Review on Enhanced Gaming Experience with the Black Edition 8Bitdo Sn30 🎮 Pro+ Bluetooth Controller for Switch, PC, macOS, Android, Steam, and Raspberry Pi by Justin Kautzman

Used it for about a month and almost every day. This is the highlight of my experience. In terms of hardware, it's hit and miss. Hits is a rechargeable battery that can also be replaced with regular batteries. This means downtime between charges is virtually zero. The DPAD loads better than the Switch or even the Dualshock 4. It also emulates the latter's layout, which is a huge boon to me since for those who prefer the Playstation layout to the Xbox one, most controllers are out in the wild tend to emulate. The DPAD's superiority over the latter also makes it suitable for fighting games where the DPAD is heavily used if you're the type of guy who uses a controller for combat. As a Dualshock player, my fingers really appreciated the DPAD SN30 versus the DS4 in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, where I use the DPAD a lot and its design hurts my thumb, in addition to slower inputs due to its disjointed nature. This is where the hits end, however. On the other hand, the body of the controller is a magnet for dirt and feels like a cheap plastic toy in my hands. The keys, while responsive, are also prone to stickiness. Very often I press a key and hear a delayed press, which lets me know it didn't happen right away. It hasn't bothered me yet but I'm afraid it's only going to get worse which sucks because I heard this issue should have been fixed in this improved model, the previous model had this issue too. However, before receiving this particular controller, I received two consecutive lemons. I don't know how much another lemon costs. The rest of the problems have nothing to do with it. As far as wireless capabilities go, to be honest he connected to everything I offered him. There were only two of this number: my PC and Switch, but it still worked. There was no problem on the PC side, plugging it in and using it was as easy as plugging in my Dualshock 4. However, plugging it into my Switch is a big hassle. Firstly, unlike other third-party controllers, it cannot wake the Switch from sleep mode. Before I can even use the controller wirelessly, I need to use my WIRED controller to wake up the switch and then I can start pairing with my Sn30. Whether it actually works on the first try depends on the game. You see, games that only support one controller at a time - mostly single-player games like Bayonetta 2 - are a huge headache because if the SN30 isn't a single-player, it will shut down and become unusable as soon as you launch the game. The solution is to go all the way to system settings, go to controller settings and connect the SN30 from there to make sure it is recognized as Player One. Then you can use Sn30 to play. This behavior is not the fault of 8bitdo, but of Nintendo. However, the failure to wake up the Switch is definitely 8bitdo's fault; The only reason I even have to go through this is because the SN30 can't wake up the switch, forcing me to leave my WIRED controller connected, meaning it's always the first controller to be paired, after I wake him up, which means it always works. being the first player means I have to go through that every time I want to sit down and play a Switch game, which happens a lot and the frustration grows every time. If the SN30 could wake up the switch like other third-party controllers, I'd have to have a wired controller plugged into the switch all the time. this problem would not exist at all. Stupid design decisions don't stop there. The killer app for the SN30, The 8bitdo Ultimate Software, is a godsend when it comes to games that don't allow you full control over the controller layout (the number of such games per switch is way too high, but I digress away). I can literally map any button to any other button, with multiple buttons or no button at all. There is even an option to assign macros and turbo boosts. You can create an unlimited number of combinations and create an unlimited number of profiles. Just make sure you don't have more than three profiles or you'll be in trouble. You see, Ultimate Software's GUI is terrible. It always opens dead in the middle of the desktop when actually opened (sometimes it crashes on startup). That and the need to have a computer handy to even use it isn't a big deal, but not being able to resize the window is definitely a problem. This, combined with the total lack of a scrollbar, means that some options are simply not visible, especially since there are no scrollbars. Do you know why I said you can't have more than three profiles? Because you can't scroll through the list. So you only see three profiles at the same time and you can't even see the third one, it's only half visible. So profiles four, five, six etc are there, since looking at the program's installation folder will show you where your profiles are stored, you just can't reach them because you can't scroll through your list of profiles. The only way to get to the additional profiles is to DELETE the profiles so it has no choice but to show what you want, which is what I found the hard way. Once you've actually set up your profiles, you can sync them to your controller and it works as expected until you need to go to another profile. You see, you can only load one profile per controller at a time. So if you're Smash Bros. with your Smash profile and decide you want to play Bayonetta 2 now, you need to connect the controller to the computer (it won't work if you connect the controller to the computer wirelessly), download the software, hopefully the software has no graphics bug that requires you to restart the program, load your Bayonetta 2 profile, sync the profile to the controller and then start playing Bayonetta 2 (of course after going to System Preferences > Controller Preferences > made hot nonsense). Let's say you've had enough of this and now it's time for Breath of the Wild. Well, you have to go through it all again. And again Mario Kart. And again for Smash. And again for any other game you have created a profile for. If we had the ability to load multiple profiles onto one controller and have a specific profile load when we launch a particular game - or even have it do it ourselves by looping through our list of saved profiles - it would completely eliminate these unnecessary headaches . .This could be the Holy Grail of Switch controllers if 8bit didn't drop the ball so much. When it works, it works great. The problem is that it takes so long to work. They've taken steps and even mentioned that they've been working to reduce downtime when it comes to battery performance, but any time you would save is completely overshadowed by all the downtime you have between game changes be, not to mention about the break. from games. Add in graphical bugs, glitches, and design choices that require ridiculous workarounds to overcome, and you've got a controller that could be as great but isn't allowed to live up to its full potential. What makes this even more unfortunate (and confusing) is that they initially delayed the release of this controller, only for it to still turn out that way. too important to overlook, but the issues above mean there will always be some kind of frustration, and that frustration will always make me think deep down about what could have been. It will also give me food for thought the next time I choose an 8bitdo product.