Playstation StationAll Things Playstation

I did not think I needed yet another remote control because I thought the six-axis had everything it needed for movie playing on the ps3 and, yet, I bought one. There were 2 initial reasons:

- my wife was missing a ‘magic wand’ shaped remote for playing movies

- Amazon had it at a great price in one of them lightning deals

I ended up using it myself and, in fact, using it for more than just movie playing – see below.

But, let’s do a quick inventory of features:

= It’s blue-tooth enabled and, therefore, it’s not taking any ports on your ps3. This is probably important for anyone who has a “2-USB ports console”.

= It’s wand-shaped, allowing the non-gamers to control their movie-watching activities while holding a familiar-shaped device in their hand.

= It maps ALL the six-axis buttons and performs everything a six-axis would do, except for the joystick features of R3 and L3 (but you do have the push-down or ‘click’ abilities for them).

= Includes additional buttons that the movie-only users would expect on a remote such as:

+ a number pad

+ eject

+ red, green, blue, yellow buttons

+ play, stop, pause

+ slow(step), scan(left/right), prev/next

+ display, top menu, pop up menu, return

+ subtitles, angle, audio

= 2 AA battery powered (still with the original Sony batteries after 4 months of use)

What is interesting about this remote is that you can use it for much more than movie-playing. Given that it has all the six-axis buttons, guess what? You can use it, and I do use it to:

- surf the web

- play music

- shop at the PSN store

- play certain games such as Sudoku

- turn the ps3 on/off when your six-axis controllers are in the charger and I am playing GT5 that is using a racing wheel

And, yes, you CAN turn the ps3 on and off with this remote. Turning it on is easy – you simply press the playstation button and the ps3 turns itself on. To turn it off, you either go as far to the left on the X-bar and all the way up and press Enter (the turn-off playstation icon will be highlighted) or you simply hold the playstation button pressed for a few seconds and then select ‘yes’ and press the X button a couple of times.

Overall: I am happy with this peripheral. Yes, it’s one more remote control but it’s a pretty good one, for the reasons I stated above.
Rating: 5 / 5