The controller has small compartments in either side of the handgrips. Lifting the controller out of its box for the first time, you’ll notice immediately how surprisingly light it is.
Blue is the Pro Control mode, and red is the Advanced mode.Īfter setting your desired button configurations, the profile button allows you to switch between four stored custom settings in the controller – if you have buttons mapped specifically for FPS games, you can store it as a profile, and so on for other genres such as beat-em-ups or driving games. You can easily tell which mode you’re in thanks to a pretty neat light circling the right analogue stick. This is all done with the Revolution Pro Controller Companion App (that’s a mouthful), which comes available with the controller as standard. Advanced lets you mess around with the settings, allowing you to remap buttons, set dead zones, macro combinations and much more. You’ll also find two more buttons above the rockers – the ‘Mode’ and ‘Profile’ buttons. The Revolution Pro comes in two modes – the ‘Pro Control’ mode and ‘Advanced’ mode – Pro Control essentially disables access to the rocker buttons on the back and maps the rest of the controller to its standard setting, as Sony intended. If you’re an avid FPS fan but don’t like moving your trigger finger to R1 for melee combat, you can map the R1 button to the rocker. Moving to the back of the controller, Nacon have included additional rocker buttons for added customisation. Each rocker includes two buttons, and all four can be remapped to whatever you wish. My only complaint is the high glossy nature of the d-pad in comparison with the rest of the controller – fingerprints show up quite easily and it sticks out like a sour thumb, but the actual visual design of it is decent. The d-pad has had a similar make over for the Revolution Pro – unlike the DualShock 4’s standard four-way d-pad, this sports a circular eight-way d-pad, which should come in handy if you’re into fighting games such as Street Fighter V. Both sticks are also raised slightly higher than the DualShock 4, allowing for a greater range of motion at 46 degrees. Don’t worry, this doesn’t look as tacky as you might think, and the convex nature of the right stick allows for finer movement in fast paced, twitchy gameplay. The left analogue stick is concave with a fine, textured finish whilst the right is convex, sporting Nacon’s company logo. This feels like a more natural, comfortable position, and will be perfectly suited for gamers thinking of jumping ship from the Xbox to the PS4.
The most obvious change to the design of the Revolution Pro is in the placement of the analogue sticks – much like the Xbox controllers, they are now staggered with the left stick placed higher than the right, replacing the original position of the d-pad on the DualShock 4. Sony did a great job redesigning the DualShock controller for the PS4, but in comparison to the Revolution Pro, it feels somewhat cheap – where the plastic on the DualShock creaks under pressure, the Revolution Pro is rock solid. The controller itself screams quality – it has a smooth, rubberised texture and feels incredibly sturdy.
Right off the bat, it’s clear from the packaging that Nacon did a wonderful job with this controller – it’s housed in a classy magnetically sealed box and includes a carrying pouch, a 3m length cable, stickers and additional weights for the controller (Weights? Yeah, more on that later). With Razer’s Raiju sporting a rather hefty £149.99 price tag in comparison to Nacon’s more reasonable £89.99, I opted for the Revolution Pro (and between you and me, the Raiju just doesn’t look quite as nice as the Revolution Pro). Rather than building an official pro controller, Sony instead licensed Nacon and Razer to come up with their own versions, the Revolution Pro Controller and the Raiju Controller. It was a massive step up from the standard Xbox One controller, and PlayStation owners were soon begging Sony to release one of their very own. Billed as the ultimate gaming peripheral for pro-gamers, it sported high build quality, additional paddles, textured grip and customisable face buttons. PlayStation 4 fans around the world went green with envy when Microsoft unveiled their Pro Controller for the Xbox One.
Nacon deliver the first must have third-party PS4 controller.