Great nostalgia bait, but probably also perfectly fine as a daily-driver for those <30
If you used the S-types on the original Xbox back in the day, you'll find your muscle memory comes back almost instantaneously. The new bumpers, few new buttons, and the shiny new Hall-effect sticks are somewhat exceptions to this. The buttons feel great, but Back & Start being in the bottom-left again rather than centered as they are on a modern controller can take a few hours of retraining to grow used to again. The Black & White buttons do the same things the bumpers do so they're ultimately optional, but they're pretty much mandatory for many modern titles as designed imo, since they're so much easier to depress than are the Black & White buttons, and you're able to do so without removing your fingers from the analog sticks or dpad/ABXY face buttons. These new bumpers are also easy enough to get used to, but I must admit they're hidden a bit farther away back there than are bumpers on a modern official Xbox controller, though the entire controller isn't built to the smaller child-suited form-factor of newer official controllers. We did fine with them as kids, regardless. I cannot imagine anyone without incredibly small hands finding even these bumpers uncomfortable for even longer sessions -- they feel just fine to reach, being a typically-sized adult man myself, and they're hardly much farther back there than on the official controller I have side-by-side with it right now as I write. By my reckoning, the biggest functional change from the OG S-type has to be the new Hall-effect analogue sticks. They're almost entirely resistance-less, and the little bit of resistance you're able to detect feels as if there's nothing pulling back at you -- only a constant, slight resistance. Feeling my old genuine S-type relic next to me now, I have to say, the old analogue sticks were VERY stiff to move -- as though rubber-bands are fighting you. They have a lot of resistance as you shift them around. Newer official Xbox controllers have far, far less resistance than the old S-types, but these new Hall-effect sticks have even less resistance than that, and its resistance is of a more consistent, almost digitally pure resistance for the sake of resistance. It's difficult to describe, but it feels more consistent, rather than changing depending upon where and how extended the stick is in its range of motion. I quite prefer it to either of the alternatives myself, but it is a slight departure which may take a bit of getting used to. You can feel a bit of deadzone in the center, as with the OG S-types. How much of that his hardware vs software, I can't say, but it's not an issue for me. They do say Hall-effect tech is virtually immune to the sort of stick-drift which has plagued the major companies for decades now, so I'll take this constancy over a progressively deteriorating stick drift or stick wobbling which tends to happen with the old tech. It's wired, too, so that may be a con to some, though I don't really notice it as the cable detaches, and the one it comes with is so imperceptibly light when plugged-in, as well as long enough to make it a non-factor. Feels to be a quality cable. Solid, fabric exterior, with their own branding. The Xbox sticker is a button as well. The logo not blinding you at nighttime is lovely, as there's no luminescence to it after it's fully connected and the LED on the face turns itself off (on PC, at least -- I can't say for the consoles). That being said, all of the buttons are satisfying to use and almost perfectly emulate the look and feel of each of the buttons on the original S-types. ABXY+B/W have that translucent raised bubble effect, and feel hefty to press, with that thudding actuation you can't miss. Back/Start (or whatever they're called now) don't depress far at all, and are very clicky. Triggers give good resistance. Bumpers feel more like the ABXY buttons than the clickiness of Back/Start. The D-pad is objectively better than on the old S-type while still being *that type* of d-pad. Less mushy, easier to discern when it's pressed. It's shaped the same and travels that longer distance just as the old S-type, but has more of a sharper thud to it -- but it's definitely not clicky like some newer d-pad designs. It doesn't begin to depress until you put a good bit of pressure on it, at which point it depresses to max with a dull thud. I can't imagine anyone disliking it, it's great. They clearly put a lot of effort and painstaking engineering into this thing. I don't regret it one bit. It's my new go-to, and I don't feel compelled to put it down for any uses in particular, as though it were a gimmick not suited to certain tasks. I can't say I'm disappointed by any of it, and it has plenty I greatly prefer. Read more
