Leadjoy VX2 Aimbox Keyboard and Mouse Adapter

Hardware Type: Adapter

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Review:

(Note: This product was received at no cost for review via the Amazon Vine program.)

By this point, the term “PC Master Race” has become an old meme among gamers. Despite the ominous supremacist overtones, this semi-facetious term is generally meant to refer to the fact that some things are simply better on PC than on consoles. While consoles absolutely have their advantages (user-friendliness and ease of use, fewer compatibility questions, exclusive first-party games, and often price), PCs are far more customizable than any console, more adaptable and malleable, have access to the ability to use mods and helpful apps like Discord, have theoretically unlimited hardware power, and theoretically unlimited backwards-compatibility, just to name a few.

However, one major element that is frequently mentioned is keyboard and mouse support, often seen as the definitive way to play some game genres – First-Person Shooters, Strategy and Simulation games, and some Graphic Adventure and Puzzle games are absolutely best with one hand on a keyboard and one on a mouse. It is this area that the Leadjoy VX2 Aimbox Keyboard and Mouse Adapter (from here on referred to simply as the VX2) purports to bring consoles a step towards parity with PCs.

Released in 2024, the VX2 works with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. Evidently a recent patch interfered with this device working on PlayStation 5, but supposedly this can be remedied by buying an additional adapter. For the purposes of this review, I used a Nintendo Switch to test the device.

The VX2 plugs into your console (or a docked Nintendo Switch) via a standard USB port, and the device itself has three further USB ports and an audio jack. It is indicated that the left and right USB ports are intended for a mouse and keyboard, while the middle USB port is intended for a wired Nintendo Switch controller.

The instructions for using the device are fairly simple – you just make sure that your Nintendo Switch controller settings allow for wired controllers, plug your keyboard and mouse into the device, then plug it into your docked Switch. The indicator lights on top should flash red a few times, then cycle through colors, indicating the device should be working properly. If there’s a problem, pressing the circular icon on top resets the device.

I won’t sugarcoat this – the VX2 gave me nothing but trouble while trying to use it.

The keyboard usually worked well enough, though at times when I swapped secondary controllers it would suddenly stop working. When it did work, the ASDW keys would assign to the four directions on the left analog stick while 1, 2, 3, and F1 would become the D-Pad directions. The C key would act as the A button, the space bar as the B button, F key became X, R key became Y, left shift becomes L3, caps lock becomes the – button, tab becomes the + button, ` becomes the camera button, and Esc becomes the home button. All working more or less how you’d hope.

The real problem starts when you try to use a mouse with this thing. In short, nothing I tried worked at all. One of the two mouse/keyboard ports wouldn’t even get my mice to turn on, and the other one powered my mouse but the Nintendo Switch didn’t seem to register it (it’s supposed to act as the right stick, with the mouse buttons being ZL and ZR).

Let me be clear – I tried everything to get this thing to work. I used three different mice (two wired, one wireless with a USB dongle), all of them standard mice that required no software installed to use them. I tried resetting the VX2, I tried unplugging and replugging the VX2. I tried re-detecting controllers in the Nintendo Switch controller menu, I tried swapping USB ports back and forth, I tried downloading the associated VLead app on my Android phone and used it to mess with the VX2’s settings, as well as using it to try updating the firmware.

Nothing. Worked.

The ironic thing was, the game I was looking to use to test this device, Quake II, actually has keyboard and mouse support built into it on the Nintendo Switch, along with full button reassignment in the game’s option menus. In my view, I could not have lowballed this any lower, yet somehow, even though this game can support a mouse and keyboard without the VX2, using a VX2 makes them stop working. Oh, and just in case it was something odd and unique about this game itself, I tested a few other games too. Nada.

It’s a real shame, because looking at the VLead app, it looks like the VX2 is designed to have some really impressive customizability. You can use the app to adjust sensitivity settings and create profiles for specific games, with some popular games like Splatoon 2 and Minecraft having their own prebuilt profiles. But none of it matters if the mouse support this device purports to offer simply doesn’t work.

Also, a quick Google search confirmed that I’m not the only one dealing with this issue, and there appears to be no solution – the only recommended fixes (unplug and replug it, try a different USB port, try a different mouse) were all things I had tried repeatedly by this point.

At this point, I thought I might at least look for a silver lining in the headphone jack. At the very least, could I use this device as a way to play my Nintendo Switch docked using headphones? The answer to this is yes… but even this works abysmally poorly.

Using the device with headphones plugged into the 3.5mm standard audio jack does indeed mute the TV and bring sound up on headphones exactly as you’d want… except the sound is extremely quiet, and there’s no way to adjust the volume on the VX2 itself. What’s more, I noticed that with some games, this device seemed to cause my controller to cut out while playing it, apparently with this device fighting against my standard Nintendo Switch controller over which would be designated my device’s controller.

It is so very, very frustrating that the VX2 fails so hard, because it seemed to have the potential to open up new possibilities for controls on consoles. However, without its mouse functionality working, using the VX2 is like using half of a controller, which is about as bad as not working at all. And the laughably bad headphone support just highlights how everything this device tries to do fails miserably. Maybe the issues this device has will be fixed in a future patch, but until then, I recommend you absolutely avoid it.

tl;dr – Leadjoy VX2 Aimbox Keyboard and Mouse Adapter is a device that purports to get a keyboard and mouse working on your console, but it can only seem to manage the keyboard, which simply doesn’t go far enough to be worthwhile. What’s more, even the included headphone port is plagued with problems. Nothing this device does works properly, and you should avoid it.

Grade: F

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Hardware

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