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We heard you loud and clear. Never in the history of controller roundups

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has there ever been a greater omission than the Game Sir Cyclone 2.

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We covered 19 controllers, and the Cyclone 2 was not one of them.

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Not because we didn't want to cover it. It was on our original coverage list.

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It just didn't arrive in time. And so lucky for you, ShortCircuit exists,

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and we are going to take a look at what is potentially one of the best controllers

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on the entire fricking market. We have our controller. We have our included charging stand.

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This thing's cool, man. It looks like a little monitor stand.

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We have our 2.4 gigahertz dongle. We have our instruction manuals, stickers,

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quick start guide, and we have a one meter type A to type C USB cable.

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That's fine. It's shorter than a lot of the cables that I see in controller boxes,

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but I'm going to use this thing wireless because why the heck wouldn't I?

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We also have the white version, which nicely enough comes with a white cable

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and a white dongle. That's actually a nice little touch. Genuinely wasn't expecting.

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We have our face buttons, our asymmetrical sticks. We have our menu, view, and share buttons.

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We have our Xbox style turn on button. It's got a little nice little light around it.

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On the bottom, we have our M button, which presumably means mode.

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You can assign different functions to it. And then at the top, we have our nice clicky bumpers, our triggers,

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our type C port, as well as now that I know, a phone mounting slots.

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You put a little phone mount on there. That's pretty cool. On the back, we have two paddles

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and our little pins for charging for the dock that comes with it.

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You don't have to get the dock. It costs a little bit more. And on the bottom, we have our headphone jack.

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Very nice. Very solid amount of buttons, nothing too extra.

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And I'm okay with that. In terms of hand feel, this is very similar to an Xbox control.

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It feels a little bit smaller and this back edge feels a little bit sharper.

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It lands right in the crevice of my fourth finger.

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So it's not uncomfortable, but I think some people won't love it.

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That does mean that the paddles land right under my middle finger.

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So it's a very natural hand shape and it feels very comfortable. It feels quite premium, very solid,

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no twist or anything. The triggers are fairly light,

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but they feel premium, very even across the whole travel.

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On the trigger itself, you'll see there's a little switch that switches it between hall effect and micro trigger mode.

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That's an interesting mechanism. Usually there's like a little button here

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that adds a plastic stop. I don't hate that.

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In the clicky mode, it feels totally great.

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I don't think my finger's gonna touch that toggle naturally.

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I kind of have to go reaching forward if I wanna feel it. So I think that's actually a pretty ingenious spot to put it.

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It is a little more finicky. So I don't think mid game you're gonna be reaching

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and switching that, although that's not a particularly common thing to do.

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Oh, that's pretty cool. You can actually see what's happening inside the trigger when I switch the toggle.

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There's a little lever that comes down. It looks like a little mouse switch,

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and you're hitting that directly. It's not just like a little plastic stop.

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And then when you turn it off,

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it goes back to being the full hall effect motion. That's really cool that you can actually see that.

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I think that makes the transparent even cooler. These bumpers are definitely in membraney,

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but they're well within good zone. Across the whole thing, it feels like a pretty even press,

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although I think you can hear the difference of pressing closer to the inside than the outside.

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Definitely totally fine, cause my finger's resting on the whole thing. It's pretty neat.

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The white one has the transparent triggers, at least more transparent than the black transparent one,

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which is transparent, but as you can see, it's hard to see inside.

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So I think this is a more striking look. I like that aesthetic. I'm not a big gold guy,

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and I fear that the plastic would wear on this

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and not look so great. I think aesthetically speaking,

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it is a fairly striking controller, quite attractive.

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Face buttons are a fairly short travel with a little click at the bottom.

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So it's a micro switch style. Those feel pretty good actually. I like that.

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These buttons aren't as important and they all feel fine.

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The D-pad, not bad. Clicky, but it's still a little mushy overall.

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I don't think I would hit accidental diagonals too often,

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but doing, you know, forward, quarter circle forward

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is not going to be a super consistent experience. These sticks have a good weight to them.

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They feel pretty premium. And part of that is actually the selling feature

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of this controller. These are Game Surge, Meg, Rez, TMR sticks.

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It's worth noting that these are 12-bit resolution analog sticks,

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which means that you have a little more definition and precision on the sticks.

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In my experience, that doesn't translate a ton in game.

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That being said, I don't play a ton of competitive games with a controller. So I think it's one of those, it's not going to hurt you

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and it's good to have that precision overall, although it's probably not worth going out of your way

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just to get that. In terms of other features we're going to get into, it's got RGB, it has eSports level rumble,

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which means absolutely nothing, as well as an 860 milliamp battery,

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which is adequate size for this, and a thousand Hertz polling rate over

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its 2.4 gigahertz mode, which is very good.

