PS4 Back Button Attachment: Is It Worth It?

so as many of you are probably already aware Sony recently announced the ps4 back button attachment for the DualShock 4 which adds two additional buttons to the rear of the controller with a little LED screen on the back to control your presets I've spent about a week with it now tested a good amount of games and I think now is a good time to do an unboxing and general review to see if it's worth it and if you need this to improve your gameplay starting with the unboxing it's pretty straightforward the device is very tiny and you'll almost always be surprised once you see the Box in person there is an initial paper warning you to read it first and these instructions are cautioning you on how to properly attach it to your Dual Shock 4 then there's the actual back button attachment with more instructions on the bottom the attachment itself seems to have a solid build quality and the tiny little LED display will pretty much immediately collect fingerprints now there's a reason why the first paper warns you to read it as Sony doesn't want you damaging the device when putting it onto your controller it's a bit tricky the stereo plug is slightly adjustable so the idea here is to line up the stereo plug with the headset jack on your DualShock 4 as is and then push the attachment forward don't try and adjust the swivel just align first and push forward this creates a very firm attachment to your controller and you'll have no worries about it coming off once it's on it's held in there pretty good so a lot of you actually don't even know what the back button attachment is and this will give your dual shock forward to completely remappable buttons on the back of the controller this is something seen in a lot of higher-end controllers offered on the market currently most notably Microsoft's Elite Series controllers but ps4 owners might also know about the line of scuff controllers which a lot of controllers that offer back buttons go for well over a hundred to two hundred dollars this is Sony's first official offering and retroactively cost-effective solution with an MSRP of $30 anyone can add two back buttons to any stock DualShock for no problem the back of the device features a tiny LED display that comes on once connected to signal it's working and then goes away you can click the display to show your currently used preset you can store up to three different presets and you can cycle through them by too fast clicks to change a preset simply click and hold for a second or two then use the back buttons themselves to pick the button you want a map you can assign any button you want except the share button and the time path now it's important to note you're not removing the original buttons function you can still press the original button on the front of controller and it will still accept inputs in addition to the newly assigned one on the back the back buttons themselves may appear wobbly on video but they won't easily accept unintended presses when holding the controller you're not hitting the innermost part it's the outer portion that you press and it gives back a very responsive loud click now before going any further another thing I noticed a lot of ps4 owners asking is well why what is this thing for well as an example if you're playing an FPS like Call of Duty you could assign square to the back button that way you don't have to take your hand off the right thumbstick in order to reload or l3 so you can quickly sprint and never have to worry about having to click in the stick maybe you're playing destiny and you feel it's better to assign X to the back so you can focus on aiming while performing jumps these are just a few examples where a lot of more competitive players like to make use for these kinds of accessibility buttons but the great part about those premium controllers or this is that the buttons are programmable and you can really set them however you see fit for whatever game you want this will work wherever whenever you can easily swap this to another controller and the presets are saved directly to the device these inputs will follow it connected DualShock for no matter where it's used that includes PC or even phones and for those worried about the headphone jack being blocked it's still accessible on the button with no noticeable drop in audio quality so actually playing games with the back button attachment there is certainly a learning curve if you've never played with something like this before especially considering this goes on a stock controller I'm seeing a lot of people asking if this gets in the way of resting their fingers and the answer is yes and also know you can rest your fingers on this naturally without worrying that you're going to accidentally hit the buttons but it's the attachment you're resting your fingers on at all times so initially this is going to feel very foreign to you because it changes the dynamic of how you would normally hold it but this isn't really a huge deal I adjusted to it after a few matches of modern warfare remastered that's the easy part taking advantage of the buttons is where the fun begins and where you can really start to extend your play the responsiveness of the buttons are pretty much what you'd expect I wouldn't really consider this - your option to get your response time down and competitive play since these require more pressure for input than some of the more premium controllers that offer higher sensitivity but this is a very accessible entry point without having to pony up the extra cash with this you get two buttons with three modes and then the $150 controllers are offering up to four back buttons swappable Stix sensitivity adjustments and so on for the most part my playtime with the attachment has been a positive one the longer you have it the more ideas you can think of to make your game play better suit you and I think that's what makes this a great low-cost option for those interested having said that there are some gripes for the function this serves it would have been more convenient to have the o LED up front so you can easily see your presets and change what you need to without flipping the controller around maybe they couldn't make that work with a smaller real estate up front but that would have been more convenient also for me I use a docking station with my controllers where the DualShock 4 clicks in from the bottom so this has to come off anytime I want to charge again luckily there are docking stations that plug in from the top so if you have one of those then you have nothing to worry about it also does make the controller a little bit heavier but that's not really much of a problem just be wondering if it could have been shrunken down board other than that though it works like it showed and this will only be worth it to those that think this will genuinely better their experience with their favorite games this isn't the best pro option like I mentioned