The Steam Controller just came out and our biggest hang-up was the price.
So we're looking at a controller that sneaks in quite a bit under
and if you're only looking for that gamepad functionality, none of that trackpad or nonsense,
the Vader 5 Pro from Frye Digi might be a very interesting option for you and for me.
I'm at the point with my Cyclone 2 where I'm maybe considering a replacement
and this is at the top of my list for a number of reasons.
The top of them being these adjustable tension joysticks.
As we explored with the four era of Flye Digi's product in our 16-way controller roundup,
these adjustable joystick tension thingies are friggin sweet.
Whether you like really light 40 gram force or 100 grams of force,
you can kind of lock in the tension you want and with the latest version of the Vader 5S Pro,
these are actually ratcheting, so it's less likely for them to slip as you play in the tension
to switch. Good sticks are important, but what about the rest of the controller?
On the top we have our Flye Digi button that is actually a button this time,
not just a logo. We have our start select, they're not called that anymore, menu options.
We call it overlapping squares and three dots.
On the top we have our joysticks, we have our floating D-pad that is clicky and will
do a fine job getting you through your menus. If you're planning on using this D-pad for
precision controls, stop planning that immediately. This is not what that is designed for.
Over here we have four clicky mechanical buttons, which I have grown to really like clicky buttons
on my controllers, as well as two extra buttons. So if you're playing them Sega games or Xbox
original games, you got actual face buttons. The click on these is actually quite different.
It's substantially less satisfying. You can even hear it.
But that's fine. These are things you can assign to extra controls. I don't think
they're going to be primary inputs. So just having the extra options is nice,
especially when you go to the top, there's extra little option bumpers here. Like the
8-Bit Doe 2C, we have three shoulder buttons on each side. We have our regular
big boy bumpers with a textured plastic, and then we have our triggers that have a ton of
features hidden inside. We'll get to shortly. And then we got these little clicky bumpers.
I think just like the 2C, they're a little bit far of a reach that I probably wouldn't use too,
too often. But in games where I'm like, I really wish I could assign one extra control,
that is nice. And they feel pretty good as do the bumpers. They don't feel even across the button.
Over here, it's a much more satisfying click. Over here, I can feel the plastic doing sort of a
lever thing before the mechanism actually activates. Still pretty good though, would have no problems,
especially the way I hold it. Like most of my fingers on it anyway, just like the triggers.
And similar to other Flydigy products, we actually have mechanical stops to make them
the competitive style little hair triggers. And these are really satisfying. You hear that sound?
Also on the top of note is our Type-C charging port. You can also use this controller via wire.
In terms of connectivity, there is a 2.4 GHz dongle included. You can use Bluetooth on the back.
We got the trigger stops back here. We have pre-installed paddle buttons that are built into
the controller. We have our two slots to add extra paddle buttons with attachments that are in the
box. We'll actually do the real unboxing later. And then the two little buttons actually for the
extra back paddles as well. And then we have our mode toggle. So we have dongle, Bluetooth,
Nintendo Switch mode. It's important to note, this won't work out of the box with a PlayStation
or Xbox console. You can get adapters that do work with that. But by the time you buy those adapters,
the value proposition of this controller is severely weakened. It's time to go out to our field
reporter to find out if this controller connected to a Switch 2 can turn it on just using the button.
Switching this into Nintendo Switch mode, holding the button.
You're gonna need to be hitting the bumpers. Oh, nope. There we go. It's connected.
Takes you back home, but it will not wake the console. Wow, incredible. On the bottom,
we have our function and turbo buttons. That's not stuff I'm in the habit of using, but I know
some people are very passionate about those. So power to you. We also have our LED strip that
will light up in desperate search of a dongle that is not plugged in right now. Of note,
just like the Steam controller, there is no headphone jack, which may or may not be a deal
breaker for you. But features are what features are, baby. Let's see how this feels in the hand.
It feels like I'm holding a really much improved Xbox controller. It's got a similar grip style you
can kind of see in terms of the angle, but it has a more rubberized plastic sort of like the elite.
I think people are going to be a little bit mixed on this. I don't like rubber
on my controllers because that puts a counter down for when this controller will be absolutely
disgusting and oily. That being said, today, it feels really nice and really premium. We got
the textured back, the textured bumpers and triggers. There's a different type of plastic here
that has little speckles in it. So I think that's a neat touch, although I don't think they go quite
far enough to make it super two-toned. When it catch the light, it feels more different than it
looks. In person, it kind of just looks like dark gray and dark gray with flex in it. I wish this
had more contrast. I think that would make it pop more. That being said, that's as nitpicky as
nitpicky gets, baby. I actually got too excited about this controller. We need to see what else is
in the box. So you get a nice little thick manual in many languages. You also get ads for other
via Digi controllers from the Doom Fox all the way to the Apex 5. I want to cover both of those.
Let us know in the comments which one you're more interested in me covering. We also have other
products like a phone cooler and a laptop cooling pad. Also in the box is a 150 centimeter cable
that's just under five feet. It's not the cheapest cable I've ever felt. It's great for USB 3,
which is nice. Pretty good housing. We'll do the job. We also have our dongle. Regular ass dongle
is definitely not as cool as the steam controller one, and it doesn't have the functionality of
plugging into your cable or charging your controller, but that's fine. Last thing inside of this
plastic is our extra rear paddles. They slide into the back here with a little satisfying click.
