I’ll be the first to say that I’m not much of a gamer. I play video games for sure - I love my PlayStation 5 - but I’m definitely more of a casual gamer. I prefer to get immersed into a good story game and play it until I beat it over the big multiplayer games like Call of Duty, PUBG, or Fortnite.
At least, I wasn’t, and certainly not on my PlayStation. But a while back I received a Nubia Red Magic 7 gaming phone to test out, and since I was testing it, I forced myself to play some of those games on my phone. And you know what? I kinda like it. I definitely didn’t get sucked in the way I do sometimes into those big story games, but it was fun and I found myself enjoying the experience.
So when I got the chance to review the Gamesir smartphone gaming controller, I thought “why not?”
Hardware
The Gamesir X2 looks a lot like what you’d get if you took the screen out of a Nintendo Switch and stuck a USB-C connector on the right side of it that you could drop your phone into. And honestly, it works really well. You pull the two halves apart, attach your phone to the USB-C plug and away you go. I really like how they made the USB-C port flexible inside the handle so you can move it up and down a bit to accommodate different-sized phones, and it makes it much less likely to break.
There’s never a worse feeling for a writer than mushy, non-responsive keys on a keyboard and the same is true for game controllers. You want a crisp, precise tactile response on every button…