Avoid THIS Nintendo Switch & Switch OLED Controller | Funlabs Firefly
0In this episode, we review the Firefly Mario Wonder controller design for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch OLED.
These days, there's no shortage of prostyle controllers for the Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch OLED. Designed to give players a much better experience when playing in TV mode than the Joy-Cons or Joy-Con grips, I'm always interested to see other companies takes on these sorts of controllers. Funlab recently reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in checking out their new Firefly controller, and I'm always a sucker for pretty lights so I accepted their offer. Let's take a look.
Out of the box, the Firefly offers little new underneath the hood. The shape of the controller is extremely similar to the Xbox One controller. One of the key characteristics that it carries over from that controller is the god-awful D-Pad design. A circular disc was installed over the top of a pressure-fitted mounting plate, I was not a fan of this design. Thankfully, they include a more traditional D-Pad that you can install in place of the stock unit. More on that in a bit.
One of the really cool things about the Firefly is the pseudo-hidden graphics underneath the white shell. There are a series of LED lights in the controller itself, and as you cycle through them you can see the different designs on the face. They have many versions of the Firefly controller, this one featuring graphics inspired by Super Mario Bros. You can cycle through the lights so that they are on solid in one of several different colors, A breathing mode where the LED colors fade in and out, and a rather annoying flashing mode. I do not recommend the flashing at all.
There are a few other features on the Firefly that have been introduced in other controllers as well. A rapid or turbo fire functionality is here, back buttons are here, and adjustable rumble. It did not wake the system from sleep and was not compatible with Amiibo.
The instructions are very lacking overall. There's no description of how to remove the stock D-Pad and install the optional one. I eventually had to use a set of tweezers to get underneath the disc and pry it up. I did not take note of which direction the disc came off in, and there's an index underneath the D-Pad to get everything lined up. Something, anything in the manual would have been better than the nothing that we got.
Pairing was effortless and straightforward, and I was able to do so within a few seconds on my Switch OLED. While I liked the overall look and feel of the Firefly, very similar to a wrestler who has great promos and no skills in the ring, eventually the bell has to ring. The analog stick, which is not a Hall effect sensor, functions decently, but the D-Pad, the D-Pad is the worst that I've ever tested.
While playing Street Fighter, I could pull off all the moves with the analog stick, which was actually pretty impressive. The D-Pad, however, often missed moves, registered double presses or otherwise failed to respond accurately. I thought this could have been due to swapping out the D-Pad face for the optional one, so I Switch back to the standard D-Pad. There was no difference whatsoever between the performance of either of these, something truly frustrating while I played. The analog stick and turbo all seemed to work okay enough, but the D-Pad was unusable. Like it wasn't just bad, I literally could not use it.
Why it RoX:
- Number of different graphical design options available
- Exceptional battery life
- Three different LED display modes
- USB-C for charging
What could be improved:
- D-Pad is absolutely unusable
- Instructions fail to demonstrate how to install the optional D-Pad
- No hall effect sensors
- Does not wake system from sleep
- Not compatible with Amiibo
- Flashing LEDs are just annoying
Should you buy one?
No. In a word no. This is one of the worst experiences I have ever had with a prostyle controller for the Nintendo Switch. Funlab needs to go back to the lab to further refine its D-Pad functionality because it breaks the rest of the controller. The analog stick was okay enough, and the buttons were decent too. But if D-Pad performance is all-important to you this is a hard pass. The instructions also need to be improved to let you know how to swap out the D-Pad. For the money and features, there are simply better options out there for you to consider now.
#Nintendo #SwitchOLED #ProController #Review