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So far, everything is pretty darn good on this thing.

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And I'm really excited to test it out in game. But first, let us tell you about our sponsor.

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I'm a big fan of the USB port on the stand, which means you can plug the USB cable into the stand,

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the dongle into this, and that's all you ever have to do is just plug this thing in, stand it there,

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it's going to charge, it's going to connect, and it's supposed to auto-connect as soon as you take it off.

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That's actually a pretty slick system for a PC thing. I'm a big fan.

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And once connected, we get our RGB controls, that's pretty nice.

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We have our polling rate, they're calling it the report rate.

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You can turn it down, I guess, if you want it to conserve the battery,

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we're going to keep it at a thousand. Over here, we have our gyro controls.

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We can change our x-axis output modes that you can control what directions

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it's actually going to output in, how you turn it on with a button,

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and then the method of either holding on or just pressing to switch.

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Our output modes, we have our stick, our mouse,

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and then our Professor X mode. If you know what that is, let us know in the comments.

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Down here, we have trigger controls, including dead zone, which by default has a little bit of dead zone on both sides.

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We have our adaptive mode, although these are not adaptive triggers.

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There's fixed mode. Oh, there's actually more hidden controls.

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Same thing, dead zone, anti-dead zone. There's a curve adjustment, which is pretty nifty.

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We're going to leave it at default, as well as the hair trigger mode. I'm not going to use that

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because I'm just going to use the triggers locks themselves when I want to use that.

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We have stick control, same thing, dead zone, anti-dead zone, curve adjustment,

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and then stick trajectory. We have button reassignments, we're just going to leave everything at default.

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But that's a fairly comprehensive amount of control in this app, and it worked pretty good.

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Pretty impressed with this controller. It's time to game. First impression, these sticks are very precise.

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They feel very good. The triggers feel awesome. Input latency on this feels spot on,

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and with our Labs testing, this fell right in the middle of the pack with input latency around nine milliseconds,

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although we've seen reports online of big input latencies over the 2.4 gigahertz dongle.

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Our testing over Bluetooth was not particularly good. Wired seems to be the most consistent,

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but personally, I would suffer through the spikes

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to have the wireless mode, because I'm usually sitting away from my screen.

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I think these might be the best feeling triggers

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with micro switches I've ever felt. Generally, it's just that plastic toggle,

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but this still has that tactility of a little micro switch.

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These feel exceptionally good. And then the regular Hall Effect trigger travel

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also feels really premium. This feels exquisite.

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I didn't even test the stick circularity yet. Oh, that's looking pretty dang good.

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Oh, average error of 0.1%.

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These are precise. These are nice sticks,

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which puts it within margin of error of our Labs testing, which was 0%.

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Labs explicitly said these are among the best analog sticks they've tested yet.

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Oh, game, sir. You know how to game, sir.

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I like recycling jokes from LTTs. This is a really good controller for hand-filled too,

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if you're a sweaty gamer, it has this textured plastic feel,

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so it's not gonna have that gross rubbery decay. And it feels very nice in the hand.

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Now that we know that the sticks and triggers are phenomenal, why don't we play a game that's gonna test

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other aspects of this controller? Even in a game that demands precision like Super Meat Boy,

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this is a flawless experience. I am having a hard time finding any negatives on this thing.

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I actually really like the amount of click the face buttons have.

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It's clicky, so there's a definition of when you know you're pressing it,

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but it's still an acceptable travel amount, so it feels not that far out of the ordinary,

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coming from like an Xbox controller. The Cyclone 2 might be the new King of Controllers,

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especially considering that this controller is only $50 or $56 if you want the stand,

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which I think is actually worth it. It's made out of metal, it holds the controller well,

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and it has the little dongle slot. Seems worth the $6.

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And this controller works on Switch, it works on PC, Android, iOS.

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It's an excellent package. This is hard to argue with $50

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for such an excellent controller. Wow, there really is no reason

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to buy first party controllers unless you're playing on a console. I am left wondering, should I get this?

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Or the Vader or the Apex? Man, there's so many good controllers

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that I just wasn't aware of. I don't see any major downsides to the Cyclone 2.

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It's a really well-rounded controller

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that's built for a lot of purposes at an absolutely fair price.

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I would definitely add this to the list of controllers you should consider,

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just like you should consider subscribing to ShortCircuit and watching more videos.

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I recently unboxed the Apex 4, which arguably is a better controller,

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but it's a different price tier. So it's an interesting one to have in your conversation,

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but you should watch it.