My review of the NexiGo NS32 Switch controller which tries to be a replacement of Pro Controller.
I'm not really a type fo guy to write a review for the product and even when I do it's short review for something like Amazon. However in this case I tried to find a lot of reviews for this controller before buying. Turns out there is no many of them in the Internet or I couldn't find them. I only found the reviews on Amazon and this one article which was very positive about this controller. So I decided to but it and try it. Unfortunately I can't agree with it as this is one of the worst controller I've ever used. This review is gonna be mostly a comparison of this pad with the official Nintendo Pro controller.
- works - haven't had any issues, all functions beside amiibo scanning are present
- -/+/rec/home buttons are easy to press
- strong, configurable rumble
- design
- price - 30% cheaper than the Pro Controller
- cheap feel - not very good plastic quality, the buttons have a worse feel when pressing, the joysticks are less pleasant to operate
- too light - less comfortable when holding
- the LEDs from around the joysticks can be seen thru holes in the body
- no standby - turns off after 1-2min of inactivity
- to turn it on you need to hold the home button
- it takes 3-4s to (re)connect with the console
- player indicator hard to read
- short battery life - 12-15h of Pokemon Scarlet playtime
- low battery warning is a mess - 5mins of spamming with the warnings, then 15min of playtime and the controller turns off itself without any further warnings
- few RGB light presets
- the design looks like a sticker
- no amiibo scanning
A controller holder on the photo is KEERXUN-KEX Headphone Stand & Controller Holder and the console is Nintendo Switch OLED Pokemon Scarlet § Violet edition. I guess it's possible to get a similar controller holder from different Chinese companies as well.
Yeah, that is a big positive aspect of this controller. And I'm not saying that I was expecting it to be broken. Only that the Pro Controller for Switch has some additional features like motion control, rumble or waking the console up with the home button which sometimes are not present in the cheaper replacements. The only missing feature is NFC for amiibo scanning but I don't have any amiibos so I don't mind. And it works with a PC/Steam just like the Pro Controller. So yeah, it works, just as expected. Didn't have any issues with that, button presses and joystick moves are correctly recorded.
These 4 buttons on pro controller are on the same level as the controller body which makes them (I guess intentionally) harder to press. However as I was playing Pokemon Scarlet I needed to use the + button often and the fact it was raised (higher than the controller body, just like other buttons) in the NexiGo controller was a positive thing for me. It just makes this buttons easier to press. Tbh I wish it was like that in the original Pro Controller.
This controller has very strong rumble which was a nice thing to me. Unfortunately they are also loud when set to 100%. The level of rumble can be set up in 4 stages - 0% (turned off), 30% (IMO similar to the Pro Controller), 75% (default) and 100%. I was using it on 100% and liked them. The rumble level in the Pro Controller is just too subtle for me.
For many the biggest selling point in this controller. I bought the Cosmic Nebula edition. Tbh the reason I wanted to buy it in the first place was because my gf liked the design. However at least for me the design is the last thing I care in the controller - sure I like to have a nice design, but only if the controller itself is nice to use. And given a choice between the simple black Pro Controller and nice looking NexiGo one I'd choose the Pro Controller.
I can't say much about the design itself - I like the Space theme here and there are also other designs that I liked for this controller. The printing on this controller looks ok and is detailed (high DPI). It's printed on the plastic body itself which is nice but it looks like a sticker from some distance which not so good IMO.
I couldn't decide if I should consider the price to be a positive or a negative thing. Here I know that the price may differ around the world but I will take Germany as a baseline here, because it can be applied to the whole Europe. The NexiGo controller costs 43€ on Amazon (and looks like the only place where you can get it). The Pro Controller has an MSRP of 70€, but can be bought for 60-65€ in some electronics stores (63€ in MediaMarkt). However the used Nintendo Pro Controller can be bought for 40-50€ and for me the used Pro Controller is a better choice than this controller. Btw an used NexiGo costs about the same as the new one because of shipping costs.
This is the main issue for me with it. It just feels cheap. The plastic body feels cheap when holding, the buttons have a worse feel when pressing, the joysticks are less pleasant to operate. It's also lighter than the Pro Controller (197g vs 249g) and have a little different shape which makes it less comfortable to use for me. Additionally the LEDs from around the joysticks can be seen thru some holes (like near the triggers or the reset at the back) or thru the player indicator.
The controller turns off itself after 1-2 min of inactivity which means it can turn off itself during some cut-scenes or trips to the bathroom. And it wouldn't be much of the issue if it could be turned on easily, but it isn't. To turn it on you need to hold the home button for about a second (just pressing it is not enough) and it needs to be specifically home button. Also it takes 3-4s to connect with the console after turning on. The Pro Controller on the other hand has a longer standby, can be turned on by any button and connects with the console in under the 1s.
Given how the NexiGo controller turns on and connects it would be nice if this controller had some standby mode when it keeps the connection with console but turns off the input and LEDs. Or just make it work like Pro Controller.
The player indicator on the down side is hard to read on the first glance. The blue LED that shows it can be seen thru all 4 player slots - sure the correct one is brighter but if you don't know how it works you may thing that all 4 LEDs are turned on.
Yes, I know that Pro Controller has a very good battery life when compared to other controllers. But as this NexiGo controller is mostly for Nintendo Switch the Pro Controller here is the baseline. I could get a 3/4 evenings of playtime with a single charge which is about 12-15h. However it was in Pokemon Scarlet where there is a lot of rumble so maybe you can get more of it in other games. I've read somewhere that the declared battery life for NexiGo is 20h (which is half of the Pro Controller which has declared battery life of 40h). I don't have an exact data to compare with Pro Controller but I'm sure I felt that it has a better battery life in my personal use case as well.
Here I wanna say that I don't know if the same issue is with the Pro Controller as I've never got it under 30-40%. However the low battery warning is a mess with the NexiGo controller. When I got the low battery level the notification of low battery (popup and sound) was showing every 5-10s for few minutes. It was literally spamming me with the warning that my battery is low. And after few minutes the warning was gone. After the warning was gone I could play for about 15-20 min (with no warning about low battery at all) and then the controller suddenly just turned off itself. The console didn't notice that the controller had turned off and was still "receiving" some input - in my case I was going straight were the controller turned off and my character was going straight until I was able to grab the console and undock it to get the control back (via attached joycons which are turned off in docked mode).
IMO there is not enough of RGB presets available.
The available options are:
- static color (one of seven - red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, blue or violet; has 4 brightness options)
- breathing color cycle (the breathing effect with static color but the color changes with each breath - starts with red breathing, then orange, then yellow and so on; you can't select just one color, it always cycles)
- static rainbow (all colors visible, but it's static, has 4 brightness options)
- breathing rainbow (the lighting pattern is static, only the brightness changes in the form of breathing)
- no RGB
In my gaming PC I have a moving rainbow effect and it is the effect that I miss here (all colors are one by one but they are moving - eg. on the wheel they go around). You can have something similar here with the static rainbow, but yeah it's static and doesn't move around.
As I said above the printing here has a good quality but it looks like it was a sticker placed on the black controller.
As I said above this controller misses the NFC for amiibo scanning. Not a huge deal for me, but others may need it.