When the Razer Edge shipped earlier this 12 months, it included a higher-end model of Razer’s $100 Kishi V2 cell controller — a tool eerily just like well-known competitor the Spine One. Now you will get the $130 Android-only Kishi V2 Professional controller by itself, in one among two variants: the usual model and a specifically licensed Xbox Version that features — look forward to it — an Xbox button below the precise joystick for an additional $20 (accessible solely in North America).
The Professional fashions supply two options you possibly can’t get for the additional bucks: a 3.5mm audio jack, which implies now you can use a wired headset and cost on the similar time, and rumble help (buzzwordly recognized nowadays as “haptics”).
So, yay for the three.5mm jack, which works as anticipated, however I am not a giant fan of Razer’s HyperSense audio-based haptics. For many video games, it is not based mostly on cues within the sport, it is based mostly on sound frequencies, so that you get some bizarre vibrations. Right here it is even weirder, as a result of there’s so little bass within the cellphone’s sound system (at the least in my Samsung Galaxy Extremely S22), so, for example, background music vibrates and nothing appears like a rumble.
The design is in any other case the identical. It comes with extra rubber tabs you possibly can slide in at both finish to offer a extra comfortable match or increase the digital camera bump barely so it does not press in opposition to the again help, however I have a tendency to seek out that makes it tougher than I prefer to snap within the cellphone.
A 3.5mm jack (left) joins the for-charging-only USB-C port (proper).
Razer up to date its Nexus app together with this rollout, and I am nonetheless not loopy about it. For example, fairly than realizing I am signed in to Xbox Recreation Move by way of its app, it at all times tells me that to allow haptics for it I’ve to launch Chrome and allow a browser setting that is not there and tries to make me play in Chrome.
And if you happen to exit a sport or the app unexpectedly — say, when it is attempting to throw you out to Chrome however the message does not have an choice to cancel since you maintain forgetting it does not deal with Recreation Move login appropriately — it loses the connection to the controller. Then you need to disconnect and reconnect it bodily, as a result of there is no approach to drive a connection refresh in software program. That is not the solely scenario wherein the cellphone stops recognizing it, both.
So whereas I proceed to love the Kishi V2 line for the crisp controls and simple in-and-out, and I am glad to see the devoted audio jack within the Professional, it is nonetheless extra irritating than I might like in some methods. Perhaps V3 would be the allure.
