Xbox One Elite Controller review

PROS

• Tonnes of customisation options
• Mature, refined design
• Reassuringly heavy

CONS

• Expensive
• Accessories could be more secure in case

WHAT IS THE XBOX ONE ELITE CONTROLLER?

When Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One Elite Controller, with all its knobs, sticks and paddles, at E3 2015, we all gasped, oohed and aahed. It's quite the work of art, with its brushed metal accessories and matte black soft touch finish.

And in reality, the Elite Controller's announcement didn't come as much of a surprise, seeing as the rise of eSports and competitive gaming has been huge.

The new Xbox One Elite Controller is a customisable gamepad that’s quite the upgrade over the regular Wireless Controller. It’s primarily aimed at the seriously competitive gamers, in particular the ones that tend to mod out their pads for the aggressive edge.

But with those customisation options comes a steep price – £129.99. So the question is, is the Xbox One Elite Controller worth it?

Related: Xbox One Elite Controller vs Regular Wireless Controller

XBOX ONE ELITE CONTROLLER – DESIGN

For your £130 investment, you’ll get a wonderful box of tricks. Sliding the lid off the box presents you with the Elite Xbox One Controller in its fabric-covered clam-shell case, which protects it when not in use, but also acts as storage for all the accessories.

By looks alone you could be forgiven for thinking this is a standard Xbox One controller with a lick of paint. But the little moulded rubber holder beneath belies its elite status.

The Elite Xbox One Controller comes with a pair of D-Pads – one a metal version of the regular D-Pad, but the other a faceted metal option – and three analogue stick choices. For the analogue sticks you’re looking at the standard concave diamond grip option, a taller version of these, and a domed set that sit between the two in terms of height.

There are also two sets of paddles that attach to the rear of the controller, and a long, braided micro-USB cable, which is a must-have for those competitive sessions.

All of these sit within the moulded rubber holder with the idea that you can store them securely when not in use, even when travelling around. In practice the spare analogue sticks and cross-style D-Pad all fit in securely, but the faceted D-Pad and the paddles come loose very easily, rattling about in the case.

Related: Xbox One vs PS4

When I first picked up the Elite Controller what was immediately noticeable was the increased weight. Due to its upgraded innards and new metal attachments, the Elite Controller has gained some grams. Microsoft says that with all four paddles attached and the AA batteries inserted – there’s no Play and Charge pack included – the Elite Controller weights 348g (give or take 15g for the different attachment combinations). That’s quite the increase on the 280g regular Wireless controller.

Although the weight is initially very palpable, you quickly become accustomed to the increased mass. In fact, it’s reassuringly heavy. The combination of the new matte rubber finish and the diamonised rubber grip on the underside, you’re looking at a controller that moulds into your hands and stays there – regardless of how sweaty your hands get during extended gaming sessions.

You get so familiar with the weight and feel of the Elite Controller, that the regular one makes feels cheap, rough and thoroughly inferior. Microsoft has ensured that by kitting the Elite Controller out with a mature, understated design. The colourful face buttons and plastic finish have been swapped out for a monochrome colour scheme and metal touches that makes the Elite look like a premium product.

Related: Xbox One vs Xbox 360

The triggers, D-Pads and analogue sticks are all now made from metal for durability; while the actual analogue stick sockets have been enhanced with a reinforced ring to make sure they last longer.

Both the D-Pad and analogue sticks are interchangeable, with the current option attached by magnets. While you’re playing, they feel safe and secure, but if you want to change them out for a new version, it’s quick and simple to do.

The only issue with the magnetic attachments that I had was with the rear paddles. The Elite Controller can support up to four rear paddles, which can function as a duplicate of any of the buttons on the pad you want. Or, you can go without them entirely: the make-up of the Elite Controller is up to you.

But these can be easily caught and dislodged as you pick up the controller. It’s a particular pain at first, when you’re getting used to have those extra appendages, but you will get used to it eventually.