earlier but this is an accessible entry point to the style of play and see what does and doesn't work for you based on the experimentation that you do for me personally I found it very convenient to map things that often needed me to take my thumb off the analog sticks immediately most people don't need this but if you are considering it than I say it's worth a shot and I mostly say that because it does seem a bit weird that Sony is just now adding this to the DualShock board near the end of the ps4's lifecycle the big elephant here that a lot of people have been asking me about is what about playstation 5 Dual Shock 5 is this something Sony will do with the Dual Shock 5 controller is there something that they'll further iterate on and to that effect of course I don't necessarily know that for certain however it appears to me that the reason why they've done this light and life cycle is for a few reasons that there will be forward backwards compatibility with the controller's presumably you can use a DS 4 on PlayStation 5 and vice-versa ads5 can go back to ps4 but I'm slightly thinking that perhaps this also actually attached to a DualShock five now we do have a few patent images showing the controller we do have a few leaks showing a prototype controller where it does look a bit more bulky but it appears as though potentially this could still fit on that I don't think that Sony would add to the stock controller rear buttons that to me seems rather unnecessary point blank because most people really don't need something like this now having said that I don't think the stock Dual Shock 5 will have a back buttons in it I don't think that's what they're going to ship with every single system because we do have another patent that shows what appears to be a dual shock for not the more bulky layout of a dual shock 5 or those prototypes we've seen this patent show is very clearly a ds4 but it does have back buttons on that one as well so I think this is something that Sony would offer with it built in so I think it would be an option that they're exploring if it does actually come to retail but as a standard I don't think that will be the case I think it will either be the attachment can go on both controllers or they'll offer one that also just has a built in that's at least how I feel in terms of ps5 but that's highly speculative now just to round this out I do want to answer a few other questions that I asked you over on the community tab of my youtube channel a lot of humorous and you know humorous comments over there but I'll answer some of the other ones that I didn't write up in the main review their monkey gamer is it comfortable do you accidentally hit the button from time to time those were answered but does it drain the ps4 controller battery faster I didn't really see that it's one of those things where d/s pores don't really have a great battery life to begin with I'd imagine this is a very low power device so it didn't appear as though it really drained the battery much faster for Sony user Mike important question can you assign button combos circle plus square for example to it or just one button so you can't do combos but to play off of that that might be something that you might want to explore experimentation is pretty important with this thing and if you are playing something like a fighter where there's a lot of combinations that you can pull off and you're using a controller you can assign something to the back and use that in relation to the other button that you would need to pull off that combo for example and that might work out better for you again a lot of it comes into experimentation but I think there actually are a good amount of ways that you could use it for a fighter absolutely Ben mech is it annoying having the controller being more bulky or heavy when is it actually useful so I feel like I answer the second part but your first part no it's not really annoying although I did notice that I guess I realized now that every time I pick up a dual shock for off the table I always underhand it and now I can't do that because the attachment stops that so now when the attachments on I grab it from the top and for people that are still concerned about like how it feels again you do have to rest your fingers on the attachment but when I held a controller without the attachment then that felt weird so it really is a matter I've just used it for a little bit you will get used to it Myles Dyer says how does it compare to the back paddles on the scuf controller mine cost two hundred plus dollars and was busted within a year this looks like a hopeful better yet cheaper option so I've only I've full disclosure I haven't played with a scuff that much I just know that it's very much what you'd really want to use over this for example oh yeah it's a cheaper option but it's not something you're gonna want to use to actually get the same kind of competitive play style as the scuff unfortunately your Scot broke within a year so that is pretty bogus I'd be upset about that Shogun I says we'll work with second party controllers that would be third party I'm assuming that's what you mean second party means that certainly would fund the actual thing which they don't do they licensed the the PlayStation brand but I'm assuming you mean third party which in that case it would have to be the exact shape and shell of a Dual Shock 4 so obviously if the controller is completely different this won't fit on there if it has the same shell and layout like when we did on boxing's for a bunch of knockoff controllers off of ebay the shells on those I mean yeah it'll actually plug right in I don't have those controllers anymore because I gave them away but I would guess that it would still work actually is a good jumping off point I also fooled around with the accessibility options on the ps4 UI where you can completely remap the buttons on a software level not a controller level and that will override everything else so for example if you change the circle button to be X and then you map the circle button on the back fun whenever you hit the circle button on the back button it will input as next because the software will override everything and that covers just about everything so if I didn't touch on something by all means send me a tweet over at mr. Cryan I'll be happy to answer it for you if you haven't yet of course please subscribe to the best PlayStation news reviews and updates that are here on YouTube and that's it I will see you all in my next video you take it easy [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mystic

Views: 1,593,573

Rating: 4.8955698 out of 5

Keywords: PS4 Back Button, PS4 Back Button Attachment, PlayStation 4, Back Button, Back Button Attachment, PS4, Sony, Back Button PS4, Review, Unboxing, Back Button Unboxing, Dualshock 4, PS4 Controller, Dualshock 5, PS5, PlayStation 5

Id: kRzL59Y0Fs4

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 22 2020