky NHL," "MLB," "World Tour Soccer" and "NBA." Electronic Arts has several sports titles, including "MVP Baseball," "NBA Street Showdown," "NFL Street 2 Unleashed" and "Tiger Woods PGA Tour." Activision's "Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Remix" is fun, too, although I haven't had much time to play it yet. The PS2 "Tony Hawk" was a favorite at our house.

For more details, you can check out this delightful new device online at www.us.playstation.com Or you can take a leap of faith and just buy one. You won't be disappointed.

E-mail: lois@desnews.com

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