Razer Kishi Review - Gaming Controller for Android By Hands-On Tech

Racer finally released its fish game pad for Android devices, and it's pretty cool played a lot of games on it. Our view is next. Hands-On tech is brought to you from LastPass studios access everything you need online simply and securely. Wherever you're logging in from LastPass makes security for your digital life. Effortless visit, LastPass, calm slashed with this these droids, this episode of hands-on tech is brought to you by molecule. Molecule is reimagining the future with clean air for 10% off your first air purifier order, visit, molecule calm and enter code.

Hot everyone, I'm, Jason, Howell, and I am stoked for this review. I have right here in my hands the razor fish game pad for Android devices, specifically for Android devices. Now I played a lot of games on Android over the years, and you know it's the same for iOS, but when you're playing certain types of games, the on-screen keys, the controllers that are laid out on-screen, you know touch sort of way. They just don't cut it all the time some games, it works really great for and even some like fast-paced action games. They can figure out a configuration that makes it work.

Strangely, you can't get used to it, but we don't have to get used to it. It makes me pretty happy because something like this, the key she actually allows you to take the hardware game pad that you're used to saying playing on a console and then rope that into your Android playing. Now you could take a console controller and sync that up to your Android device, I've showed off how to do that on an episode of hands-on Android. If you want to check that out, you can do that, but this is an integrated approach to kind of bringing the Nintendo Switch form factor to Android devices. So, let's dive in and see why the razor fish is so special.

So, first the hardware and the design, the layout as I said, is very reminiscent of the Nintendo Switch. You've got the buttons, of course, which I say they feel nice they're comfortable I like them. There's also some a few extra buttons, there are three extra buttons, a home, a back and a forward, or you know those are just utility buttons. You can really program that be whatever you want, mainly for me. They acted as select and start that sort of stuff and usually mapped automatically.

For me, which was nice, you got the d-pad, of course, which worked fine for my thumbs is a better quality d-pad than I've, actually seen in some other controllers of this type, and then two analog sticks that are clickable they center nicely. Sometimes, though, the sticks aren't as sensitive, or I didn't, find them as sensitive as I was looking for kind of smaller movements, and sometimes I had to kind of push them just a little a bit harder than maybe I wanted to At that moment to get that subtle movement, but my fingers adjusted over time and that got better. We've got two shoulder buttons on each side. They are a little squishy. The bottom ones have a lot of travel to them, but I found them to be perfectly sufficient, feel really nice overall buttons and controllers feel pretty top shelf for a controller of this type.

Now one of the things that makes the Racer fish special is its collapsible design. So when you've got a phone inside it, it has that very familiar. Nintendo Switch. Look, it's very easy to just pop out the one side, the left hand, side, the smartphone kind of pops out of there and then, on the right hand, side where it connects via USB, see just slide that out fold the whole key sheet together and it kind of snaps into place, and you end up with a smaller form factor device that can sort of be pocketable. But it's still kind of big for that.

I could fit it in my pocket, but yeah it was just a little big, but nonetheless it's pretty portable when it collapses down. Now, on top of that, of course, you've got the universal fit that it allows for so putting a phone in, like I, said, there's a USB-C port in the middle of the right-hand side. So this only works with Android phones that have that USB-C port and that it's centered I use the OnePlus 8 pro the Pixel 3a, the Pixel 4 XL and the Samsung Galaxy s 20 altar, and they all worked perfectly for this. You just slide the phone into the port, then you pop the left-hand side of the key sheet around the left edge of the phone and boom it's in place, and you're good to go. Of course.

The one thing to remember here is that you have to remove the phone case if you have one in order to fit it in there, but I just feel. Like that's an of course. That's a no duh! You can also see that there are some speaker ports on the right hand, side face of the key sheet. This is for phones that have a bottom firing speaker so that that sound doesn't get trapped into the fish. This passes it through, and it works really nice to get the sound out of the device.

Now the USB-C port on the bottom of the key sheet is also included, and this is good because it allows for past power, which is great. You can plug it in if you've got a long gaming session, and it's just going to pass that power through the key sheet into the phone, and you're good to go. You'll actually see an LED on the right side of the fish that indicates when power is plugged in, so that's nice. One complaint about the design. The overall design is that the left side, when you fasten it in to this universal fit, can feel a little flimsy, the wobbles during gameplay and in fact, I, can kind of show you right now.

If we've got a device like this, you can kind of see how this wobbles back and forth, and it's not ideal like sometimes when you're, when you're gaming, you get a little of that wobble. So just a little too much give I. Think that's something. To consider another complaint is that the back side feels a little unfinished and I realize, like you, can kind of see on the back here. It's this way because of the universal fit right, but when you're playing, there's no perfect place for your fingers to go, and some of these edges are a little sharp.

So over time you end up getting a little sore in the fingers based on where they're resting on that backplate. It's not again. It's not the end of the world, but it is a consideration, definitely something to take advantage of the razor Fish. Furthermore, it comes in the realm of lag, or rather the lack of lag. This is not a Bluetooth controller.

