The Essential Guide: Why Adding Thumbsticks Grips to All Your Controllers Enhances Playtime

Key Takeaways

• Thumbstick covers prevent rubber degradation and extend the life of controllers, saving you money in the long run.
• Covers greatly improve grip on all types of analog sticks, making gaming more comfortable and precise.
• Grips are affordable, with options available for a few dollars in a variety of colors and styles.

For years, I used controllers with naked analog sticks. But after I dressed up my first pair of thumbsticks with some removable thumbstick covers, I never looked back. Here’s why.

Thumbstick Grips Prevent Joystick Rubber Degradation

I got my first wireless controller in 2013. It wasn’t a high-end model, but I remember it was touted as a pretty solid budget option. Less than a year later, in early 2014, I remember playing South Park: The Stick of Truth with the left thumbstick completely naked, its plastic skeleton exposed because the rubber coating had completely worn away.

In 2015, I got an Xbox One controller, which was a marked improvement in all areas compared to the previous one. Its thumbstick rubber lasted more than two years before disintegrating. This time, I ordered replacement sticks, but those, too, wore down over time. I still have that pair of thumbsticks lying around, so you can see the extent of the degradation below.

By then, I had heard about thumbstick covers and decided to slip them on said controller. The result was phenomenal. I used the controller until mid-2022 before it died, with the sticks staying the same as they were the moment I put the thumbstick covers on. There was no further rubber degradation after almost half a decade of heavy use.

Impressed by the results on my Xbox controller, I equipped my Nintendo Switch Lite with thumbstick covers on day one. As you can see below, its analog sticks still look pristine even though I’ve enjoyed the tiny console for hundreds, if not a thousand-plus hours. I did the same with my two PS4 controllers, and those, too, looked pristine when I sold the console in 2021.

If you’re not someone who likes to collect controllers and instead only use one or two gamepads, thumbstick covers will prevent thumbstick rubber degradation many controllers suffer from. But that’s not the only thing they’re good at.

Covers Massively Improve Thumbstick Grip

Personally, I find Xbox controllers to have the grippiest analog sticks on the market. But even those sticks get grippier when you wrap them up with a quality pair of covers.

The improvement in grip is far more substantial on other controllers. I made the mistake of not having a pair of covers ready and waiting when my Steam Deck arrived, so I had to retrofit the Switch Lite covers on its thumbsticks on the first day because Steam Deck’s analogs are slippy as heck (I’m talking specifically about the original LCD Steam Deck here).

While the Steam Deck’s concave thumbsticks are an outlier because they’re touch-sensitive and used to trigger gyro aiming, I’ve noticed that controllers with convex sticks—8BitDo Ultimate , DualSense , and Joycons , for example—benefit more than controllers featuring concave thumbsticks.

That said, if you do end up getting a nice pair of thumbstick covers, they can make every pair of sticks, be they concave or convex, grippier.

Before I move on, I should also mention that many people online claim that tall grips, like the ones below, improve their aiming. Personally, I didn’t find a difference, but your mileage may vary .

They’re Cheap and You Can Buy Them Anywhere

If thumbstick covers were a pricey accessory, you might read this and think, “Well, I won’t spend a good chunk of cash just to end up disappointed,” but you can buy a pair of thumbstick grips for as little as a few bucks.

Personally, I use Skull & Co. thumbstick grips because they’re by far the grippiest ones I’ve tried, and because they come in a variety of colors. You can find them on Amazon, and while they command a small premium over most other covers, they’re well worth the price.

Just remember that you should use convex grips for convex sticks and vice versa because doing otherwise will make the covers fall off rather easily (this happened to me when I put concave grips on my 8BitDo Ultimate’s convex sticks).