It’s useful for navigating menus in games/apps that are designed for keyboard/mouse. I can’t say I ever use the touchpad in-game like you would the touchpads on the Steam Deck itself.

As someone with all Sony consoles… it’s good, but even first party titles barely use it. Usually it’s just used as a button, sometimes multiple (GT7 gives you turn indicators to the sides and emergency blinkers on the center, for example).

As a track pad it’s honestly a perfectly fine one. That said! PS4 and PS5 ones are very similar from the point of view of pc gaming, you get the usb port to be a type C, haptic feedback instead of the ancient rumble motors and uh what dumb name they gave to the triggers… adaptive triggers? Cool tech. So in short right now you get rumble that works different and in the future will be better as games start to use it, a better usb, and triggers that only Sony games use right now.

For comparison the Xbox Series controller have the ancient rumble motors (so in other words Steam/Sony/Nintendo are haptic, Microsoft isn’t) that every game has been using since the rumble pack/Dual Shock, it has no track pad, no motion sensor, and rumble triggers that are kinda dumb but in Forza Horizon 5 they are extremely good at making you feel the loss of grip. If you have no preference about the shape, Sony gives you the most advanced and complete hardware that will give you the full experience in titles that can use it, all for the same price. Downside, there’s a shitton of stuff in there and the triggers have a motor each, so the battery won’t last as long. Also pretty rgb lol.

I also have an 8BitDo one shaped like the Sony ones and it’s good. Simple tech, barebones, works well. Less expensive.

Right now if I could have the perfect controller it would be the PS5 one but with hall effect sticks that are touch sensitive like the Deck’s ones, plus the rear buttons. Damn near the PS5 pro controller tbh.