I’m just worried what would happen if you lost one of these accessories, as it doesn’t seem like Microsoft will let you to replace them individually at this stage.

Related: Best Xbox One Games 2015

Around the back of the Elite Controller above the slots for these paddles is a green switch on either side. These are associated with the new and improved Hair-Trigger Locks on the triggers. If you push the green switches down (and they operate independently), they’ll physically limit the travel of each trigger. In practice that means you’ll be able to aim and reload faster in shooting games, or whatever you use your triggers for. That’s going to be a massive boon for professional players where every second counts.

Other improvements on the Elite Controller include a standard 3.5mm headphone jack at the base rather than the irritating proprietary port on the regular controller. Next to that is a legacy connection for purpose built headsets.

You’ll also find that the Xbox One Elite Controller has some rather lovely shoulder buttons. Gone are the overly-loud clicky bumpers of the original controller, with the Elite instead offering a quieter, more even response wherever you press them.

Related: Xbox One HDD Upgrade – How to upgrade your Xbox One storage

XBOX ONE ELITE CONTROLLER – XBOX ACCESSORIES APP

But what takes this enhanced Elite Controller even further is the Xbox Accessories app. Available on Windows 10 and Xbox One, the Xbox Accessories app makes sure that the customisation options don’t stop with the hardware.

The app gives you the option to rebind the functionality of every button, trigger and bumper on the Elite Controller (aside from the menu and options buttons). You now have complete control over how your gamepad works, without being confined to customisation on a game-by-game basis if you don’t want to be.

The Xbox One Elite Controller can store two button mapping configurations at once. The controller lets you switch between them using the slider underneath the options and menu buttons. You can store even more configurations in the Xbox Accessories app and load them onto the controller as and when you need them.

Related: Best Xbox Live Games 2015

There are a few pre-made options in the app too, for games such as Halo 5, the Gear of War: Ultimate Collection, new racer Forza 6 and even the classic Sunset Overdrive. Microsoft promises that there are a tonne more en-route too.

They’re great for those among us who find the thought of remapping every single button totally daunting – and trust me I did at first.

The app also goes beyond basic button-mapping too. There’s individual adjustments for analogue stick sensitivity that manage the distance the sticks need to travel before they react as in-game movements. These include: delay (slow start), aggressive (fast start), instant, smooth and default.

You can also adjust the sensitivity and dead zone of the triggers. The app even lets you turn down the haptic feedback and adjust the brightness of the Xbox light. For those among you that like things a certain way, the Elite Controller also lets you swap the sticks over, permanently invert the right or left stick’s Y-axis or swap the triggers around.

Related: Xbox One backwards compatibility – Can I play Xbox 360 games on my Xbox One?

XBOX ONE ELITE CONTROLLER – PERFORMANCE

In practice, for me the customisation started slowly. I began by adding two paddles for Rise of the Tomb Raider – one for sprinting and the other to initialise the Survival Sense.

But the more I used the Elite Controller across a number of games, the more time I spent tweaking and analysing my button mapping.

Take Forza 6 for example – a game where the back paddles really come into their own. Suddenly you’ve got the manual car controls at the press of a finger, which is especially handy because I don’t really want to fork out for a racing wheel that’ll clutter up my home. Instead, I’ve got the Elite Controller to provide me with more of an authentic racing experience, while still providing me with an excellent gamepad for other games.

Elsewhere, I started using one of the Halo 5 presets to make commanding Team Osiris much easier, as suddenly I’m not having to reach down for the D-Pad anymore, but toggling commands using the back paddles.

If you’re a fighting game addict, then the faceted D-Pad will also be a huge success. Although I’m using it because I prefer the feel of it under the thumb and the general look, I’m assured that it makes it a lot easier to pull combos in titles like Mortal Kombat X and co.

Related: Xbox One tips, tricks and secret features

SHOULD I BUY THE XBOX ONE ELITE CONTROLLER?

