CRKD NEO S - Wireless Collectible Controller for Nintendo Switch OLED, Mobile, PC, Smart TV, Steam Deck OLED, Legion Go, Rog Ally Gaming (Retro Gold)

Nice portable controller. Bought to use with my nitro deck when I travel.

I absolutely love this controller for when I am playing cozy and relaxed games. I use it for PC gaming mainly so my only irritation is the Nintendo button layout. Even though the buttons are identical they are each keyed so you can not just open the controller and swap it to traditional xbox layout. I inquired with CRKD about getting a set of xbox buttons because I have seen one of their controllers with that layout and know they make them, but I was told it is impossible to swap the buttons and will void the warranty if attempted. Which is disappointing but I understand.The look of the controller is just beautiful. The feel of it is very high quality and doesn't feel like a cheap toy, it has a nice weight and texture.The battery seems to last forever and I am always caught off guard when I need to throw it on the charger.It works flawlessly paired to my PC and to my Steam Deck, I have not had any issues with it dropping the connection or any perceivable input lag. I have not had the desire to attempt connecting it as a pro controller to my PC to use the tilt controls, so I can't speak on that function.Overall this is an amazing controller, it is so good I won't take a star off for my disappointing Customer Service interaction.

I own a lot of controllers and slowly I'm trying to get around to reviewing all of them.First I'm going to say, don't buy this controller if you're expecting great ergonomics. I bought this for form over function, so I won't be knocking points off of it for ergos. Let's just say, I unexpectedly found myself fighting a special FATE pop in FFXIV when I had just logged on to mess around with the controller and it was not a great experience for my hands. That being said, for the boxy shape of the controller in general, it's easily bigger and more comfortable than similar options.Getting that out of the way...I selected this model in particular because I have a PC in my house that is sakura themed, and whenever I see good looking sakura accessories for it, I usually cave.Features:Face buttons are membrane but have good tactile feel.dpad is old school feeling membrane with center pivot.Bumpers are tactile, somewhat noisy.Triggers feel somewhat light to me (subjective)The controller minimizes the discomfort from the form factor by providing you with a wider controller and small contours on the back.Special Features:The standout features that attracted me to this controller were....- Aesthetics and Collection nature- The compact form factor & the amount of modern features packed into such a small formCute and collectible things are always a plus to me, even if it's not always practical lol. Also it's cool that this controller has features such as app based firmware updates, remapping, programmable back buttons, and hall sticks in such a small package and a decent price.Functionality:The controller looks great, paired easily with Switch and over Bluetooth to my PC, and works perfectly. I was also able to pair it to my phone to check the rarity and update the firmware without a hitch. The only thing that sometimes happened is it sometimes seemed to not want to connect to Switch, even after waking it up without an issue. Maybe take a half star off for that, but it still rounds up.The responsiveness of the controller didn't seem terrible via bluetooth for me. The placement of - and + doesn't get in the way.I typically don't use back buttons on games I play on Switch, but I find the location of the back buttons to be perfect for my middle finger to actuate with enough space to keep my middle finger off of the button to prevent accidental presses.The joysticks have good resolution allowing me to be able to select time fairly precisely in Genshin Impact, though it tends to jitter between two minutes similar to the 8BitDo Ultimate 2C.A staple of my controller reviews... the Tetris dpad test. I play games on Tetris at as fast of a pace as I can (I'm roughly a 1 minute sprinter in modern Tetris games) and see how many false hard drops I get. Where the controller loses a point for me is in this test. I found it a bit too easy to trigger unintentional hard drops when trying to up my pace. I find that tactile dpads are usually unbeatable in this test and my Mobapad M6 HD joycons (with cross dpad) are my current leader for Switch, followed by my trusty 8BitDo Pro 2. Sadly, Nintendo's own first party Pro Controller is the worst offender in this test. That being said, this is a subjective test. In some types of games, you may want more responsive diagonals... and in general if I slowed down my pace with this controller I would not trigger accidental hard drops... unlike the Pro Controller where it can still happen even if slowing down.In Conclusion:I could see myself playing retro games, or turn based JRPGs with this. The controller is easily suitable for those sorts of games that do not require lots of inputs in a short amount of time, and being flat and compact makes it a nice controller to just stick in a bag if you know you'll be gaming and don't want to bring a bulkier controller.At the end of the day, I'm happy to add this controller to my collection of many. It's good looking and fun and perhaps I'll add the Famicom styled one in the future too, but the likelihood of using them for anything beyond the casual level is fairly low. I think they are a good functional option if you're looking to game casually in style.Edit 9/18/2024 - Changed Formatting more like my other controller reviews.

A1 controller

Perfect for retro gaming, has all you need for modern games. Love the design of this controller, size and feel is right, connecting is easy and it works great.

The controller itself is fantastic, I basically have no gripes with any of it. The buttons feel just right, the sticks are pleasant and smooth, the dpad is far above average compared to first-party controllers on the market- the only thing I could see someone having issues with is maybe it's a little light and might feel cheap to some? But I don't mind that, if it doesn't need to be heavy then don't make it heavy, who cares. I bought this because the controls, especially the face buttons, really well imitate that of the DS or 3DS', like how close the buttons are together. Most home controllers have really spaced out buttons and that can feel a little weird when you're playing old portable games on your computer or something. And this controller filled that niche exactly how I wanted it to!HOWEVER. And this is kind of a big thing. The app sucks because of one big oversight with it.So, the buttons and macros and whatnot are customizable with an app made specifically for this company's controllers. The app isn't suspicious or sketchy or anything, so that's all well and good, but for some reason they're trying to make like, a weird hierarchy with the controllers? It feels like they're trying to treat them like NFTs and make it a social aspect which is laughable and so unnecessary, and to be protective of each one, you have to register your controller in the app before you can do anything with it. And to register it- you have to tap it to your phone, and using NFC on your phone like an amiibo, it registers it and gives it a rarity and whatnot, and from there you can customize the buttons. But, to do that tapping registration, your phone has to actually HAVE NFC functionality. And a lot of cheaper or older smart phones just, do not. Such as mine!I got this controller and one little thing I didn't care for was the paddles on the back of the controller. They're perfectly fine, but I kept accidentally clicking them when I was holding the controller. No issue, I thought, I got the app and was just going to disable them. I register for a CRKD account in the app, only to see that it expects me to register a controller before I can mess with anything. I mainly stay home, and prefer to use my computer, and so my phone is on the cheaper end, and does not have NFC functionality. That is the ONLY way to unlock the option to customize the controller. You can't plug it in, you can't just connect it to your android via bluetooth and have it register that way. So, if your phone doesn't have NFC, you'd better just hope you like the default bindings for everything! So, because of this stupid oversight, I had to borrow my boyfriend's phone, install the app on his, log in, use the NFC on his to register the controller to my account, delete the app from his phone, and from there I was able to connect to it from my list of registered devices and just update and unbind those buttons like normal. You literally only need NFC to register these controllers and nothing else, but until you do you can not customize the thing at all, and that's just so silly to me. I think it's because they're trying to push the stupid "rarity" social thing but be honest, who in the world needs more than one of these? I didn't buy the controller for clout, I bought it because I wanted to use it! I didn't get the gold one because that puts me above people who couldn't get that one, I just picked it because it shipped faster and looks cool!So yeah, aside from the app, oversight, it's a great controller. Just make sure you're cool with being stuck with default bindings if your phone doesn't have NFC and you don't have a friend whose phone you can borrow.

This controller is awesome! Good connectivity, good size works with phones/computers/Nintendo switch. Can be used wired or wirelessly