Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsImprecise/stiff analog sticks & major jitter issue, micro-USB port causes unstable connection
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2018
UPDATE: The analog sticks are complete garbage and start failing within months of use-time.
My left analog stick jitters immensely when moved to the north and slightly west (about 11:30 on a clock). This results in incredibly jerky movement in games, with your character spazzing out constantly depending on the severity of the issue.
I did a google about this and it seems to be a widespread issue with the DS4. Tons of people are complaining about the analog sticks jittering.
What's worse is that the newer model of the DS4 has an even worse jitter problem. Where on the older model this only happens after extended use (in my case), this appears to be a critical design flaw on the newer model, resulting in jitter no matter where the analog sticks are positioned. If you move them from their resting spot, they will jitter constantly. It affected both analog sticks, and was extremely easy to spot as the camera wouldn't smoothly rotate when moving the right analog stick. Opened up a calibration tool and saw the crazy jitter on both sticks. Packed it right back up and returned it. So, buying a new stick to fix this is out of the question.
I'll be trying to repair it with one of these products (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015CK8IV0/ or https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XH1NTFY/ ) in hopes it's actually the sensor wheel, else I may have to resort to looking for an old model controller to cannibalize. Not looking forward to this.
Either way, I can't rate this thing any worse than a 1 star here, but by god these controllers are truly garbage. My DS2 still works fine aside from age wear, and if it didn't have compatibility issues on PC with an adapter and third party tools (x360ce), I'd still be using it. Thanks for cheaping out over time, Sony.
---
Original review:
Note: This is a PC based review.
Finally upgraded from my old PS2 controller that I've been using with an adapter for ~15 years now.
Right off the bat, here's the core objective problems with this controller:
1) It doesn't come with a cable.
Apparently if you're using a PS4, that's not a problem, because a PS4 comes with the cable(s) you need, or is native wireless. But if you're using it on PC, you're SOL and forced to buy your own micro-usb cable. Well, unless your motherboard came with some fancy bluetooth wireless adapter (or you bought one as an add-in card, you loony), but then you're using wireless and have to deal with all its problems, along with needing to charge the built-in battery. Basically, you need a cable no matter what.
2) Notice I said micro-USB.
Why on earth did they use a Micro-USB connector? It's well known for its terrible reliability, and it shows its ugly head quick.
I bought 2 different cables to use with this. One was a shorter, high quality charging cable, fairly thick, the other was a longer cheaper generic cable, fairly thin. Both usable for generic USB devices regardless.
In 2 weeks they both started having loose connections with the gamepad. I'm talking barely any movement and it'll lose connection repeatedly, multiple times a second.
The connector, ontop of being micro-usb, is also designed in such an asinine way. There's a cut out for the connector so the housing actually fits, but there's also a piece of plastic housing that juts out surrounding the internal connector. This plastic meets with the housing on the cable connector, stopping it from fully inserting. This alone is mainly why it's extremely loose and wobbles very easily.
The amount of frustration this has caused is immense. You can't move the controller while using it or else whoops, connection lost. The only fix I found is to BUY A NEW CABLE for it to last a few weeks before the metal becomes loose enough for it to wobble and have the same problem crop up again and again.
For this reason alone, I can't recommend it. It is a huge design flaw in my eyes, and Sony should have a class action lawsuit on their hands about it. I'm baffled as to how there hasn't been a huge ruckus about this.
With that out of the way, let's move on to my opinions about it.
Things from a person standpoint I hate:
1) The L2 and R2 buttons turned into triggers.
As someone who's been used to buttons being buttons on controllers for 30 years, this is an atrocious design decision. There's not a single game I've played which uses "triggers" for any meaningful purpose, they're just L2 and R2, like they've been since the PS1.
The trigger sensitivity results in accidental activation with the slightest touch; even just holding the controller with your fingers on the shoulder buttons will result in them triggering. Additionally, because they're resistive triggers, you have to forcefully hold them down when you want to press the button, resulting in fatigue. I actually suffer pain after a while of playing games with this controller solely due to the constant force required to press these triggers.
It took months to start to get used to it (along with configuration to add a 35% deadzone), and I still hate it as much as the day I first used it.
Oh, and some games see them as an axis with their resting point as -50 and fully pressed as +50 and as a result the DS4 pad is unusable in numerous titles. Even just having it plugged in in certain controller aware games will result in the camera or mouse moving up and to the left at all times unless you hold both triggers at their center point. Utterly unusable.
2) The touchpad.
The start and select buttons went from being in the center as soft, easy to press buttons to being spaced off to the sides, out of any sort of comfortable reach, and turned into RECESSED MICRO-CLICK BUTTONS THAT ARE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO PRESS.
Every controller I've ever used for any platform has had the start/select buttons in the center of it. Not this thing; the touchpad is there. The utterly useless touchpad which controls your mouse cursor.. which we have a MOUSE for.
Any sort of light touch on this thing will register, causing the cursor or camera whatever else to move around, inciting frustration. The pad also doubles as buttons if you press down on them; 2 different ones.. basically a gigantic start and select button. EDIT: There's also an 'upper' touch button.
It's pointless garbage, and was one of the first thing I had to disable, along with converting the touchpad 'buttons' into start/select.
3) You need the DS4Windows tool to get it working properly, which emulates an XBOX 360 controller. Sony said it had native PC support. Sure, if you consider the 1% of games that properly detect it as 'support'.
Steam's controller stuff could work too, but I never bothered with it, since DS4Windows is a lot more powerful and works on every application, not just Steam games. It's a lot better than the old x360ce we've (DINPUT controller users) been forced to use, and you can even turn off the stupid light bar with it.
4) The light bar is always on.
Yeah, I just mentioned it, but the light bar is bright and always on unless you use a third party tool to disable it. There are zero settings for it in Windows' built in controller settings. Apparently it wasn't even possible to configure on the PS4 either until recently, but you still can't disable it there. Baffling.
5) The analog sticks feel shorter and stiffer than the PS2 pad. Maybe it's just my 10 years of wear, but I find it a bit more difficult to control these analog sticks. They seem to be a bit 'sticky', especially when you try to move them from their resting position, where they won't move until you put enough pressure to make them pop out and start moving. It's small, but it's a problem. Thought about buying those accuracy extender things, but haven't wanted to waste yet more money on this controller. Update: Bought them eventually; it helps but still doesn't fix the core issue.
EDIT: No it's not just subjective. There is a clear problem with the way these sticks are designed internally.
They're oblong shaped, facing horizontally. This results in greater movement horizontally, but vertically it's very restrictive on the range of movement. This is severely impacting precision when moving up/down.. which is forward and back of both the camera and character movement in the majority of games.
If I didn't have to deal with the adapter for my PS2 controller.. and if it wasn't 10+ years old and in need of replacement, I'd still be using it over Sony's updated DS3/4 design. The old DS2 controller was superior to me, especially the L2/R2 actually being buttons. I don't like this, but I'm forced to use it because of aging technology and well, old stuff not being in production anymore. I'd still use it over a 360 style pad any day though.. those things are atrocious in their layout.
