When the Razer Edge cloud-gaming handheld shipped earlier this yr, it included a higher-end model of Razer’s $100 Kishi V2 — an on-phone recreation controller eerily much like well-known competitor the Spine One. Now you will get the $130 Android-only Kishi V2 Professional controller by itself, in considered one of two variants: the usual model and a specifically licensed Xbox Version that features — look forward to it — an Xbox button below the fitting joystick for an additional $20 (obtainable solely in North America).
The Professional fashions provide two options you possibly can’t get for the additional bucks: a 3.5mm audio jack, which suggests now you can use a wired headset and cost on the similar time, and rumble help (buzzwordly identified lately as “haptics”).
So, yay for the three.5mm jack, which works as anticipated, however I am not an enormous fan of Razer’s HyperSense audio-based haptics. For many video games, it is not primarily based on cues within the recreation, it is primarily based 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 telephone’s sound system (a minimum of in my Samsung Galaxy Extremely S22), so, for example, background music vibrates and nothing looks like a rumble.
The design is in any other case the identical. It comes with further rubber tabs you possibly can slide in at both finish to supply a extra comfortable match or elevate the digital camera bump barely so it does not press in opposition to the again help, however I have a tendency to search out that makes it tougher than I wish to snap within the telephone.
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, somewhat than realizing I am signed in to Xbox Recreation Cross through 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 in the event you exit a recreation or the app unexpectedly — say, when it is making an attempt 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 Cross login appropriately — it loses the connection to the controller. Then you must disconnect and reconnect it bodily, as a result of there isn’t any approach to pressure a connection refresh in software program. That is not the solely state of affairs by which the telephone stops recognizing it, both.
So whereas I proceed to love the Kishi V2 line for the crisp controls and straightforward in-and-out, and I am glad to see the devoted audio jack within the Professional, it is nonetheless extra irritating than I would like in some methods. Possibly V3 would be the appeal.