And if you've been paying close attention to Fly Digi's latest controllers, you'll know that some
of the early ones had a really bad back paddles where they would break really bad. And you'll be
glad to know that this is actually the V2 of the Vader 5 Pro, and they fixed the part inside the
controller that was just a little plastic loop that was breaking. So it should be more reliable.
Although I do have comments about the fact that there's a V2 that it's hard to know about. We'll
get to that later. Wow, that's actually surprisingly seamless. I was expecting it to feel like the
difference in back paddle would be quite drastic, but they feel very connected to each other. Like
there's a little bit of flex on the levered ones, but I'm getting a satisfying click. And if I needed
four back paddles, this would be certainly adequate, although I would like that plastic a little stiffer.
One thing that is slightly painfully missing when you compare it to something like the Cyclone 2
is there's no included dock. Not the end of the world if it keeps the pricing more accessible.
And the fact that there is an optional dock for $25 is pretty nice. Let's see how this thing is.
White. White. The dock is very premium feeling compared to the pack in one on this,
the Cyclone 2. I start to understand why they're charging more for it. It's got good weight,
which is actually nice because the controller is going to sit nice and it's not really going
to be in danger of falling over or disconnecting. There is no magnetic click, but the pins go in
quite nicely. On the front, we have RGB array for cool RGB stuff. We have our charging pins and the
controller mount. On the bottom, we have rubber feet so it doesn't slide as much. And then we get
to the good stuff. We have our dongle USB slot. It's the right size for this so that you can
actually use these ones, just like a USB dock. This type C goes to your computer,
so you actually get two extra USB ports if you use this dock. I actually am more considering
this dock than I thought I was going to at the beginning of this video. Just like I'm really
considering the upgrade to this Goku edition Vader 5 Pro. Yes, you heard that right. This
Vader 5 has fricking Dragon Ball Z branding all over it. Over here, we have this sort of silk
screen outline of Super Saiyan Goku and then Super Saiyan in Japanese as well as more flames.
These orange transparent triggers are really nice and they can let you see a little bit of the
mechanism of the rumble triggers of the Vader 5 Pro. Very similar feel outside of the front plate.
This feels really nice, premium. This feels sticky and cheap. It's actually cheap enough
feeling that even though I really like some of the aesthetic choices on this, I think I'm going
to stick with my base model. Let's plug it in and find out how it performs after I tell you about
our sponsor. We have our controllers plugged in via the dock. There's a lot of RGB going on.
I don't know how I feel about that. Let's open up the Fly Digi software and see how it goes. Oh boy,
we got some Chinese characters. That's not going to work for me. Okay, I can infer that this is
profile 1234. That's fine. We can set up more configurations if we want. I really only need
the one. First off, we can reassign all our mappings. That's pretty cool, especially for the back
buttons where games might not have the ability to map that directly. You can kind of assign a
specific input or a macro or something special. Next, we have our common settings, which include
the light, dynamic glow, breathing, gradient, and we're not going to go through all these. We're
going to turn it off for battery life. That is quite bright. It might not seem like it in a well
lit room, but that actually would need to go off for me because I don't want to be made aware of
all of this when I'm playing games. You know, I want to be sucked into the screen. I play video games
like it's the never ending story. I also want to extend my battery life. This comes with a
1000 milliamp hour battery, which Fly Digi says is good for about 15 hours of game. But of course,
if you're using tons of haptics or lights and stuff that will go down slightly, 15 hours is okay.
No, not great. Steam controller did like 37. So, and that was like full tilt haptics going all the
time. It's okay. Next, we have our vibration. We can turn on or off vibration as well as the
intensity. I want my fingers to tingle. That is a rumble motor that is not haptics. That's not
advanced stuff. That's fine. I think most people prefer the haptics, but this would be sufficient.
Next, we have our buttons, which is just another way to remap. Then we have our joystick. We can
change our sensitivity curve. We can change our circularity algorithm. If we want to have it be
a rectangle where it's basically more forgiving about slightly being off axis, where you're trying
to go forward or perfect circle. If you're using Hall Effect or TMR sticks, usually you want the
precision of the circle. But that being said, we haven't even talked about what technologies
actually in these sticks. These are Hall Effect sticks as well as Hall Effect triggers. Now,
Hall Effect technology is better than Potentiometer based sticks like you have in all three of the
first party controllers. However, we have entered the golden age of the tunnel magneto resistance
sticks, which basically has the precision and long life of Hall Effect with lower power draws.
