I bought 11 Broken PlayStation portals to see what exactly is going wrong with these things and if we can fix them this video is sponsored by I fix it more on them in a minute so I paid $75 each for these which I think is actually a pretty good deal assuming that the screens aren't broken if a bunch of these have broken screens then that's really not that good of a deal as of May of 2024 when I'm filming this you can buy a PlayStation portal on eBay for $1 to $150 just for parts used ones go for 160 to$ 80ish so assuming that a lot of these are fixable I'll actually be able to make some good money on these now it is important to note that I've never taken these apart I don't know what's wrong with them and unfortunately Parts generally just aren't available so I'll probably have to use parts from some of these to fix others of them so here are all of our PlayStation portals let's see if any of them turn on two of those are turning on without broken screens that's good three four okay okay we are looking really good on these so far they all turn on good come on two more one more okay wow so these all turn on and I don't see any problems with any of the screens on these so far that's amazing but to figure out what's going on with them I need to get them all at least set up so we can do some testing that's going to take a little bit of time so I'm going to do that off camera then we'll come back and have a look and see what we got that sounds awesome so all the screens on these PlayStation portals are good I'm going to go through and test each one one by one with my PlayStation 5 and then we'll come back and see what I've found as far as what's wrong and what repairs need to take place all right so testing PlayStation portal number one we've got this analog stick that looks good that analog stick looks good all of these buttons look good adaptive triggers oh this one so it does work but this trigger gets stuck okay so this one's got an R2 problem L2 is a little chewed up but R2 is definitely the problem here um I got a little more testing to do but overall this one actually looks pretty good other than this R2 so we'll take a look at that in a minute let's move on to PlayStation portal number two and after all of our testing we found number two number three and number seven I see no problems at all so those ones seem all good we got a lot of thumb stick issues though so let's start with number one and see if we can fix this R2 issue so for portal number one we have a problem over here on the R2 button so we got to get this thing taken apart and then we'll see what's going on there and if it's something we can fix now I've never taken one of these apart before but I think we need to remove this and remove this it it comes apart I think it comes apart similar to The Dual sense controller so we just need to get under it like that there we go and then under this one you got to be super careful doing it this way not to Mar up the plastic when you do that there we go this is a great one to practice on it's uh not in the best shape we got a crack right here so not surprising that this thing's kind of busted up a little bit okay now I'm guessing this back plate yep back plate comes off next got a bunch of Clips on there all these clips right here and it looks like we actually didn't even break any of them sometimes it almost seems like I know what I'm doing I love the iFixit prot Tech tool kit because it can open almost any device but what if you only want to open one device I fix it it now has a series of toolkits that are device specific this is the PlayStation toolkit so the first cool thing is it comes in its own tool bag this is like a canvas type material and it's got a nice heavyduty zipper on the top inside we've got all of these tools first we have a set of six opening picks we have a cleaning brush this can get right in the vents of the PlayStation and really help keep your PlayStation clean we have a spudger which I use all the time we have a whole bunch of tiny cleaning brushes these work great for getting into really small spaces next we have an anti-static wrist strap to protect your electronics from ESD damage they have angled ESD safe tweezers I also use these all the time and then they include every bit that you'll need to disassemble your PlayStation they've got the Philips Z the Phillips 1 the security T8 and the security T10 along with the driver and of course they included a cool patch I love these small tool kits because they include everything you need without a bunch of stuff you don't need and they're a great price if you want to check them out I'll put a link right in the description okay so L2 definitely has some marks on it too but R2 is the problem see how L2 see how much Movement we have there whereas here it doesn't bounce back like like L2 does I can't can't see what this thing's hitting on I'm going to remove the R2 button and I think I hope this thing comes off the same way as it does on the Dual sense controllers I think I think it does let's find out here come on there we go okay oh here we go got a little broken piece down inside here so there we go that little piece was broken off inside of this R2 button so is that all we need I mean that looks pretty good so the other thing is is this R2 button broken it actually doesn't look broken so can we just slide this back on here okay I mean that that's all it took it was just this this broken plastic piece down in there that actually looks pretty good now it all it all works good has as much play as the L2 over here so that one actually is in pretty good shape actually just looking at this I think what I'm going to do is just replace both of these since we're already here and also I want to see if the buttons from the Dual sense controller will work on here so I have the buttons right here so these ones we just need to get in this little Gap and push pry down on it