Although I’m totally addicted to the Xbox One Elite Controller now I’ve used it – God forbid I’m forced to go back to the regular one at this stage – my recommendation comes with some caveats.

If you’re looking to spend £130 on a controller, you need to seriously think about how much you play on your Xbox One and what games you’re playing because it is around £90 more than a regular controller.

However, for your £130 investment you will get the ultimate customisable controller that will no doubt last the entire lifespan of your console – and possibly longer.

VERDICT

The Xbox One Elite Controller really is the one controller to rule them all, with its mature aesthetics, strong customisation options and durability. You might just want to wait for a price drop before you buy.

Xbox One review

XBOX ONE – TWO YEARS AFTER LAUNCH

I think we’ll look back at 2016 as a landmark year for console gaming – the year when manufacturers ditched the whole idea of console generations to follow a more straightforward, less risky smartphone-like release model where you no longer abandon your existing hardware and customer base every five to seven years. It’s a move that's already brought us the Xbox One S, and will in the near and not-so-near future deliver the PS4 Neo and Project Scorpio – consoles that will play the same games as your current one does, but make them look a whole lot better.

But where does that leave the original Xbox One? From one point of view, in a sad place, destined to become Microsoft’s second-rate system within four years of its launch. Yet from another point of view, the future’s golden. It has a lot of big releases still ahead of it, and providing Microsoft sticks to its current ‘no-one gets left behind’ philosophy, it could have many more on top of that.

Related: Best Xbox One games

XBOX ONE – HARDWARE

Like most sensible people who aren’t rabid Xbox fanboys, we’ve often been unkind about Microsoft’s initial Xbox One design. At 333mm x 276mm x 78mm it’s not only larger than the PS4 but bigger than some gaming PCs, which only seems more amazing when you remember that there’s a huge external power supply to find a home for on top of that. Factor in that you can’t stand it upright, and you have one of the biggest, most obtrusive home entertainment products that’s not a home cinema amplifier or old-fashioned VCR.

This makes Microsoft’s achievement with the new, svelte Xbox One S seem even more significant. Much smaller, it’s still found space for an internal PSU and can stand fully vertical as well. Microsoft was also smart enough to jettison the dust-magnet glossy areas and over-sensitive power button, which came on at the slightest brush.

Yet I’ve got a lot of affection for the old Xbox One. It feels solid and it’s proved reliable. I can’t tell you how many Xbox 360s died on me in the decade between 2005 and 2015, but between the production and the debug consoles it got close to double figures. The Xbox One is still going strong, feels robust and works fairly quietly. Where my PS4 sometimes makes a noise like a leafblower that’s been turned on accidentally in a garden shed, the Microsoft console sounds pretty much the same as on the day I took it home.

Of course, some things have changed since then. The Kinect that Microsoft pushed as a core part of the system now spends much of its time unplugged, making the dedicated power and USB connections on the rear of the Xbox One seem strangely obsolete. The console’s repositioning from home-entertainment hub to games machine has had a similar effect on the HDMI input, and I wonder how many users actually have one connected to a Sky or Freeview box. That still leaves two USB 3.0 ports on the rear and another one on the side, which have been handy for Guitar Hero and Rock Band wireless adaptors, not to mention external USB hard drives.

Supporting the latter has been one of Microsoft’s best decisions. Sure, you can replace the hard drive on a PS4, but doing so is a hassle, involving switching out the drive and transferring the data. With the Xbox One you can just plug in a USB 3.0 drive and it’s initialized and ready to fill within minutes. It’s a quick, cheap upgrade and one that can actually reduce your loading times.

