I’m often close enough to my PC while playing games that wireless seems a little unneeded, but more than that, I just want fewer batteries to manage.
Adjusted title to mention preference for no batteries.
I wouldn’t. I can’t imagine wanting to go back to a wired controller, especially when they have built in rechargeable batteries now.
PDP Xbox controller. They’re relatively cheap and have a range of options from pretty basic to “elite”
The one I use is a stepup from the basic, with RGB. It has extra buttons on the bottom where your middle fingers rest that can be mapped to other buttons. I have them remapped to be extra bumpers as it’s more comfortable/easier for me to play games that rely on a lot of bumper use.
I recently got a used PS3 controller because I literally couldn’t play some emulated games without the motion controls. It works as well as you’d expect a PlayStation controller to work.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this mentioned yet. It’s a database of tested controllers and their latency.
I’ve had an old Xbox 360 style controller for PC for like 15 years probably and never had any problems with it. Just plug and play. I personally have always preferred Xbox style controllers, though having tried the bells and whistles like adaptive triggers on the PS5 controller does make me consider upgrading at some point.
Yeah in hindsight I’m kicking myself for not having gotten one like that, but I had trouble finding wired ones at the time (and didn’t think I’d get tired of the battery maintenance), which surprised me.
The 8bitdo ultimate or 2C wired look like good options. I haven’t used any of their controllers but I’ve heard good things about them, and they have hall effect joysticks!
Yeah, I have the 8bitdo 2C (wireless). Highly recommend it. I’d imagine the wired version is just as good.
I use the wired one on PC and it works and feels great. Also it’s so cheap for such a good product.
I’ve got the 8bitdo Ultimate Bluetooth and it’s great. I finally upgraded to it from my old Xbox 360 wired controller. I would say it’s a worthy successor. I assume the wired versions are solid too.
Honestly, a Dualsense wired up. The special haptics and triggers only work when plugged in, so I plug mine in all the time. Some games, like Pacific Drive, Metro, and Returnal are COMPLETELY transformed by the triggers and haptics. Even the lil speaker makes a difference. My partner and I both use Dualsense controllers but we will never have a PS5 hahaha
If you do the Duaksense Edge you get the nice locking USB connection too, which would reduce wear on the USB port compared to other controllers. It’s easily my most used controller.
Alright I’ll preach from high places about the dualsense but
250+USD for a controller
money isn’t really a problem but nahhhhh this insane hahaha
Quick edit: not even Hall effect laaaaawl
Steam Controller
All hail the mighty steam controller
Most wireless controllers today have an integrated battery and can be used in either wired or wireless mode.
So it’s really just that the battery adds a bit of weight, and someday the thing will fail and maybe cause electrical failure of the gamepad. If that doesn’t bother you, could get a dual one and just use it in wireless mode.
That being said, I agree with the general principle that one should use wired unless there’s a compelling reason otherwise. Avoids security problems, interference issues, and a mess of compatibility issues. I had a Logitech F710 that used a proprietary wireless 2.4 GHz protocol. It didn’t support wired mode. At some point, something in my environment started blasting enough 2.4 GHz radio emissions that every now and then, the connection would briefly drop, which was absolutely infuriating, since it could cause one to lose in fast-paced action games.
If you very specifically want a gamepad that is only wired…hmm. There are a bunch of low-end, generic wired-only controllers that leave out wireless support to help get the price down. I can’t specifically recommend one of those; I’ve used a few, but all the ones I’ve used have had some things that annoy me, and probably a lot of the brands are throwaway ones that have gone under. If you want high-end…most of those are dual wired/wireless. IIRC, Thrustmaster has a high-end gamepad with swappable elements, and IIRC it’s wired-only, remember seeing that and thinking “wow, weird, most high-end gamepads are dual”. I haven’t used it myself.
goes to look
Yeah, the Thrustmaster S eSwap Pro, and it’s wired-only.
https://eshop.thrustmaster.com/en_us/eswap-s-pro-controller.html
Thrustmaster has a long history of making pricey-but-nice high-end game peripherals — I think the first joystick I ever saw for sale was a nice metal thing from them at a computer expo in the early 1990s — so I’d generally be willing to try them, if you can live with the price. I don’t know if they have Hall effect analog sticks, which some people — including myself — like, as they’re immune to drift.
kagis
It sounds like the gamepad ships with standard potentiometer-based analog sticks, but that if one is willing to throw even more money at the gamepad, they do sell optional Hall effect sticks that can be swapped in.
https://www.thrustmaster.com/en-us/products/eswap-sh5-hall-stick-module/
However, the price is also pretty much in line with their history of being expensive. The basic gamepad is $140, and then each Hall effect analog stick module is another $40, which is very expensive for a gamepad; you can get inexpensive wired-only gamepads for something like $15, though they might not have amenities like rumble motors.
