I say this as someone who bought a PS1 back in 1996, and I’ve loved Sony’s consoles ever since, but it’s PSA time. Please, please do not buy a PlayStation Portal. Obviously, you do you, and when the streaming device eventually comes back into stock, by all means purchase it if you’re thirsting for one. I’d just strongly suggest you don’t, though, because of one product I’ve fallen in love with mere days before Cyber Monday arrived.
Right now, the Backbone One Mobile Gaming Controller iPhone (Lightning) PlayStation Edition is on sale for $69 at Amazon. That’s a $30 savings, as this awesome peripheral is normally sold at $99. This same great deal is also available in the UK, where the Backbone One is £69 @ Amazon — a £30 discount off its normal £99 price tag.
If you’ve just bought an iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro, you probably think you’re out of luck due to the Backbone One’s Lightning port connection, right? Don’t worry, there’s also a USB-C version available. At time of writing, you can buy the 2nd Gen Backbone One Controller with USB-C port for $69 at Amazon. That’s the same $30 saving as the lightning version.
I bought my Backbone on Black Friday and spent most of this past Sunday glued to the device. Thanks to a handy adapter that comes in the box that creates extra room for the camera on the back of my iPhone Pro 14, it fits my smartphone like the most elegant of gloves.
It also has the official PlayStation logo on the back too, which makes it feel like a truly premium device. Factor in the $199/£199 price of the Portal, and in my book, the Backbone make’s Sony’s first-party streaming gizmo a must-avoid product. While it’s cool you get all the same haptic feedback and adaptive trigger features of a regular DualSense with the Portal, and that 8-inch LCD screen certainly looks vibrant, there’s just no way I could justify buying one when I own an iPhone Pro 14.
The main reason for that? My iPhone has an OLED screen. Hell, every Apple mobile since the iPhone X has been treated to one. The Portal’s panel may get admirably bright, but it can’t compete with the stunning, infinite blacks of OLED.
I primarily played single-player PS5 games on the Backbone over the weekend through the device’s official app, which is really well designed. It lets you switch between PS Remote Play, Xbox Game Pass and even your PC library thanks to the additions of Nvidia GeForce Now and Steam Link. Navigating through its menus is also a breeze thanks to the Backbone’s pleasingly responsive sticks. Oh, and as an added bonus, the Backbone One can also be paired with an iPad, Mac or PC where it functions as a reliable Bluetooth controller.
Hoo-boy does playing games on the tag team of my iPhone 14 Pro and Backbone look special
And hoo-boy does playing games on the tag team of my iPhone 14 Pro and Backbone look special. I’ll go one further: the experience of playing titles remotely on my Apple cell phone looks stunning. How could it not? This is an OLED screen with a resolution of 2556 x 1179, after all.
Sure, at 6.1-inches, I’m losing a fair bit of screen real estate compared to the 8-inch Portal. Yet thanks to my iPhone’s perfect black levels, that’s such an easy sacrifice to make for this OLED obsessive.
I played Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Cyberpunk 2077 and even Metal Gear Solid 2 from the disastrous MGS: Master Collection Vol 1. and I had a blast with all of them on the Backbone. The screen on the iPhone 14 Pro is so good, it makes playing Snake’s sneak ‘em up far more pleasurable than on my 77-inch LG G3 OLED as it’s far harder to spot the game’s muddy textures on a small display.
There are a couple of caveats I need to throw in, though. Just like the PlayStation Portal, your experience with the Backbone One will hinge entirely on how good your internet is. I’m lucky enough to have 1GB fiber optic, my PS5 is connected to my router through an ethernet cable and I was sitting all of 9 ft away from my console the entire time I was playing remote games on the Backbone. That said, I’m sure if you have a connection of at least 30 Mbps, you’ll have a good remote play experience with this brilliant gaming accessory.
Image quality for me was immaculate, with zero video artifacting, while I felt no discernable input lag. There was some occasional, fairly mild stuttering, but that’s the only thing that has ever so slightly blotted the Backbone’s copybook during my time with it.
Of course, if your broadband sucks, you’re not going to have a great time with either the Backbone One or the PlayStation Portal. I’m lucky enough to have access to pretty much the best internet speeds in the UK, something I definitely don’t take for granted. Again, like the Portal, the Backbone is a device I’d suggest using with your home Wi-Fi only.
With all that said, if you are privileged enough to have strong interwebs, I’d recommend the Backbone One at this lovely Cyber Monday discounted price without reservation. With the $130/£130 you’re saving not buying a PlayStation Portal, you could probably buy at least three new AAA PS5 games for that. And obviously a whole lot more if you use that cash on digital indie games from the PlayStation Store.
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