When the Razer Edge shipped earlier this 12 months, it included a higher-end model of Razer’s $100 Kishi V2 cellular controller — a tool eerily just like well-known competitor the Spine One. Now you may get the $130 Android-only Kishi V2 Professional controller by itself, in certainly one of two variants: the usual model and a specifically licensed Xbox Version that features — watch for it — an Xbox button beneath the proper joystick for an additional $20 (out there solely in North America).
The Professional fashions provide 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 similar time, and rumble help (buzzwordly identified today 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 recreation, 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 telephone’s sound system (at the very least in my Samsung Galaxy Extremely S22), so, for example, background music vibrates and nothing seems like a rumble.
The design is in any other case the identical. It comes with extra rubber tabs you’ll be able to slide in at both finish to supply a extra cosy match or elevate the digicam bump barely so it would not press in opposition to the again help, however I have a tendency to search out that makes it harder than I wish to snap within the telephone.
A 3.5mm jack (left) joins the for-charging-only USB-C port (proper).
Lori Grunin/CNET
Razer up to date its Nexus app together with this rollout, and I am nonetheless not loopy about it. As an illustration, somewhat than realizing I am signed in to Xbox Recreation Move 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 for those who exit a recreation or the app unexpectedly — say, when it is attempting 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 Recreation Move login accurately — it loses the connection to the controller. Then you need to disconnect and reconnect it bodily, as a result of there is not any solution to drive a connection refresh in software program. That is not the solely scenario wherein the telephone 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. Perhaps V3 would be the attraction.