I’ve never actually owned a Thrustmaster product myself. I mostly went with CH stuff (another long-running American game input device manufacturer; they tend to make less-expensive, less-nice stuff). But I’ve definitely heard no shortage of positive stuff about Thrustmaster products over the decades. Might be worth considering if you don’t care about the price, specifically want wired, and are looking for high-end stuff.
So it’s really just that the battery adds a bit of weight, and someday the thing will fail and maybe cause electrical failure of the gamepad.
Emphasis added, yeah this is among the reasons I’m asking. The other reasons I’ve noted, but this underlies a lot of it. I don’t know how long the dual-use ones’ batteries may last if I’m primarily using them wired, so instead of having that in the back of mind, I’d like to get a wired controller for when gaming on devices I’m already close to (which is mostly PC, hence asking for it specifically).
Well, I can kinda answer that: I’ve got a launch PS4 controller that I mostly use wired on my PC and it’s fine.
If I use it wirelessly, it’ll still get about 5-6 hours, which basically means after 13 years it’s still right on spec for what it should be able to do.
Not really something that’s probably worth worrying about unless you’ve got some absolutely shitty batteries.
(Hell, I’ve still got some PS3 controllers that’ll do 3-4 hours, and they’re freaking ancient at this point.)
someday the thing will fail and maybe cause electrical failure of the gamepad.
Emphasis added, yeah this is among the reasons I’m asking.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that’s a real thing. If a lithium battery sits around discharged for too long — and they’ll constantly self-discharge, so anything on a shelf will get there — it’ll never work again. I do kind of think that there are too many devices with non-removable batteries that are going to wind up dead at some point. Might be possible to open the thing up and replace the internal battery in a wireless gamepad, if it’s standardized. I don’t know what wireless gamepads typically use.
That being said, if whatever one gets is an inexpensive gamepad, I mean, one option is to just throw it out and replace the thing at some point down the line when it stops working. Also solves other wear and tear problems…
I got a wired wired XBox360 controller at GameStop 10 years ago for a really good price and it works wonders! I’m on Windows 8.1 and for most games it doesn’t require any sort of configuration either, I just plug it in and it works right away
I have a 360 controller and Microsoft offers a USB wireless dongle that lets me hook up any standard 360 controller. It pretty much works like it of the box with any game.
I prefer wired. The problem I have with most is that they are battery. Thus, the wired part is always a USB connection that inevitably wears out with use and disconnects randomly.
It’s not an innovative controller with programmable buttons or anything, but the razor controllers have a keyed recess that all but makes it impossible to disconnect or wear the port. It’s really the only selling point, but one that has kept me from looking for anything else.
why do you prefer wired? just wondering
This is just my opinion, and there are always legitimate use cases for wired or wireless. Losing connection at the worst time is the main reason. I play online, so it’s a complete and absolute, non-negotiable dealbraker to me. Every other benefit wireless gives and every other negative wired gives is trumped by this singular requirement.
I won’t go into every situation, but almost every minor issue in wireless results in disconnects. This ends up with me using wired anyways, which leads to the problem in my previous post: worn out USB ports. Wired by comparison has far less disconnects.
On a side note: I also wanted to add (but didn’t feel it was worth editing at the time), razor is stupid expensive for just that one little feature. I’ve had this controller for years, and back then it was the only one I could find like it. To me, it has been worth - but if I was to buy another I’d definitely look for something similar that is cheaper with possibly more features. It wasn’t meant to be a razor promoting post.
valid. even if i haven’t exp the same disconnect issues, i get it. hope you find one that works for your set up.
If you’re on linux, DualSense controllers are awesome. I got mine for ~ $20 from a /r/buildapcsales post.
They’re great on windows too, and the extra features like the triggers are really nice for the games they work in
I’ve had troubles on my windows machine with the controller not registering in-game. I have to use a third party program DSX to make it work.
For steam games? Steaminput’s translation layer seems to work pretty well
There are some games that it doesn’t seem to play nice with that I end up using DSX for myself, also it’s nice for non Steam games.
Pacific Drive and Returnal are completely different experienced with a Dualsense versus a normal controller!
I like gamesir’s controllers and have had several. the g7 series is nice for what you describe. they have a wide array of options so check for some reviews to see the festurrsfeatures fully.
I have a dualshock 4 that I use wired x3… honestly atm im just kinda waiting to see if a steam controller 2 comes out cause most of the controllers I saw on the market were lacking a decent bit of features, or basically the same as I have for double the price tho
most of the controllers I saw on the market were lacking a decent bit of features
Yeah, I’ve screwed that up on a number of occasions before. Didn’t think about the fact that there’s actually a set of features that I do care about, get a gamepad, get it, and then discover that it doesn’t do everything I want. Wish that there was some checklist out there so that people at least think of them before buying, even if it’s not features that they care about. Something like:
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Wired mode of operation.
