So for the past couple of years (… coming on a decade?) I’ve liked the 8bitdo controllers a lot. Build consistency is a bit of a shitshow but you can tell almost instantly if you have one of the bad ones (and it is usually a matter of just loosening one screw unless the PCB itself is cracked). And the Ultimate Pro Whatever The Hell With Charging Dock is really nice and I love that I never have to worry about my controller needing new batteries when I am on my PC. In theory I can just plug it in but that gets into a mess with games that auto-detect what is connected and so forth. The charging dock that doubles as a receiver is delightful.
But when I switched to linux for fulltime gaming a while back… things got messier. 8bitdo has no linux support whatsoever. Mostly that is “fine” because the controller is a controller and I can use a phone app when I want to change what the rear buttons do. But I can’t update firmwares. Which, again, is “fine” except I finally wanted to get back into Crosscode and have learned that shitshow of an html5 engine ONLY supports xinput on PC and apparently the functionality to tell the 8bitdo to present as an xinput might only be in a beta firmware? So all the joys of debugging but with very non-technical resources on google.
Not the end of the world (was mostly planning to moonlight to my xbox anyway) but kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back as it were. Because Crosscode is a mess of a game technically that even the devs acknowledge was a mistake (AMAZING experience though) but what happens the next time I run up into a corner case? Not ready to throw this in the bin and rage purchase a new gamepad but very much ready to start browsing what my options are. Especially as (some) third parties are actually pretty good these days.
So what gamepads do you folk use?
Saw the title and I came here to say that I have the 8BitDo Pro 2, I didn’t need to customize the buttons a lot, but if you really need to do this I’m not sure I’ve seen any other controllers that support this feature, even on Windows.
Same goes with updating the firmware. While researching it, I found that they provided a firmware update for a 2.4GHz controller to make it work with Bluetooth (!). I’m not sure I’ve seen many controllers with upgradeable firmware in general, let alone the company choosing to make it support Bluetooth instead of forcing you to buy their more expensive controller in their lineup.
I like the build quality, I don’t know what you mean but i.e. my Pro 2 of course is not going to have the same build quality as a €200 controller that has metal parts etc.
It was also nice to see that it has a button to change the input mode, which I guess it would be more useful if I had to connect it to consoles etc (but I think I remember I did need to use it once when Steam input was misbehaving or sth)
Oh also I was surprised by the battery life; I think it was advertised as having 12 hours, but after 2 years of using it I happened to notice that I had 25-30 hours of playing time in a game and I hadn’t charged it (now that I’m looking at their website it says 20 hours, but I think there’s been another revision since I bought it)
Last thing I really liked was the removable battery: when your battery needs replacement, with other comparable controllers you either need to buy a new one, or try getting inside the case and solder one yourself etc. Meanwhile my controller comes with a rechargeable LiPo battery, for which you can buy an official replacement, or change it for 2 AA batteries, either rechargeable or not
Oh also I was surprised by the battery life; I think it was advertised as having 12 hours, but after 2 years of using it I happened to notice that I had 25-30 hours of playing time in a game
If it has a rumble motor, that probably dominates power usage. I don’t know how they come up with an “hours” number, probably work out some percentage of time that the rumble motor is active, but I could easily see that varying game-to-game.
