Nacon’s new officially licensed PlayStation 5 controller also works with your PC, and it offers a mind-boggling number of swappable buttons and sticks. The company is unashamedly targeting competitive gamers who may want an array of customizable shortcut buttons, control profiles and even an interactive control screen for all those options.
Priced at $230, Nacon’s Revolution 5 Unlimited its most premium gamepad yet. Instead of Hall effect sensors on its joysticks (already an upgrade from typical potentiometer sticks), it opted for TMR (tunneling magnetoresistance), which uses less power while still minimizing physical wear and tear and the threat of stick drift.
The R5U has an asymmetric stick design instead of the traditional DualSense layout, swapping the joystick and D-pad placement on the left side of the R5U. I find an asymmetric layout more comfortable, although after decades of conditioning, it oddly felt like I wasn’t playing a PlayStation game. This is the first controller I’ve reviewed that also features trigger blockers, reducing trigger travel if needed, with a chunky toggle below each pair of trigger arrays. You get the best of both trigger travel lengths; you can gently increase your speed in racing games, keep trigger travel short for faster firing in high-speed rounds of Overwatch (the game I tested on the R5U most) or use the feature for quicker parries in fighting games. Below the trigger toggles, there are no fewer than four — yes, four — custom shortcut buttons. Then there are two more shortcut “S ” buttons between the L and R trigger pairs.
Mat Smith for Engadget
While it may only come in black, everything but the color is customizable. The D-pad can be swapped between a classic 4-way pad and an 8-way pad for easier Hadouken motions in fighting games. The joystick heads are also interchangeable, offering three profiles (concave, high concave and convex) for comfort and control. Nacon goes even further, with adjustable weights (ranging from 10 to 16 grams) that can be embedded into each of the controller’s grips. I tested different weights until the gamepad felt just right. It may seem odd to make a controller heavier, but it felt better with a mid-weight ballast.
Alongside its own carry-case. the R5U also comes with a dedicated charging dock, with a pogo pin connection and a USB pass-through port that connects to your PS5 and the wireless dongle. Unfortunately, the R5U controller can’t remote-start your PS5, a function I’ve always used with DualSense controllers—and the PS4’s DualShock before that.
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