That might actually be part of why this has a pretty okay battery life is these Hall Effect sticks
while precise and should have a long life other than the centering spring may be dying out or
giving out on you. It's a shame that they haven't upgraded to TMR sticks in an era where they are
getting cheaper and cheaper. Go back to our software. We can basically have our dead zone
or offset. We are going to leave things at default. Then we have our gyro sensors. I also
haven't talked about the freaking gyro in this. It's got six axis baby. Yeah, more features than
you can freaking handle. I know not everyone's super into gyro aiming, but I am definitely
coming around to it in the right games. Basically, what that means is you can still aim with the
right stick to your big macro movements and then little micro adjustments with the gyro gives you
extra precision. Pretty freaking sweet. Next, we have our trigger settings and we can change these
independently of the trigger, which is nice because sometimes you want one to be really,
really quick and so you want to optimize for around quickness and speed and the other you want to be
a little more immersive or you can have them be the same. We can turn on and off the vibration of
the triggers. Next, we can change the stroke setting, which basically means that like it'll
get a positive press faster, the more sensitive you set it. Then you can change your vibration
intensity. I don't think there's a vibration test, which is fine, but I'm going to put my
vibration intensity to 100. Next, we have our trigger amplitude, which seems to set the minimum
maximum range for the trigger vibration intensity as well as our vibration shielding value, which
basically is like a dead zone for activating the trigger depending on the game. We're going to
leave these at default and see how our games do starting with Forza Horizon 5. Let's actually
switch back to wireless mode so we can comment on that wireless latency. Oh, I also need to
turn off the lights on the dock. What are our dock settings? Light mode, diagonal flow. It's
kind of nice to get a little preview on the screen. Okay, I'm a little more into this. Custom. Okay,
yeah, you can put like videos in. It doesn't look, you can upload videos. See how this works?
Plot of the device. The amount of RGBs is great for a controller dock, but it's not quite enough
to have like a full on story told through this thing. Right now, it's just like a beige to green.
You can kind of tell mic, but you can't really tell Linus. That's okay. We're just going to go with
something I like to call off. In the software, we have four other options. One is intelligence
start, which basically knows that the controller is plugged in and will turn off the animation and
show charging. We have lighting sync, which will keep the RGB of the dock and the controller connected.
You can have it close when shut down, which basically turns off the RGB when the computer's off,
as well as you can change it to be a power display. So it'll show you
how much the controller is charging with this cool little animation. I got to say for 25 bucks,
this dock is a pretty decent value if you're getting this controller. I'm turning my RGB off
and I'm turning my gamer fingers on. Let's freaking play, boys. These rumble triggers really do rumble.
And the way that the trigger meets the plastic housing here, I find actually vibrates kind of
uncomfortably. Like it does kind of give me that tingly feeling because I'm half my fingers on the
stationary plastic and the other pieces on the rumbly piece. I actually wish that the trigger
didn't go as far down into the body because then I wouldn't have that problem. It's not a big deal.
And I think I would just adjust my grip slightly, but it's enough that I want to continue turning
down my trigger vibration. I've turned it down to 25% and this feels much more comfortable for me.
It's still quite immersive on both triggers. The resistance also feels very, very good. In this
kind of game, I'm not going to use the competitive triggers, but the action feels good. The resistance
is good. And then the trigger's just that extra little bit of immersion. Okay, we're going to play
some cascading to test out this D-pad. The verdict is in. D-pad, not so great for retro games. I think
this kind of game is the best use of this kind of controller because then you can set the competitive
trigger so you can get the faster response. I still prefer doing the competitive trigger for aim
down the sights and then full trigger for the guns. Yeah, these sticks feel really good, really
responsive. They're whipping around pretty fast. I like my tension set to maximum. I like the weight
of the sticks. The back paddles feel really good. And that was wrong. I actually think that these top
bumper buttons are not as inaccessible as I first thought. I really like the Vader 5 Pro. I think
it's even better than I expected. I think they've done a lot of improvements since their last
generation of products. And the MSRP is 80 US dollars. And you can often find it for around
like 65, 63 US dollars. That is a really good deal. Here comes the asterisk. This is the V2 of the
5 Pro. The V1 doesn't have the ratcheting tension so that it can slip in the middle of the game. You
don't have the metal innards on the back paddle. So those have been known to break. And the centering
spring on the joysticks is not quite as good. And it's not really easy to identify online which
version you're buying. If you look at the box, the model number here is GPC F50301. If you have
50101, that's a version 1. 301 is the second version. That's the one you want. And I know that
there's a lot of the original ones out there. It's still going to be a good controller. But
it makes me really hesitant to buy one online, especially if I'm buying it from a marketplace.
It's a little bit harder to return. That being said, it's hard to beat the value of 60 US dollars.
Even with this $25 add-on, that's a pretty frigging sweet ecosystem. And this is a really
nice controller. I think if you are really interested in just the joypad functionality,
this is an excellent option for the price. I think it has the features that you need for
competitive gaming for more immersive stuff. And I don't think that it's necessarily worth the price
up to the Apex. It's nearly double the sale price of this. And then you get the more adaptive
triggers. You get bigger battery. You get a screen on your controller. Do you guys even want that?
So I think that the Vader 5 Pro sits at the sweet spot of exactly the controller I want
if you can get the exact one that you want. Just like I'm telling you exactly
the next video you should watch. You should watch our unboxing of the Steam Controller video.
Ploof did a really good job. He had a lot of the same thoughts that I did, but better.