and then it comes off and then same thing over here come on got to get down in that Gap though there we go okay there we go then we just slide them up come on maybe they're not the same this is not wanting to slide on there oh nope I'm just doing it wrong okay there's that one and then we have L2 over here slide on that way okay there we go looks pretty good now I want to get need to get these screws in and then we need to put these other bumper buttons on and just make sure that there's no problems there make sure that everything fits that's how it should R1 goes over here there we go okay that actually feels pretty good good so far and there we go so portal number one is all fixed that was a pretty easy fix let's move on to the next broken one portal number four so as far as I can tell on number four and as far as I I've tested the only problem is that we're missing this thumb stick the problem with that is at least as of filming this video These are not available so we've got to figure out something that might work for a thumb stick or at least try a few things I don't know if there's anything that will work but I've got a bunch of controllers around here so let's see if we can figure out anything that might work for this uh I think firstly we need to get this thing apart enough I need to at least get this black piece off and that might be enough to test a few things so that's easy enough if I can't find anything that'll work I'll just I'll just keep these around until the these parts do become available because I am confident that that will happen at some point this screw and this screw yep okay now we got two screws that we can remove this kind of uh Shield over the analog stick that one and then this one okay and that comes off just like that and now we're down to our thumbstick there's actually metal in here that's impressive so all of this piece is a big slab of metal and then if we want to take the analog stick off we just got this screw this screw and then this little ribbon cable right here so easy enough that is that is impressive they're actually using metal in this I'll give them that but now we have to see if we can find a thumb stick that will fit onto the shaft and not be too big or too small so this is the size that came off of it this is the size of a dual sense controller which that's just too huge and really I think the main problem is actually this the shaft right here is too big because that's got to fit up through here and it's I mean as you can see it's just not even close so it's got to be something smaller like this I'm going to see if I have anything around my shop that might work for this so the thumb stick for the PlayStation 4 5 and Xbox controllers doesn't work mostly because the stem is too fat around here um this almost would work this is for a Nintendo 3DS firstly though it doesn't fit on here secondly though when you put this guy on here there's just not going to be enough room for it to move I've checked lots of other controllers both first party and aftermarket and I can't find anything close except for this this is from an Oculus Quest 2 controller and this actually does sort of fit on there and it moves around okay when we put this on here though the top of the the actual thumb stick part hits the edge so what I'm wondering is if we put a little bit of space in there then it can move a little bit further so I'm thinking I'm going to stuff something down in here to space that up a little bit which will make that sit up up a little bit higher and make it so that has a kind of full play and I think probably like I could just stick some paper up there probably and that will create enough space to make that stick up a little bit so let's try that and see if we can get that to work unfortunately I don't know how much paper I'm going to need I do know that it needs to stick up quite a bit so I'm going to just stuff some of this down here until I feel like it's about right okay that seems probably pretty good this is obviously not a long-term solution I do want to be clear about that once there's manufacturers actually making new thumb sticks for these then I can just take and and replace this with one of those but until then I I would like to find something that will work for now okay oh yeah that totally works okay I'm going to put this together and then we'll see if this works or if there's any any problems that arise because of this thumb stick now I have also heard that the PlayStation VR2 have thumb sticks probably very similar to this that work for this I don't have one here so I don't know for sure if that's true but I have read that online okay with that installed let's get the rest of this thing put back together okay and just giving everything ATT test good good that works that works it definitely is not as smooth as this one because the radius of this uh the stem of the thumb stick is smaller I think that's the main reason so I think this will work if you're wanting to get your portal you know working but I can't say I would recommend it long term it's just not made for this application that being said it totally does work and can get it working for some amount of time so we're going to call number four uh at least sort of fixed and once we can get new thumb sticks for it then this will be a fairly easy fix also these other two that are missing thumb sticks we're going to skip over those just because there's not really anything we can do about them for now at some point those will be fixable though so let's move on to number five that has a left thumb stick that won't move up and down but it does move left and right so I've got it apart down to this trigger and it is still not moving up and down so we're going to take this cover off and then I'm going to try and unplug and plug in the ribbon cable and see if that does anything probably won't but I think it's worth trying at least I think the