It’s been a hot minute since I decided to look at a controller for review, so when I got a chance to check out the Brook Vivid controller for the Nintendo Switch, I jumped on it. When I read the spec sheet, the first thing that jumped out to me was that this controller would wake the Nintendo Switch from sleep mode. This is a big deal for third party controllers, since a good portion of them will not do this. This controller was supposed to work on PC, iOS and Android devices as well, so I thought this could be a very nice bargain if the quality is there. Let’s dig into this thing and find out.
When I unboxed the Brook Vivid controller I noticed it felt great in my hands. It was a good size and weight, even for my big ass hands. Over the years I’ve come to like the Xbox style controller layout more than Sony’s. This is probably because I’ve been playing many more games on PC and Switch over the past few years and I’ve just gotten used to it, but I digress. In addition to the standard USB-C charger cable, there were some nice extras in the box that included four paw shaped controller caps, stickers and a smartphone holder.
The first thing I had to do was sync up this controller to my Switch. This was very easy: hit the button to have the Switch look for the controller and presto. In fact, I had no issues connecting this controller to my phone, desktop PC, or my laptop either, by cables or over Bluetooth. Just keep in mind the controller will only remember one device at a time, so if you want use it between a couple things you will have to sync it back up. Once I fired up a couple games and started using this controller I was pretty impressed with it overall. The buttons feel good, the sticks are accurate and even the D-pad is pretty good. I played a few rounds of Street Fighter II with it and had no issues inputting any of the commands. The only real complaint I have here is the start and select buttons are a little small, but this is a very minor thing that didn’t effect my gaming at all. The battery life on this one seems pretty good. They claim 10 to 12 hours of battery life and I wouldn’t doubt this honestly, but I think this could be less if you used the vibration motors on a high setting. Either way on a couple hour charge the Brook Vivid controller will be good to go for long gaming sessions.
Some of the other features of this controller are six way gyroscope inputs, programmable macros, and the one I found most interesting called shooting sniper function. On the back of the controller next to the two macro buttons is a switch that reads macro on one side and shoot on the other. If you set this to shoot mode it will lower the sensitivity of each stick depending on which macro button you are holding down. Need to be more precise with the left stick? Hold down the left macro button or vise versa. This was somewhat helpful while I was messing around with Monument, but I found this very helpful in Shmup titles I used it in as well. They may have not intended for this to be useful in that genre, but it certainly is.
Overall the Brook Vivid controller is a solid pickup. For the $40 retail price this controller just simply works well. The included accessories give it a bit more value as well, but the fact it will wake up the Switch from sleep, has that neat shoot mode and is easily paired up with all my devices makes it very easy to recommend to anyone looking for an affordable, but great, third party controller.
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If you want to snag one of these controllers up for yourself, you can do so over on Amazon.
Controller was provided for review.
