Brook Vivid Controller Is Good, Affordable Wireless Controller For Switch
Brook recently sent me a new wireless Switch controller to use. The Vivid controller is compatible with the Switch, Android, iOS, macOS, and PC and comes with a phone mount and Type C cable. Overall, I liked the controller. It comes with a lot of features that for me with more casual gaming don’t come up much but would be good to have if you play more games, especially shooters, than I do. So let’s go through it.
The first thing I noticed holding the controller is it is lightweight. Weighing in at 220 grams/.49 pounds it doesn’t actually weigh much less than a regular switch pro controller, but for me I did like having it be lighter. While the difference isn’t huge, it is nice when attaching a phone to keep the controller as light as you can. The buttons are also light but not cheap, they generally are nice and snappy with the exception of the triggers. For me they worked well although every so often it felt like they lagged a little bit in responsiveness, but it was so sporadic it was difficult to tell if it was the controller or the particular game I was playing.
There are a lot of features in this controller. I really appreciate that this controller still has the vibrate feature. You can also adjust the amount of vibration you get from it which is great so you can customize your gaming experience. You’re also able to adjust the sensitivity of each joystick to help with aiming in shooting games. This feature is really easy to activate and deactivate too, simply have the switch on the back switched to shoot and then push and hold the back button on the side of the stick you need to slow down. There is also a turbo mode that can be easily accessed, but definitely get your settings in order before jumping into combat because while it has three different speeds, I found it a little cumbersome to switch between the speeds. You can also change the color glow the controller has which doesn’t affect anything but sure is cool.
There are a few downsides for this controller. The fact that there is no indicator light for turbo is annoying, I really wish there was a light that would indicate not only that it was activated but at which level it was at. I also don’t love the phone holder. It goes on easy enough and has some grips to help hold your phone. But when I had my phone in and shook the controller a little, the hinge wasn’t strong enough to hold it tightly in place and wobbled. The grips held the phone from sliding out the side, but wobbling is definitely not something I want to have happen. I also could not fit my phone (Google Pixel 5a) with the case on. I’m not sure if this is standard for controller phone holders, but considering my case is not very thick this would be really annoying for me. While most of the buttons are good, the triggers don’t have a lot of spring to them. While all the other buttons have that satisfying click, the triggers feel a little hard to tell when you have pushed them to the point of activating the button. They feel significantly different than every other button to use and slower to push down. I wish that they had angled them a little differently to make them a little easier to use. If you play with one finger on the bumper and one on the trigger you may not like the angle to the trigger buttons on this controller.
Overall, I like this controller. On the whole it works well and has a lot of features built in. And the color schemes look nice. I would probably count on getting a different phone controller holder though. But for a casual gamer like me and with it only costing $40, this controller is a pretty good buy. I would rate it a 7/10.
