The PlayStation Portal at least makes stick drift easier to repair

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By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

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With stick drift plaguing so many controllers these days, it’s nice to see Sony making faulty thumbsticks a bit easier to repair on the PlayStation Portal. In a teardown video posted by iFixit, the team finds that only a little tinkering is required to access and remove the joysticks.

The iFixit team first removes the device’s plastic frame and pries off its backing. It then takes off the panel containing the Portal’s D-pad and button controls, allowing iFixit to disassemble the thumbsticks in about three steps using just a screwdriver. The only downside is that if you need to replace the Portal’s rumble packs, you’ll need to take out your soldering iron because they’re attached to the motherboard.

But still, that’s already more repairable than other first-party controllers out there, including Sony’s own DualSense controllers. As pointed out by iFixit, the thumbsticks on the DualSense controller are soldered to the device’s motherboard, making them far harder to replace. The thumbstick repair process also looks less involved than what’s required for the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con and the Steam Deck.

Sony just released the PlayStation Portal a couple of weeks ago, which serves as a $199.99 solution to streaming PS5 games on a handheld. Even though the Portal appears to be just an elongated version of the DualSense with a screen stuck in the middle, it’s nice that Sony didn’t carry over some of the controller’s harder-to-repair internals.

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