The Revolution X Pro Controller by Nacon touts high-end customisation and materials, marketing itself as the best gaming accessory of the T3 Awards 2022. Designed with the latest generation of Xbox consoles as well as PC, is the Revolution a good pick to replace your old controllers?
What’s in the Box?!
The Revolution controller comes in quite a special little container, something I would expect more from a headset or wider-reaching device. Complete with the controller is its coiled wire that can be removed for easier transportation, several weights to place into the handles, and two spare joystick heads and shafts.
Slowly becoming a standard, the weights can be exchanged into the handles of the controller to decrease or increase its overall weight. This customisation allows many players to adjust how the controller feels, making it closer to whatever their previous controller felt like.
As for the thumbsticks, regardless of changing out for the spares, the left comes with a dotted surface and the right has their logo. While these make for better grip at times, anyone who has used a mouse or controller with ridged surfaces knows that if it isn’t entirely smooth then it will cut off the dead skin on your hands.
The design continues into the sides of the controller, with a coarser surface for better grip. Unlike many other controllers that stick to a smooth surface, this will eventually lead to a few cleaning
sessions more than usual, to get rid of the gunk that will accumulate on the controller as a whole.
Assuming Direct Control
Like many controllers before it, the Revolution arrives with its own software to alter its specifics of it. From changing the colour display of the right thumbstick, the curve and dead zones of the thumbsticks, reassigning buttons, vibration levels, and much more.
Following the adjustable buttons, the Revolution comes with four programmable rear buttons, found where your middle and ring fingers would lay on the back. Sadly you can’t adjust how sensitive or resistant these are and will take some getting used to if you’re not accustomed to back buttons. I often found myself pressing them by accident, though this is sorted by disabling those buttons.
Whilst you can change what the buttons do, as far as I could find, you cannot program your own inputs. They are limited to the buttons a controller can normally do, no fighting game combos such as combining the triggers for special moves and the like. “Programmable” is both correct and a bit far-reaching, as many other devices that state as such allow you to input your own macros.
On the other end, however, the minute details you can apply to the triggers, sticks, and vibrations show just how much the controller could do. With graphs to mark points on, to easy-to-use sliders, you can certainly make the rest of the controller fit your playstyle.
The audio adjustability is also similarly in-depth, even though the controller does not come with a headset or mic. You can adjust gains, levels, 3D effects, and even noise suppression. It will come down to what other devices you’re using for how useful these settings are, though you can be confident that it will work with most.
With four profiles to switch between on the fly, you can set up different styles for older classics that use X for their menus, or swap the A and B inputs around. You can also make a profile with specific sensitivities for shooters and the like.
Is It Worth It?
The Revolution X controller is selling for around £80 at this point, £70 if you can get it on offer. From what it offers, it is quite a few steps up above the basic Xbox Series X controllers you can buy for about half the price. Many of the adjustable parameters will not be necessary for the everyday gamer, though those highly focused on shooters and racing games may enjoy the controller a lot more.
Without the ability to make macros for the back buttons, they just end up as an alternative for pressing in the thumbsticks or another place for a trigger to be. It does feel a bit pointless for how it’s designed, but there may be other pieces of software you can combine to get those buttons to do something more.
Overall, the Revolution X Pro Controller gets an 8/10. It is a good piece of kit with a wide range of customising to be had. Sadly it falters when it comes to button combinations for certain genres and is even worse when used for PC. The spare sticks and changeable weights is a nice-to-have, though if it were to make the whole purchase cheaper I would have gone without them.
Grab your here https://www.nacongaming.com/en-GB/revolution-x-pro-controller
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