When the Razer Edge cloud-gaming handheld shipped earlier this yr, it included a higher-end model of Razer’s $100 Kishi V2 — an on-phone sport controller eerily just like well-known competitor the Spine One. Now you may get the $130 Android-only Kishi V2 Professional controller by itself, in one among two variants: the usual model and a specifically licensed Xbox Version that features — watch for it — an Xbox button underneath the fitting joystick for an additional $20 (out there solely in North America).
The Professional fashions supply two options you’ll be able to’t get for the additional bucks: a 3.5mm audio jack, which implies now you can use a wired headset and cost on the identical time, and rumble assist (buzzwordly recognized lately as “haptics”).
So, yay for the three.5mm jack, which works as anticipated, however I am not an enormous fan of Razer’s HyperSense audio-based haptics. For many video games, it is not based mostly on cues within the sport, it is based mostly on sound frequencies, so that you get some bizarre vibrations. Right here it is even weirder, as a result of there’s so little bass within the cellphone’s sound system (at the least in my Samsung Galaxy Extremely S22), so, as an example, background music vibrates and nothing seems like a rumble.
The design is in any other case the identical. It comes with further rubber tabs you’ll be able to slide in at both finish to supply a extra comfortable match or elevate the digital camera bump barely so it would not press in opposition to the again assist, however I have a tendency to search out that makes it tougher than I prefer to snap within the cellphone.
A 3.5mm jack (left) joins the for-charging-only USB-C port (proper).
Razer up to date its Nexus app together with this rollout, and I am nonetheless not loopy about it. As an example, slightly than realizing I am signed in to Xbox Sport Cross through its app, it at all times tells me that to allow haptics for it I’ve to launch Chrome and allow a browser setting that is not there and tries to make me play in Chrome.
And in the event you exit a sport or the app unexpectedly — say, when it is making an attempt to throw you out to Chrome however the message would not have an choice to cancel since you preserve forgetting it would not deal with Sport Cross login appropriately — it loses the connection to the controller. Then it’s a must to disconnect and reconnect it bodily, as a result of there isn’t any option to pressure a connection refresh in software program. That is not the solely scenario during which the cellphone stops recognizing it, both.
So whereas I proceed to love the Kishi V2 line for the crisp controls and simple in-and-out, and I am glad to see the devoted audio jack within the Professional, it is nonetheless extra irritating than I would like in some methods. Possibly V3 would be the attraction.
