While Smart TV’s often have a good range of built in apps, consoles often make the best media hubs, offering the ability to access most of the mainline streaming services as well as plenty of the more niche offerings like Crunchyroll or NFL GamePass. Controlling your viewing with a DualShock 4 isn’t ideal though, and with the brand new Cloud Remote, PDP have taken their second shot at making accessing all your TV, sport and movies in one place as easy and intuitive as possible.
So, it’s a remote control. We’re all fairly acclimatised to them in our everyday life at this point right? The Cloud Remote connects to your PS4 via Bluetooth, and it’s easy enough to pair: just holding down the PlayStation button and the Share button puts the remote into pairing mode, and then you can find it in the Bluetooth device settings on your PS4. Once you’ve done that you’re just about ready to go.
There is also an app you can download to finish off setting up your remote to also control your TV, this time using good old fashioned infrared. In theory once it’s downloaded it claims to be able to recognise your TV type via its HDMI connection so it’ll seamlessly sort the whole thing out. Unfortunately it immediately fell at this first, relatively low, hurdle and didn’t manage to recognise my TV model.
Given it’s from last year’s range of Samsung 4K tellies it’s clearly not that old – perhaps it’s too new? Either way, the app resorts to the old manual line of questioning what brand of TV you have, and it had correctly set the remote up within a couple of additional button presses.  You’d be hard pressed to cry foul even if the setup doesn’t quite work as well as it boldly claims.
Where PDP’s first remote was decidedly reminiscent of Sony’s official PS3 offering – ie. It was bloody massive – the Cloud Remote is a shorter, stubbier take that fits nicely in your hand. Admittedly that smaller form factor means that it’s shorter on the number of controls it houses, but it manages to cover almost all of the bases, nonetheless.
While it felt far too light coming out of the packaging, once you’ve got batteries installed – which are not included – it’s a nicely balanced controller. Alongside the PlayStation button, you’ve got a central circle which functions as your directional input, with all of the Dualshock 4’s controls – minus the touchpad – mapped around it. Besides that you’ve got a full set of video playback controls, as well as the Share and Options buttons as well. The buttons are fashioned from pleasingly soft-touch material which makes it feel like a premium product, though I do wonder how tough they’re going to be in the long run.
Thanks to being paired with your TV as well, you’ll find a smattering of TV controls, though they only extend as far as Power, Input, and Volume. Admittedly, with your PS4 handling all of the grunt work that’s all you should really need, but for those with Smart TV’s it’s likely that you’ll still need your main controller on hand as well.
The PDP Cloud Remote continues the company’s run of making cost effective and functional accessories. A bluetooth remote for the PS4 that’ll easily pair with your TV as well, if you’re using your console as a media hub it’s perfect for accessing all of your content in one place, without having to reach for multiple controllers or risk running down your DualShock 4 battery while you watch every season of Friends for the fiftieth time. It may not have quite the level of control that the previous PDP remote did, or Sony’s old PS3 one, but the majority of people will probably find that the smaller package does everything they need it to, while actually fitting in their hand.
MrYd
Now that looks useful. Solves the problem of accidentally nudging the DS4 slightly while streaming video and one of the triggers getting pressed.
But, I heard bad things about their previous remote. The one with loads of buttons. It apparently went to sleep after 30 minutes or so and would take 5 seconds or more to wake up. Which probably isn’t ideal when Netflix decides it’s going to play a trailer for something random instead of another episode of whatever you’re watching. Or you’ve just watched 5 episodes in a row and really need to pause it straight away because 5 seconds is the time it takes to reach the bathroom and you really should have gone sometime around the end of episode 3 but didn’t.
ron_mcphatty
There was a middle model, the same styling and size as this one just no infrared or well labelled play/pause etc buttons. It’s really good, works a dream and makes it way easier for wife, kids and others to control the PS4 media functions. It does sleep but it only takes a button press to wake it, then it mostly seems to do that buttons function after a one or two second delay. On the strength of extra IR style buttons I’ll be upgrading I think, I just hope the battery life is a bit better because my PDP only lasts three months with very light use.
Andrewww
I got this previous PDP model too, and it does constantly tell me it wants new batteries, but then still lasts for ages with the same ones. It looks and works ok, but I hardly ever use it, as my console belongs exclusively to me, and no one else gets any access code in my family. With the kids and partner, I already find a mess in every cupboard I open, so I just need this one remaining thing in my life I have full control over. And if I watch a movie, I usually use headphones anyway, so I need a controller to plug it in.
Nate
This sounds perfect, is it coming to UK? Seems to be US pre-order only at the moment.
Jag
Yeah I’d like to know when this is coming here too please?
I can only seem to find the previous one right now which might be the better bet as I don’t need the IR blaster given my PS is hooked up to a monitor.
TSBonyman
I used to use my PS3 for everything and had a dedicated remote back then. But PS4 media handling pales in comparison so i’ve never really bothered with it much.
Matthijs
Seems a bit redundant given that most tv’s have a pretty descent HDMI-CEC implementation for basic controls of video app’s.