The X button is much farther out than is ideal and I personally have to have my thumb fully outstretched in order to reach it properly. The A button is not difficult to reach, but you can begin to feel that it is a bit further than expected. The Y and B buttons are very easy to reach and fairly comfortable to use. There is a standard ABXY cluster of buttons in the bottom right corner where another joystick would be on a Dualshock-style controller. The buttons are where the Steam Controller begins to fall short. The grip on the joystick is made of rubber and your thumb is unlikely to slip off. The joystick itself is very similar to that of any other controller and can be clicked in.
The joystick to the bottom left of the controller is easy to reach and is not a wholly unfamiliar concept to anyone who has used a Dualshock controller. You could reach them without doing so, but this action will put strain on your index fingers. Converse to the triggers and paddles, the bumpers suffer a similar fate to those of the Xbox One controller where you may end up having to force your hands forward and lift your palms from the controller’s grips slightly in order to reach them properly. Unfortunately, their size does not make them any more comfortable. A quick size comparison shows that they are approximately three times the size of the Xbox 360 controller’s RB and LB buttons. Similarly to the triggers, the bumpers are significantly larger than those of recent controller designs.
The reason for this is that users can choose to configure each trigger to perform a different action for both a soft and hard press, the latter of which is denoted by the click. They click when pressed all the way down to notify the user that they have been pressed in all the way. These triggers are larger than those of recent controller designs and provide more functionality.
Thanks to the way the controller is designed your index fingers are naturally inclined to sit on the triggers. Removal is much simpler, requiring only that you slide a small switch upwards. It can be a bit difficult to get the batteries into each slot and may take a bit of force. Removing the plate reveals the battery slots in each grip. The back paddles are attached to a rear cover plate that can be removed by sliding a switch at the bottom of the controller. They are exceptionally comfortable to use due to the design of the grips on the controller, and will quickly become second nature, just as bumpers and triggers have in the past. Upon seeing initial designs one of my greatest concerns was that the back paddles would be inherently uncomfortable to use due to their location, but I can say that the exact opposite is true. The way the back of the controller forces your hand to sit inclines your fingers to wrap around and sit directly upon the back paddles. Many have stated that the D-Pad engraving in the left touchpad was a poor design choice, but personally I feel that it is a shallow enough engraving that it is not distracting. Depending on the configuration it may mimic a single button or four buttons in a D-Pad formation. Each touchpad can be clicked in, mimicking modern joysticks. Bending your thumb slightly will place it directly in the center of the touchpad. Rather than being angled back the grips each angle forward, placing the end of your thumb just beyond the top of each touchpad when outstretched. The edge is flatter than that of the average gamepad, allowing your palm to rest comfortably upon it. The combination easily adds up to a weight twice that of my regular Xbox 360 controller.ĭespite the weight the grips conform to your hand extremely well. Because it runs on batteries that are slotted into each grip, even more weight is placed on each side. The weight distribution is balanced by placing the majority of it within the grips. Steam’s gamepad is heavier than your average gamepad and features a bulky design with larger grips than I have seen on a controller since the original Xbox’s pad. Your first encounter with the Steam Controller will likely be a bit uncomfortable.
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