Related: Xbox One S vs Xbox One

XBOX ONE – SPECIFICATIONS

Looking at the Xbox One, knowing what we know now, it seems like the stage was always set for today’s more software-focused, device-agnostic Xbox world. What we have here is effectively a low-end gaming PC with a fixed specification, even running a heavily customised version of Windows 10. On paper, it doesn’t sound too promising. The AMD APU gives us eight Jaguar cores – already slower and less efficient than Intel’s Core technology – running at just 1.75GHz, along with a mere 12 GCN compute units running at 853MHz. GPU-wise, that makes it equivalent to a downgraded Radeon 7790, now considered a rather weedy low-end chip.

It’s no longer controversial to say that Microsoft got the core specification wrong, focusing on Kinect and all those home-entertainment hub features instead of hitting the perfect balance between performance and price. With an extra six GCN computer units and 5,500MHz GDDR5 RAM, Sony simply made smarter choices – the Xbox One’s embedded ESRAM can’t make up for the slower 2,133MHz DDR3.

While performance has differed from engine to engine and game to game, that's meant higher frame rates and/or resolutions on cross-platform games for PS4 than on Xbox One. That said, we’re now more often looking at 1080p on the PS4 and 900p on the Xbox One than 1080p and 720p, while clever adaptive resolution and scaling techniques are doing a great job of hiding the gaps.

What I would say is this: I spend an awful lot of time playing console games. Sometimes I get review copies for the PS4 and sometimes I get them for the Xbox One. Sometimes I even play them both (and on PC too). I’m struggling to recall a single instance where getting the Xbox One version has marred my enjoyment of the game or its visuals, and it’s unlikely that, without both versions running in front of you, you’d be able to spot any real difference – and perhaps not even then. In fact, as a PC gamer I should be sneering at both consoles, yet I still think many games look great – even sometimes astounding – on the Xbox One.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and its first-party studios and third-party partners continue to pull off miracles with what’s basically some underpowered hardware. Quantum Break might not be the time-stopping shooter to end all shooters, but it looks fantastic all the same. Forza Horizon 2 and Forza Motorsport 6 are still the best-looking racers around. In the coming months we’ll see ReCore, Gears of War 4,Scalebound and Forza Horizon 3, all of which look set to push the hardware even further. While the Xbox One’s spec will be thoroughly eclipsed by Project Scorpio’s, it can still produce great results on a 1080p TV.

If you’re lucky enough to have a 4K TV, of course, it’s arguably worth your while to either wait for Project Scorpio, which promises native 4K gaming, or stump up for the Xbox One S. The latter will run 4K Blu-ray movies and video streams while upscaling Xbox One games to a 4K resolution, which it does a great job of to boot. If you’re stuck with a 1080p set, however, then existing Xbox One will do you fine.

XBOX ONE – CONTROLLER

The Xbox One S has refined the Xbox One controller, adding a grippy texture and tougher thumb sticks. Neither was a huge problem with the old controller, though, which for my money is the best standard controller of the current generation and one of the finest ever made. The analogue sticks are almost perfectly responsive, the buttons fast and sensibly-placed, and the ingenious, rumbling impulse triggers add a real tactile dimension to those games that use them best. Driving games and shooters tend to be particularly good. I just wish that Microsoft would integrate rechargeable batteries. AAs last a lot longer than the DualShock 4’s built-in battery, but recharging and searching for replacements is a lot more hassle than plugging in the cable.

While the new controller has a slightly better feel and Bluetooth connectivity, your existing Xbox One controller will see you through many happy hours of gaming.

Related: Xbox One Elite Controller review

XBOX ONE – SOFTWARE

One lesson Microsoft learnt in the previous generation was that, while hardware can’t change or be upgraded, software updates could radically transform the whole experience, year on year. We’ve already seen the Xbox One shift from a dashboard based on Windows 8 to what’s effectively a whole new operating system founded on Windows 10, but with a more gaming-focused look and feel.

At times, the new UI feels too busy, packed with pages you can flick between with the bumpers and weird slide-out panels, but there’s no question that it puts the most important elements, like your games, apps and friends, close to the surface, while reducing the emphasis on Kinect and the home-entertainment hub stuff that, as it turned out, we’re not so keen on. Microsoft has also done a better job of making apps feel like less of an extra and more like a part of the ecosystem, particularly by bringing App Channels into the OneGuide and making it of use to those of us who aren’t using the Xbox One as a TV hub (which is most of us, I suspect).

