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more so gaming on smartphones we all know this is stupid touchscreen controls
are terrible but honestly this is like
equally stupid because then now how can you possibly control the d-pad or the
left analog stick or anything like that so there is good news there is a
solution this my friends is the MGA hero
power and the MGA Pro Power which we'll be taking a look at today we're going to
start with the hero power which is a $60 model it has two clickable analog sticks
a d-pad abxy buttons L1 R1 L2 and R2
shoulder and Trigger buttons an LED battery life indicator that turns on
when you actually turn the device on as well as a slim portable design excuse
the uh crot shot here and a rechargeable
18 00 mAh battery next up we've got the
Pro Power at $79.99 and inside the box for that one
we find what they're calling a console style Comfort game controller although I
think calling it console style Comfort is a little bit of a stretch is it of
the same build quality as something like an Xbox 360 controller no but it is
bigger than the portable Hero version so I will definitely give them that it's
got dual clickable analog sticks a d-pad
as well as has abxy buttons L1 and R1 as
well as L2 and R2 shoulder and Trigger buttons and led battery life indicator
it's actually quite GL granular glandular granular and very handy it
also has a rechargeable 2200 milliamp battery and okay I did claim this was an
unboxing so we should show you what's included with them you get instructions a little statement of whatever the heck
as well as a 6in USB to micro cable and
a more normal length USB to micro cable and I'll show you what these are for
moment the other thing that the pro includes that the hero does not include
is a little stand which you can actually put a tablet or a smartphone on so that
you don't have to clip it to the controller more on that in the
moment so the killer app here for the power series is that the included
Batteries Not only Power the device itself but also the phone that it's
connected to so there is a boost port at
the back that you use that little 6-in cable for you go ahead and plug that in
and then you can plug that directly into your phone so it can actually augment
the battery life of your phone cuz we all know that phones have terrible
battery life when you are gaming it can reach pretty much anywhere on the device
so you can see I can actually position this all the way around to the top of an
Xperia Z1 and how does it do that you might ask well it all starts with the
Smart Lock system it's spelled smrt so Homer Simpson clearly thinks it's a good
idea and who am I to disagree with him how well does it work exactly well we
did some shake tests with a variety of phones that we that we borrowed so these
are ones that have to go back to the manufacturer so what do we care if they come out and it actually did incredibly
well the rubber grippy material on the top of the bottom is some of the best
that I have ever encountered this is a fantastic feature but it isn't quite
perfect there aren't really any angle options so both on the hero as well as
on the pro you can see that you've only got completely sort of down completely
right angle and then this particular angle right here which I didn't find was
quite perfect from like a sitting gaming standpoint cuz I don't hold my
controller flat it looks like whoever designed it was expecting you to sit
with your controller flat on a desk as opposed to angled up in a more natural
position it wasn't a deal breaker especially if your phone has a decent
viewing angle but it just wasn't quite as comfortable as it could have been
maybe on the Next Generation so before we get into the million dooll question
of how does it play exactly I'll give some context for the competition the
stuff that I've tried so I've used the Niko playpad Pro that's the only sort of
lower cost Bluetooth controller optimized for phones that I have it's
very low latency so that's great but the ergonomics are just frankly not very
good it's somewhere between the hero power and the pro power as far as the
gaming experience goes but it's bulky like the pro power as opposed to being
something that's Mobility optimized like the hero power the other option that
I'll talk about is NVIDIA SHIELD so this is heavy I mean when you compare it to
even the Pro Power which is the heavier of the two options loaded up with an
Xperia Z which is a pretty heavy foam that comes in at around 430 G Shield is
around 590 G with that said it has
heavy-hitting battery life as well as heavy-hitting features you can it has a
tgra 4 processor you can play Android games you can stream PC games and all
that stuff but it is in a completely
different price bracket because this works with your existing phone and costs
anywhere from 60 to 80 bucks depending on the model you're looking at and this
cost anywhere from $200 to $300 and depending if you buy it with a
graphics card or not finally game compatibility MGA does have optimized
compatible games that work out of the box and I did find that that worked
quite well and was very seamless and with the ab switch on the bottom you can
also flip it into hid mode so any games that are compatible with hid which
stands for human interface device by the way for you guys who don't know that uh
any games that support that will work perfectly Shield of course is compatible
with those kinds of things as well but also has touchcreen mapping which is an
available download from NVIDIA that allows you to take touchcreen controls
and actually bind them to butons on the controller this is something where I
feel like these third party guys have a little bit of room to catch up because
it's an incredibly cool feature so for
the gaming experience and general thoughts I'm going to separate them I'll do the pro first the button tactile feel
and ergonomics are quite good actually they're okay it's not an Xbox 360
controller we've been very clear about that but they're quite good the
joysticks are good the clickiness of the joysticks is good the d-pad is very
mediocre I'd say on the low end of mediocre even considering how much d-pad
PS have been abandoned this isn't something I'd want to play my older emulated games on from SNES or anything
like that Precision platforming not so much but the abxy buttons are not bad
they're may be a little bit hard to press but I'm not going to take off too many marks there the shoulder buttons
and Trigger buttons are very good the only thing that really bothered me about
the ergonomics of this one is the fact that you bump the right joystick when
pressing the a button and the x button if you're not extremely careful and if you have larger hands than me it will be
more of an issue the setup app is excellent this actually goes for both of
them you just install their MOA app on the phone and then it guides you through
the entire process it's very very simple you don't even need the instructions of
the hid setup as well as the MGA optimized setups the latency was solid
Reaper is a game that I've been playing a lot of actually lately and it's a
little bit of precision is required but it's not a huge deal and I didn't notice
any delay whatsoever and apparently multiplayer gaming is also a feature so
you can use two of these at a time which is cool but we didn't happen to try that
particular one now now the pro comes
with this little stand which actually holds anywhere up to you know like a 10-in quite heavy bulky tablet and folds
up small enough that even though the controller itself doesn't fit in your
pocket this stand could easily fit in your pocket sorry for that crotch shot again and you could take it with you
anywhere you wanted so it's going to come down to whether you prefer the
ergonomics of the larger controller or the convenience of the smaller one so
for the hero obviously the ergonomic experience is not as good this is
something that I'd consider to be a little bit better for something like emulated games the d-pad is actually
better than the pro in my estimation although the joysticks are not as good
and the clickiness of the joysticks is a little bit hard to activate the abxy
buttons are about the same I'd say maybe even a little bit better they're a
little bit of a lighter Touch compared to the pro and the shoulder buttons are
actually quite nice feeling the one where this really falls on its butt is
the triggers the triggers are the worst triggers I've ever encountered on a
controller I mean here I'm going to put this next to my
mic there there's no tactile response there extremely mushy and extremely slow
to respond but I'm willing to let that slide because the portability and the
fact that not only this one but both of these controllers give you extended Play
Time by charging your phone at the same time is a very excellent feature I did
find myself frustrated by the lack of an adjustable angle for the smart hinge
here but I understand why they did what they did particularly for the pro even
with a heavy phone installed in it you can put it down and it doesn't tip over
which is quite nice whereas for the hero you know if they went any further back
anything would just tip the thing over but I think the idea is you're supposed
to be holding it when you're using it anyway so thank you for checking out my
unboxing and overview of the Moga Power series don't forget to subscribe to L
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