problem is probably internal to the thumb stick or the analog stick but let's find out okay still no up and down so we'll remove this okay now while it's on let's unplug and plug this back in and see what happens okay unplugged it thinks it's stuck in that position okay now we will plug it back in I hope okay got to keep the Locking tab up while I do this okay plugged back in and still nothing let's try and give it a little cleaning also don't think this is going to do anything but it's worth trying yep still get back and forth no up and down so we we will remove the thumb stick itself so I'll undo that locking tab again so there's little tabs on each of these um two tabs on each side of this metal piece you have to bend back and then you can get the metal piece off and then we have the flexible printed circuit right here and then we have the internals of this thing I'm going to get under a microscope and let's see how this thing works so here we go we've got this little tab right here that engages with this carrier and then we've got metal contacts right here and then the same thing over here now this is not engaged with that I don't know if that's how it was before I took it apart or not because when I got that metal piece off of it it just kind of exploded all over so we are going to put this back where it goes there we go okay now that's in place so you can see as this moves it moves those metal tracks those metal tracks engage with the black tracks on this flexible printed circuit and one of the things I see is it looks like there's kind of like some grease on this there's some sort of liquid on this and I'm wondering if that has caused a problem so we can see those metal tracks engage here and here this one is very discolored like it got hot and then the metal tracks over here engage here and here so I'm wondering if maybe this uh fluid this liquid whatever it is looks like maybe grease or something or maybe something was spilled into it we don't know that very it very well could be possible that something was spilled in this but you can see that these two are definitely discolored so the first thing we're going to do is clean this all up and then we'll reinstall this thing back onto this thumb stick and then we'll put it all back together and see if that fixes it going to use a cotton swab and some isopropyl alcohol just to give this a good cleaning while making sure we don't get any of the cotton hairs stuck anywhere in it okay that is looking way better all of that liquid is gone now we can try to put this thing back together and I will be the first to say this is not easy everything is very delicate everything's trying to move around trying to do one thing and you can't because it's moving too much it's not in the right position there we go that's in position that's in position okay so that part looks good everything is in position there now the printed circuit that we just cleaned needs to go in I don't remember how this goes though actually no that should be easy yeah it goes just like this goes around there and there are two little tabs as you can see actually there's four tabs one here one over here one there and one there okay so now hopefully we can get this metal piece on and there's a bunch of grease down in there I feel like that's greased for the end of this thumb stick right here so I kind of want to leave it there but also I'm not sure what caused that you know there was that fluid on there and I'm not sure maybe that was just some of this grease also got to make sure this thing stays in place while we do that which is going to be difficult okay everything's in place now I got to try and get this thing on here so these have to go over here oh wow this is so difficult honestly I think I'm gonna have to do this part off camera this is just I I don't have enough hands to do this while trying to film okay I think somehow I actually did get it I'm not sure I'm going to be able to bend these tabs down without them breaking but let's give it a try these are not meant to be bent and rebent for sure okay that one looks okay let's try these ones okay okay there okay there all right this thing is back together I think how it should be that was not easy that's just simply not possible for the average person I think okay that goes like that okay okay let's get this thing back installed and see if it actually works okay okay now I need to open the Locking Tab while we push it in there we go okay now two screws just screw it back on Thum stick cover all right and that's good enough to test let's turn it on and see if it works now okay here we go it worked back and forth and it works up and down so that thumb stick is all fixed I'm a little disappointed cuz I don't know for sure what's causing that problem so one of these other ones I'm going to open it up a little more carefully I might even have to break those metal tabs but I really want to figure out what's causing that issue so number six has the exact same issue just on the other side let's open that up more carefully and see if we can figure out what exactly is causing that problem and now we have it apart we can see the right thumb stick moves left and right does not move up and down I don't feel any roughness I don't feel anything strange with this I think that button even works so it just doesn't move up and down so I'm going to do the same thing going to remove these two screws remove the ribbon cable from here and then we'll take it apart and see if we can figure out exactly what's causing this problem okay to start do we see any external damage any evidence of anything going on externally you can see all all of the flexible printed circuit board is all in place no damage there no damage on any of the metal I think we're in pretty good shape on this one so let's start by removing this top metal piece One Clip there one clip here okay and now we'll reinspect anything funky