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Wireless mode
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Input latency. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve ever seen game controller companies rate and provide this, though several people have gone out and built measuring systems and then rated a variety of controllers. There is a surprising degree of variation in latency among gamepads. There’s also some variation for a given controller (especially for wireless), and the latency is large enough to be noticeable, especially for Bluetooth. Some discussion, and a database of measured latencies from someone doing so: https://gamepadla.com/
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Rumble motors. This is one of my big “I don’t think about it at purchase time and then get a gamepad that lacks a feature that I want” issues.
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Hall effect analog sticks. These avoid stick drift. I still don’t know what happened here, but twenty years ago, I had a Playstation 2 gamepad with analog sticks using regular old potentiometers that never saw drift. Today, a lot of the gamepads I do get, even when new, don’t reliably reach a perfect zero when my thumb is off them. It might be that that older gamepad had a larger hardware-imposed dead zone, and that newer gamepads don’t and expect one to deal with it at the PC level (which is obnoxious, IMHO), but it was enough to drive me bonkers. Hall effect analog sticks, unlike those with traditional potentiometers, don’t have stick drift, will reliably zero. They do cost more, but I personally am fed up enough with modern, potentiometer-based sticks not zeroing that I always want this.
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Hall effect buttons. I don’t see the point – button sensors don’t have any problem, in my experience – but some gamepads have these.
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Gyro
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RGB LED
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Battery life
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Weight
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Additional buttons that one can tie macros or whatever to.
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XBox-style face button layout vs Nintendo-style face button layout. If you don’t care about correct button labels, Steam will let one swap these in Steam Input, but I’ve run into a couple of games that don’t like Steam Input, and if you play games outside of Steam, that’s not available, will need to do up some other form of mapping.
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XBox-style vs Playstation-style analog/D-pad placement
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DualSense-style haptic feedback. From memory, PC video game support for this is very rare, but some people might care.
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Swappable, rather than built-in, batteries. Only an issue for wireless controllers. One reason I got a Logitech F710 some time back was because I wanted to have swappable AA batteries. Will add weight.
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Depth of analog trigger pull.
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Resistance of analog trigger pull. Some gamepads have rather more resistance, which can be fatiguing when playing driving games or something, where one is squeezing the trigger most of the time. I’ve never seen a manufacturer actually list resistance, unfortunately. This is particularly annoying because in the firearms world, listing trigger pull weight is a thing, so I know that people are able to do it…
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Force required to depress buttons. I have had gamepads that are fatiguing. As far as I can tell, gamepad manufacturers don’t normally list this (unlike keyboard manufacturers, where keyswitch manufacturers do a great job of providing a whole graph of pressure at various depression depths).
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Slightly clicky face buttons. This has become more popular recently, as best I can tell.
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Linux support. Not usually an issue, but I had a newly-released official XBox controller that had some kind of authentication thing that made it a pain to get working at one point.
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Linux Bluetooth support. This actually has, surprisingly-enough, been an issue for me with some official console joysticks. I think it was a DualSense gamepad that I had a ton of trouble with, probably non-standard stuff from Sony.
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Linux support for updating controller firmware. Not going to be an issue with no-name $15 controllers, since there won’t be updates. I have had to use an XBox to update controller firmware before, after I couldn’t convince Linux to do it, even with a passthrough USB Windows VM.
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Rounded D-pads. If you’ve ever used the original NES controller, you know that you can really start to hurt with rigid, squared-off edges. Most modern controllers are a lot more-comfortable than that.
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Headphones/headset jack. I don’t route my headphones through my gamepad, but if you use a gamepad in wireless mode a long way from the computer along with wired headphones, it might be very desireable.
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Can be disassembled. Some gamepads have all sorts of really weird security bits required. Probably doesn’t matter for most people, but of all electronic devices that I’ve personally pulled apart, gamepads have been the most-obnoxious; I have three entirely separate sets of screwdriver security bits that I’ve had to get at various points in time to pull apart gamepads.
This is a good list, but y’know a niche ya missed? Pressure sensitive buttons, only really useful for those emulating old games that used them, but still a fun feature to remember.
Oh, yeah, good point.
It’s not complete, just a mental brain-dump of the last time I was trying to build a list of gamepad features that might be of interest. I’m sure that there are some other missing things as well.
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I have had a Power A Fusion for around 5 years now and I love it. Replaced the sticks after a couple years cause the rubber wore out, but no drift issues or anything. Though it depends how hard you are on controllers. I have some friends that basically destroyed theirs in a year or two.
Switch Hori controller, $20, great quality especially for the price
