Dianven Wireless PC Controller

Hardware Type: Controller

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Review:

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

By this point I have reviewed a lot of Nintendo Switch controllers. Counting grip-style controllers, odd accessories, and LABO cardboard kits, I’ve reviewed around 50 controllers at this point, so I think it’s saying something when I say that I can’t recall the last time I have felt so perplexed by a controller.

The Dianven Wireless PC Controller has so many things going wrong, including low-hanging fruit that even the worst Pro-style controllers tend to do just fine. Yet it also does a few surprising things that are genuinely excellent, or even outright inspired. So clearly there was a solid attempt here to do something great, and sometimes this controller succeeds, but other times I have to wonder just what the heck is going on with this thing.

Let’s start with the first, most glaring thing: the above image, the one shown on the Amazon sales page, does not accurately depict the actual controller itself. Yes, even the worst controllers I’ve reviewed still actually show what the controller looks like, but not so here. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s close, but there’s one major difference. Let’s see if you can spot it:

I’ll save you the trouble of looking back and forth if you’re not seeing it: check out the very top of the controller, where the actual controller has two huge pieces of plastic jutting out above the controller, something not in the Amazon image. Now, just to see if maybe this was a fluke, something I could remove or that maybe folded into the controller, I tried pulling it or twisting it to see if it would budge, but no, that’s a permanent fixture.

The odd thing about this is, while these plastic pieces are kinda’ ugly, they don’t really affect the function of the controller at all, so why would you lie about this? And even more surprising is that this actually frames one of the more inspired things that the controller does, because the controller has its USB dongle housed within that little gap, giving you a place to store the dongle when it’s not in use. It’s such a great idea… so why is Dianven trying to hide it?

While this is odd, it’s just the start of the roller coaster ride that I had reviewing this thing.

Dianven’s controller is roughly the size and shape of Nintendo’s own Nintendo Switch Pro Controller, including the asymmetrical analog stick layout. These analog sticks are hall effect sticks (meaning they shouldn’t suffer from “drift”), and like Nintendo’s controller they are convex sticks with a lip at the edge. The underside of the grips is slightly textured, and overall the controller is fairly comfortable to hold, with a weight that’s a bit lighter than Nintendo’s controller.

Dianven’s controller has a connected D-Pad which I found to be imprecise, and while the buttons work fine, with a decent feel that’s in between “squishy” and “clicky”, I note that it has the labeling of the buttons reversed, using a typical PC/Xbox layout for the ABXY button names – something that doesn’t really affect performance, but may confuse less experienced players looking at the buttons on the controller and seeing them differ from instructions in the game.

The shoulder buttons also work fine, though I’ll note that this controller uses analog inputs for the ZL and ZR buttons, which is better for playing on other platforms, but does mean these will be somewhat less responsive on Nintendo Switch, which only recognizes digital inputs.

The plus and minus buttons have been moved down to the spots that the screenshot and home buttons are normally located. The home button is now located at the center-top, which is fine in my opinion. But the screenshot button’s size and placement is bizarre and easy to miss – it’s the teenie-tiny thing to the lower-left of the right analog stick. What the heck prompted the choice to place it here of all places, and to make it so very small?

The controller also has a Turbo button at the dead center of the controller, but for the life of me I could not get this thing to work. I tried using it in the usual way controllers with turbo buttons work, no dice. I tried following the instruction manual which indicated that players need to press the turbo button while holding another button, and not only did this not work, it made other functions of the controller stop working properly. What?

Curiously, even though the Amazon page for Dianven’s controller doesn’t seem to mention motion control, the instruction manual does… however, this also appears to be untrue, and I was not able to get motion control to work. There’s no Amiibo functionality here either – in fact, trying to go into Amiibo-scanning mode while using this controller caused the controller to function irregularly and made the game crash. But there is at least adjustable rumble in place of HD rumble, which I generally consider a fair trade-off, and this controller can wake the Nintendo Switch from sleep mode.

Turning the controller over, we see a pair of macro buttons to either side near the grips, and a macro programming button dead-center on the back. These work well enough, allowing you to set one of these buttons to be a sequence of commands, like a Street Fighter “hadouken”.

Finally, let’s talk about cross-platform compatibility. In addition to Nintendo Switch, Dianven’s controller advertises compatibility with PC, Android, iOS, and surprisingly, PlayStation 3, and I was able to test all of these except iOS.

I’ll get Android out of the way first – this connected and worked fine, as far as I could tell. No complaints there. PC, on the other hand, gave me some problems. While I got it to detect the controller fine when using a wired connection, it didn’t work in the game I tested with. The same goes for wireless bluetooth connectivity, and in fact my PC was only able to detect the controller via Bluetooth some of the time.

However, I did mention that dongle earlier. At first, it didn’t seem to do anything – My PC detected it when it plugged in, but it never connected to the controller. And at first, I thought the instruction manual didn’t even mention it, but eventually I realized that it refers to the dongle as a “2.4G Receiver” in one small part of the manual, the only section it refers to the thing. Following the instructions in this section, I was able to sync the controller with the dongle… and then it worked fine with the PC, no problem.

After all this, imagine my surprise when I plugged this controller into my PlayStation 3, and it just… worked fine. In fact, after syncing, it worked fine wirelessly, and could even wake the PlayStation 3 from sleep mode.

In the end, I’m just baffled by the Dianven Wireless PC Controller. The included dongle works great, but then they hide it in false photos of the thing on Amazon and barely mention it in the instruction manual? The controller works fine with a PlayStation 3, a rarity among Nintendo Switch controllers, but then it botches basic functions like turbo and motion controls? They go as far as to have hall effect analog sticks, but then include a sub-par D-Pad? This all adds up to a controller that I cannot say is outright bad, but it has enough major flaws that I cannot recommend it.

tl;dr – The Dianven Wireless PC Controller is a Pro-style controller that has some really excellent features and then bungles some really basic stuff. It has a wonderful dongle for effortless PC connectivity but then barely refers to it in the instructions, it has PlayStation 3 connectivity but its turbo button and motion controls don’t work at all. It has hall effect analog sticks but the D-Pad is pretty lousy. In the end, while there are numerous good features here, I cannot recommend this controller due to all the bad.

Grade: C-

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