The Verdict Is In - Gamesir is Meh!
Greetings, good day, happy frosty morning for all you North Americans feeling a bit of my arctic chill. I am back with my review of the Gamesir X2 USB-C Mobile gaming controller. And I'm not going to sugar coat it, my experience has been sub optimal for the price tag on the device. I'll save you a read if you're uninterested in the nitty gritty and just say this; 3.5 Stars out of 10. Do not buy for the current price of $99 CAD
The first thing I noticed upon picking up the controller for use was that the position of hte right analog stick interferes with my method of thumb placement. I have to kink my wrist out to the side a bit in order to hit the Y and B buttons without flicking the stick. Something I, personally find uncomfortable during extended play session as I like to play with my wrists straight and not slightly bent. There is enough room on the molded plastic to easily shift the buttons over to the right a millimeter or two while moving the analog stick over to the left an equal millimeter or two, and that would greatly increase comfort factor. I have not tested this device with mobile games on the Play Store, and only tested it emulating retro titles. I have zero interest in the current batch of mobile games, nor the ping to play any of the fps titles.
I will say though that all buttons on this device are nice and clicky with a decent amount of resistance without being a mushy mess. And the analog control sticks work really well and feel responsive. Pressing the buttons on the device is a satisfying experience, even if you're at an odd angle.
The Analog sticks even come with two sets of rubber grips to slide on for some mild customization. I threw on these wide dish ones, but I found one severe flaw. While attaching your mobile phone to the device, there isn't really an elegant solution to extending the telescope and plonking your phone in the groove. You half-ass line up the usbc port, letting the phone rest on the controller and then pull the device apart so the phone slides into the slot.
Well, EVERY time I've done this it's pulled the additional right controller grip off. Every time, without fail. Same when finished and removing the phone, you kinda flick the phone up, onto the right controller, then let it slide closed. Which removes the right controller grip... Brilliant!
Next up, the USB-C charging port. Why is this in a list of flaws? Well, because it only works with a handful of devices. The list of devices that support charging the phone while using the controller is about 20 phones. You can see a list of them here https://doc.xiaoji.com/zh/x2/ The USB-C port does not support audio pass through, so you cannot listen to your games with a wired headset. Hope you upgraded to bluetooth already!
Another thing to mention, their app is garbage. Literal garbage. It's functionally useless and really only serves as an "upadter" for the firmware of the device. You can map games to custom keybinds, but you're probably better off just changing them in-game if the game supports that.
All that said, once the device works it does work well. The controls are all responsive and snappy, and the built in screenshot button is handy for quickly getting photos of your footage from game to blog the fastest. Plus the built in screen recording on most Android devices means you can easily upload videos to youtube from one device and don't have to futz about with screencap devices or flash cards and moving files. Score!
So if you're in the market for a telescopic android controller, do yourself a favor and buy a $30 one, don't get a $100 controller, as the price probably isn't justified.