The most recent update has also brought new goodies. You can now use Cortana through Kinect or a headset microphone, to find movies and programmes to watch or to launch games, or even to quickly search for something on the web while you’re busy in a game. It’s easier to find Facebook friends with Xbox Live accounts and add them to your friends list, while sharing video clips and screengrabs is a faster process, too.

In theory, the Xbox One’s move to Windows 10 should benefit both Xbox One and PC users, the latter getting more Xbox One games and the former getting more Universal Windows Platform apps. In practice, there have been benefits, like closer integration between the Xbox One and the Windows 10 Xbox app, game streaming and the ability to check photos you’ve uploaded to OneDrive on the Xbox One. However, the flood of UWP apps has yet to materialize. I’m not sure this matters. All the major video-on-demand and catch-up TV services are covered, barring ITV Player and Google Play Movies and TV. That’s arguably the most important thing on a box that plugs into your TV, though a few more music streaming options would definitely help.

XBOX ONE – GAMES AND THE FUTURE

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it: don’t choose a console for the specs, video apps or hardware – buy it for the games. These days, of course, community also matters – if you have most of your friends on Xbox Live then buying Microsoft makes more sense than buying Sony – but it still really comes down to the games. Cross-platform titles still run best on PS4, though the difference isn’t often that significant. The primary reason to buy an Xbox One is because you want to play Microsoft’s exclusive games.

Here I’m a little less confident about the Xbox One’s line-up than I was last year. Forza Horizon 2, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Forza 6 have all been brilliant.Rise of the Tomb Raider and Inside will soon no longer be exclusives, while I’ve been slightly disappointed by Quantum Break and Halo 5. Last year, Sony was having nightmares with its own first-party line-up, but Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture,Bloodborne, Uncharted 4 and (if you like it) No Man’s Sky have shifted the balance in their favour. Microsoft has ReCore, Gears of War 4, Crackdown 2 and Forza Horizon 3 on the way, but then Sony can count on Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last Guardian and God of War in the next six months or so.

Meanwhile there are now two future consoles to consider: PS4 Neo and Project Scorpio. We’ll know more about the first in September, but while it will be a big step up in terms of 3D horsepower, that’s likely to come with a higher price tag. Scorpio looks set to be more potent still, but it will also be expensive and may even do the current Xbox a favour.

Microsoft’s take so far has been that, at least in the short term, Scorpio will effectively be a 4K version of the Xbox One, giving you better-looking games at higher resolutions with richer textures, but still running the same games. That means those of us stuck with the old Xbox One won’t have to cut our losses and upgrade right away, or risk being left with an obsolete machine.

There are still two good reasons to game on the Xbox One. One is if you already have one, in which case don’t worry: you still have a brilliant games machine. The other is that you can buy one really cheap. At the moment you can pick one up for roughly £200 to £225, making it a cheaper option than either the PS4 (£260 or more) or the Xbox One S (at £250 or more). For gamers the PS4 is still very tempting, while the One S wins if you have, or plan to buy, a 4K TV, but if you want to catch up on the current generation and get some games in, the old Xbox One, while stocks last, is still a very appealing deal.

Related: Best games you can play right now

UPDATED VERDICT

Times are difficult for the old Xbox One. It’s facing even stiffer competition and has been superceded by a smaller, more desirable 4K-friendly update. Yet if you’ve got one or you can get one on the cheap, it’s still a very desirable games machine, blessed with a line-up of fantastic games and many more to come. Microsoft’s software updates have only made it better. Bag a bargain and you have a great step into 2016 console gaming, with many years of life ahead. Just be aware that it’s not the greatest system now, and will be even less so in another year or so.