going on that we can see no just can't see anything at all okay so the next thing we need to do is remove these metal tabs now these metal tabs I don't know totally why but there's this little groove right here so that's one of the things that makes this difficult because that's a weak spot so when I unbend this it's going to weaken that and then when I rebend it it's going to weaken it even more so these were definitely not made to repair now with the previous thumb stick that I repaired one of these tabs did break and for this I'm actually going to break these tabs because we need to get this metal play off very carefully the other thing is there is a clip under here under this plastic piece that there's no good way to get to I guess we might be able to get in there and unclip it but it is very difficult so I think what I'm going to do on this is I'm going to purposefully Destro destroy this plastic part of the thumb stick and then I'm going to fully Bend these all the way up so we can remove this metal plate very carefully the reason I want to do that is because I want to see if those sliders are out of place and there's no way to do that if we take this off kind of clumsily and it just kind of all pops apart so I think that's the only way to do it I really hate to break this thing but at the same time we need to figure out whether what's going on here is a factory defect or not I feel like it probably is but don't know for sure okay so breaking that makes it so I can uncp this right now much easier than I could before so we will uncp this and actually kind of bend it out so that's not a problem and then the same thing over on this side right here there we go so same thing here and we're going to do this very carefully to make sure that when we open this we can see what's going on on the inside okay there's that now I need to hold constant pressure down so this thing doesn't kind of come apart on me before I'm ready for it to okay there's those two now this one all the way up and come on need to get a better bite with my there we go all the way up okay actually I'm going to do a little bit more to make sure that this comes off easily that one's pretty good okay so those are all good now we need to flip it over and get this thing taken apart okay so this piece comes off there we go so what do we have we definitely have some of that grease here that could be a problem let's get this off and have a look see if those yep that's the problem right there so this is off its track and we know that that's the problem because we were very careful taking this apart so all that needs to happen is this little guy right here we can get it that didn't really do much that didn't really do what I was trying to do these things are so tiny so this little guy right here needs to be in that track right there come on just like that and now that's fixed the problem is now these are bent out like that and this is this is what will happen when we try to bend them back so try to bend these back and look at that it breaks off right at that point so unfortunately this one is definitely not fixable any of the others that I try to fix are not going to be put together that well because of these tabs mostly because of these tabs so unfortunately these analog sticks are not made to repair and there's no analog sticks available at this point so it's as another example of a large corporation screwing over the consumers because of money so we have another device that could be fixed by a very cheap part but unfortunately we can't because the manufacturer doesn't make them available and doesn't make the part repairable so that sucks for us but it is what it is right now at some point third party manufacturers will probably start making these so I'm going to set this aside and once I have a new thumb stick then I can install it and get this thing back working so number six isn't fixable yet but it definitely is fixable at some point soon number eight and number nine are missing the right thumb sticks once those thumb sticks are available we can replace those number 11 has the same problem the thumb stick won't move up and down but left and right works so there's not much we can do there let's move on to number 10 that has a left thumbstick cap that looks broken that's what I'm talking about let's look at that and see what's going on here it's going to be interesting I feel like this one I feel like it's off of the analog stick the thumbstick cap is off of the kind of the stem I don't know how that would happen though seems so weird yeah it's totally off and it's just totally it's gouged it out in there okay oh and we got a piece of plastic from oh from the actual that is really rough so that whole thing is broken too oh that's a bummer I was hoping this would be something we could just fix this up but unfortunately the analog stick itself is busted up and as previously discussed there's no way to fix that because they don't sell this really cheap part such a bummer I hate the fact that manufacturers can get away with not selling Parts like this this is like a five maybe $1 part and because they refuse to make it and sell it this at least right now is just not fixable so that means the number 10 is not fixable right now number 11 is also not fixable right now but will be at some point so while we are only able to fix a couple of these PlayStation portals all 11 of these are fixable and would be fixable right now if we could get the parts for them at some point third party manufacturers will start making parts for these and then we can fix all 11 of of these PlayStation portals if you like this type of video and want to see a video where I'm trying to fix eight broken dual sense controllers I'll put a link for that video up on your screen now so you can come hang out with me and see if I was able to fix those thanks so much for watching today and I hope you have a good one