The PlayStation 5 Media Remote Is Way Better Than I Expected It to Be

There are some accessories for the PlayStation 5 that everyone can agree are useful—like the official DualSense Charging Station. Others are less popular, like the PlayStation VR 2, but it has a clear purpose. However, how many people do you know that have actually bought the PS5’s Media Remote? Well, count me among them now!

Every PlayStation since the second one has had a media remote option, since all of these devices contain a drive that can play movies from a disc. However, I never really saw the point, until I found myself reaching for the media remote instead of the DualSense, and for more than just movies!

I have a dedicated Blu-Ray player, and a launch PS5 with a disc drive. Since few if any of our Blu-rays are 4K UHD, we rarely used the Blu-ray playback function of the PS5. However, when I bought a second PS5 without a Blu-ray drive and set up my own little separate spot to play games and watch TV, I wanted to move the dedicated player to where my discless PS5 was.

This meant that whenever we wanted to watch movies or shows from disc on the main TV, we’d have to use the PS5. My wife wasn’t keen on using a controller to manage disc playback, so she asked for the media remote, and since that was the cheapest solution compared to buying a whole new Blu-ray player, that’s what I did.

Once You Have One, You’ll Use It All the Time

Logic tells you that something like a media remote for a PlayStation isn’t a good use of your money, because you can literally control all the same functions using the controller that you already have. The thing is, once you actually have the media remote, you’re going to use it because it’s simply better for everything you want to do on your PS5 other than playing actual video games.

Yes, the media remote doesn’t just operate streaming apps and the disc player, you can do pretty much anything in the PS5 OS using the remote. For example, it’s much nicer to browse the PlayStation Store or manage game installations using the media remote than a DualSense. After all, it’s still effectively a DualSense, but in a different shell. Most of the buttons, barring those special streaming service ones, map to a button on the DualSense.

I never really noticed how much of a psychological barrier using the DualSense controller to play movies on the PS5 was until we got the remote. After all, why did we prefer to use a dedicated Blu-ray player instead of the PS5 for all that time? The answer is that there’s less hassle in the way when operating the dedicated player, and now with the media remote the PS5’s media functions feel about as grindy as any dedicated player.

We use an Apple TV for streaming, but if all I had was a PS5 and I was using it for streaming apps too, I’d almost go as far as saying the media remote is an essential accessory. But, since I only watch my physical media on the PS5, I’ve noticed that having the remote makes it more likely I’ll feel like popping in a disc than before.

The Design Is Amazing

I think few people can argue that Sony doesn’t know how to design home electronics. Barring perhaps the PS5 itself, which I know has been pretty divisive, although personally I like it. Regardless, TVs, headphones, music players, and more have shown that Sony can make some incredibly stylish and beautiful stuff. Just look at my old Sony CRT TV, it’s gorgeous. Don’t worry, I bought a table for it after this photo was taken.

That Sony flair definitely shows in the design of the PS5 Media Remote. The clean look, the shape, how it feels in your hand, and the patented PS5 plastic texture all make it a pleasure to use. I’d say it’s even better in general than my Apple TV remote from a tactile perspective.

Even that PlayStation button looks like it’s just a logo, until you realize it’s actually a button too. The only real downside is that it gets dirty from handling (as you can see in my photo above) because it’s white. So I really wish Sony made a black version. That used to be its color of choice.

Sony’s Software Could Be Better Though

As much as I like the media remote as a piece of hardware, I do wish that Sony would do something about the disc player software. It’s still fundamentally the same control scheme as the DVD player interface on my PlayStation 2, and I think it could at least do with an alternative interface when it detects you’re using the remote and not a controller. The little icons just aren’t very intuitive, regardless of the control method you’re using.

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As for the remote itself, I’d like its next iteration to have at least some sort of touch strip that would let you precisely scroll through the timeline of a video the way you can with an Apple TV remote. That’s really the only feature I was actively missing while using the media remote. If you’re on the fence about getting one yourself, I’d say that if you ever use your PS5 to watch streaming or disc-based media, it’s well worth the $29,99 it goes for most of the time.