After spending several weeks testing 30 of the PC controllers, the Flydigi Vader 5 Pro stands out for its clicky mechanical buttons, long-lasting battery, and Hall Effect thumbsticks whose tension you can adjust at any time.
But players who want a symmetrical stick layout or a pad built for large hands should look elsewhere.
I'm a journalist with more than 12 years of experience writing about games and reviewing hardware. I play most of my games on PC, and I switch between mouse input and a controller depending on what I'm playing. I rotate through several PC controllers every year, from brands big and small, and have a good sense of the strengths and weaknesses of different manufacturers.
Away from PC, I play my Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series S with controllers, often third-party devices that are compatible with PC.
To pick the best controller for PC gaming, I first compiled a longlist of potential pads that I thought had a shot. I then cut that down to a shortlist and tested everything on it, arriving at a handful of recommendations.
When I began this process I didn't have a concrete blueprint in mind for the best controller, but I knew what attributes I wanted.
I wanted controllers with reliable, tactile face buttons – but I didn't care whether they were clicky and mechanical or the more traditional, softer-feel "membrane" buttons. I wanted accurate, long-lasting sticks, ideally with Hall Effect or Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors that use magnets rather than physical contacts, and are therefore less prone to wear and "stick drift.” I wanted smooth triggers, a comfortable shape, a bouncy D-pad for navigating menus or playing arcade-style games, and a battery life of 6–8 hours at an absolute minimum, but ideally much longer.
I had an extra set of features that I considered non-essential, but nice to have. These included a headphone jack, customization software, a charging dock, and extra remappable buttons on the controller, for flexibility (so you can, for example, remap fiddly control-stick clicks to the more reliable press of a button).
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/best-pc-controller