This is a wired controller via that USB-C port, so really lag ends up being pretty negligible great for gaming performance, however, not so great if you want to wear wired headphones, that USB-C port on the bottom does not pass through any headphone information. So even if you use a dongle that includes a headphone port in it, you're not going to get your headphone audio through there and most phones. If they have a wired, headphone port are going to be covering that port with the sides of the fish. It's really going to cover all the usable space on both sides. Therefore, you won't have access to that wired port, so you're left with using Bluetooth headphones and there is anyone who's used.

Bluetooth, headphones along with gaming knows that introduces lag into the audio, so your audios delayed compared to the video on the screen and I definitely noticed that it's something to consider I almost opted more for playing and gaming through the speakers instead of through Bluetooth earphones. If I could help it I just made it a little better. So that's a bummer concession, this episode of hands-on tech is brought to you by molecule. Molecule is not just innovation on existing technology, but a scientific breakthrough in air purification molecule. Air purifiers, destroy pollutants, including viruses, bacteria, mold allergens and chemicals in the air molecules, technology and filtration systems have been tested and verified by third-party laboratories for the whole home and beyond.

For 10 percent off your first air purifier order, visit, molecule comm and enter code hot at checkout. That's em, oh LE KUL, e. com code hot now, as for games, because this is a game, controller I played a lot of games. First, just Android games straight up. There's a lot of Android games out there that support a hardware controller, and you know I played limbo, Horizon chase grid Autosport Minecraft fortnight, nearly all of them mapped to the controller automatically it was.

It was as easy as like plug it in launch the game and go, and everything was seamless altered, beast by Sega that old, classic, not so hot. Otherwise, that was like one of the few games that really didn't map perfectly for me, but I would say the majority of them played beautifully as far as that's concerned. Another thing that you might want to use your Android device for especially with a controller like this, is emulation. It's a great emulation system. Now the standard warning applies here.

You know you only want to play, emulated games that you own legally. So keep that in mind, but I tested this Ciara emulator. It's a pretty recently updated emulator for the 3ds on the Play Store I did have two hardware map the buttons, but that was super quick and once I did that everything played about as good as it can on the Ciara. It's its a little at times, but that's the fault of the emulator, not the controller, also new emu and super retro 16 for NEW and Super Nintendo emulation both were completely plug and play right out of the box and worked great, so a great controller. If you're into emulation on android and then now we have to talk a little about Stadia Google's cloud gaming platform.

This is a really great use case for this, because you're talking about not quite console quality controller here, but pretty near it in many ways and then Stadia is of course you know. PC quality games streaming from the cloud, so I played a lot of shadow of the Tomb Raider and some Mortal Kombat 11. On this controller and in both cases the key she was almost as solid as a console controller I actually played Tomb Raider on my PlayStation 4 at home I'm used to those controls. These feel similar, though not entirely perfect, but very similar playing PC quality games on my phone with an ear console. Quality controller like this is pretty.

Epic I was not able to try the Microsoft X cloud, although it's my understanding that this works out of the box with X cloud as well, and finally, Racer has a fish app. Now the app has a couple of different functions. First, it allows you to update the firmware on the fish, which was really easy to do. I just held down the Y be in function button while plugging in the phone, and it did it is updated seamlessly. It also detects games on your device that are game pad, enabled didn't detect them all, but it detected some of them, so it makes it easier to find what games would be compatible with a key XI that you already have, and it has a discovery tab for games that you can jump out to in the Play Store and download and use with your key sheet.

Alright, so rounding all of this out with the razor key sheet here, let's start with the downsides, no wired headphone capability and that's going to be a real stinger for some people, even with the USB dongle I, was hoping it would work through there, and it didn't so. Keep that in mind. Bluetooth is gonna. Add that lag, and you're just going to have to deal with that. The left side has a little of flex to it when you're playing and that can get a little annoying and then the backside is a little uncomfortable with longer plays, but on the upside.

Almost everything else is amazing: right, high quality controllers controls and buttons throughout its collapsible, it's a universal fit auto-mapping is almost seamless and the wired design. The USB plug into the phone means that there's zero lag in gameplay, and that is a major upside to this device. So color me impressed this costs $80. The razor fish is $80, maybe a little expensive for a game pad, but I think you get a lot of quality here and as far as any of the controllers that I've used specifically for gaming on mobile phones, this is the best one that I've tested. So this is kind of the premier one in my mind that others have to beat going forward.

So you should definitely check it out. I'm Jason, how I appreciate you watching this review and I hope that you'll find me all over the Twit network, where I talk all about Android and put my hands on Android and sometimes talk about some tech news every week on tech, news weekly, take care, keep up with all the hottest tech news and gadgets visit. Twitch TV there you'll be able to find and subscribe to all. Our tech shows thanks for watching hands-on tech.

Source : Hands-On Tech