The New Xbox xCloud Controller From Razer By Spawn Wave

So, the idea around cloud is, of course, that you can take your Xbox games or your PC games and take them on the go with you by playing on something you already carry around all the time. Anyway. That's your cell phone, but the problem we run into with that are the controls. There aren't any physical buttons or anything you would use. Definitely nothing like what you'd be using at home with, say an Xbox controller. Nothing like that, so we're seeing more and more devices come out to try to give you that at-home experience, while still just using your cell phone clips for Xbox controllers or even full wrap around controllers like this one.

This is the racer fish and Microsoft sent it over for me to take a look at alongside of cloud, and I thought it'd be pretty interesting to see this, because this is a collaboration between racer, Microsoft and game vice. Remember them now, alongside of the racer fish, they also sent over a note 20, which would be a newer phone, of course, that people may have picked up recently to try with it as well as a one-year pass for game pass ultimate. I already subscribed to it, though, so what I'll do is later in the video I'll, just put it up on screen and whoever manages to get it yeah, it's it'll, be a nice little bonus to the video guys. So if you enjoy the video make sure you hit the like button down below and subscribe, if you are new here, so let's go ahead and unbox the racer fish to get started now. The racer key sheet is currently on Amazon for 79.99, and it is prime shipped so should get to you relatively quickly. This is set up, of course, for cloud in particular, it has a little Xbox button here that would act as your guide button.

Of course, it's also set up in that asymmetrical stick layout, and it has the typical button layout. You would expect for your Xbox games at home. The box is pretty. Sturdy has, of course, the racer green on black look and, for the most part, it's a pretty solid packaging. Now inside you're greeted with the racer fish itself, they have some foam padding here to help it, so it doesn't go flying around inside.

So at least they had some thoughts put into the packaging itself, but once you lift this out, there's really not too much else in there. Oh, there's a little 14-day pass for game pass. Ultimate there you go, you guys are getting two passes here. This is just the code. So go ahead and pause the video you can go and try to pop that in, and then we get some stickers for racer.

So that's always fun. Now the idea with the racer key sheet is it can essentially fold up. So it has a locked, closed position and then an unlocked open position which we can go ahead and pop this big game pass logo up and that allows it to expand. So I guess you would be able to carry around with a much more compact design when it's closed up, and then you open it up. Put your phone in here, and it can also expand if your phone is a little larger.

The note 20, for example, does need this to be expanded a bit because it is a larger phone. I do wonder if this is just like this small enough for people to carry on it's not bad. It certainly has a smaller profile than a normal Xbox controller, but it's not as small as something like that 8bitdo sn30 that we looked at so keep that in mind the buttons feel pretty solid. They are not at all tactile, nothing like that. They have more of a mushy feel to them similar to.

I guess that sn30 that we just looked at recently, so not bad there on the buttons. The sticks feel good they're. Full analog sticks they of course, click in as well feel very similar to like the xbox one joystick, that's pretty good. We of course have our typical Xbox buttons here that are all tactile, as well as our guide button. The d-pad is also kind of mushy.

I don't know how good this will be in practice. I mean it's there, I'm sure it works. Fine, but it does not feel amazing, nothing like that 8-bit dough controller we had, which felt a lot better at the top. We have r1 r2, l1, l2, r2 and l2 appear to be analog triggers. So that's good for anyone who wants to play something like forza on the go.

It'll make it a lot more usable now. This does require an USB type-c phone for charging right here and communication charging will take place down here. There's a little port will pass through. So you can plug your power cable into this, and it will start to charge your phone good to know that you don't have to rush trying to get your phone out of here into the wall if it starts to die. You just kind of plug this in here, which that's a nice touch all right.

So let's go ahead and play some x cloud games on this, I'm about 15 feet from the router now, so it's not too bad, and it looks like what I would go with. Are you just plug it in right here, of course the USB, and it should see it just like that, and then we can take this, and we can kind of stretch this out and over this side, and there we are? It has kind of foam on either side here, so it feels very, very solid right now, like there's, no real, give or flex to it. Of course your phone should hold it up, and it does get some added weight from your phone. Here is a switch light for comparison. You can see uh for anyway, using the note 20.

My hands are pretty far apart compared to something like the switch light. So keep that in mind, depending on how large your phone is, your hands will end up kind of far apart when you're playing now they did recently add destiny 2 to game pass for cloud gaming. So why don't we start with that? One we'll jump in there. It's a weird experience. I think, to be able to play destiny 2 on the go, but let's see how it does all right.

So now I'm running around in destiny, 2 and, as I said before, I ran into that issue with halo, where we were doing a test with cloud and that sn30 pro, and I noticed that I always felt a little behind with cloud when I was playing. Shooters in particular, are the ones that seem to get me. Others like racing games are, I think, are manageable, but like shooters, I just feel a little behind when I'm playing- and it's just, I think it's just the latency in cloud, but it's also the fact like, for example, this one, I feel it more so than other games is because it is running at 30 frames. So I believe when cloud gets to that point, it's going to make a big difference, but it is surreal I will say to be playing something like destiny, 2, on the go on a cell phone with actual controls if you know what I think it's manageable and, like I said it can only get better when they start upping the frame rate and all that so not a bad start for the racer fish, pretty good game. I think to take advantage of it now we're going to move over to a game that is 60 frames per second, is a 2d platformer and is one of the best games released this year, and that is ORI and the will of the wisps, and that is a good test.

I would say for the d-pad here which, like I said, feels kind of mushy. It's not my favorite feeling d-pad, that's for sure, but I kind of prefer it over the tactile feeling of the Xbox One d-pad. So I guess there's that it's, I would say it's better than the Xbox One d-pad just because of that right, where it's not this loud clicking d-pad, I can press down, and I feel like I'm, hitting multiple directions, but it at least feels manageable. Like I, I don't. I don't feel like I'm at a massive disadvantage using this d-pad, for example, but it's not as good as the sn30 pro.

So keep that in mind. It's uh serviceable at best I'd, say on the d-pad side. Now we're going to move over to a game that will take advantage of the analog triggers and that would be forza horizon 4. We can see it right here and something I forgot to mention with the speakers now we can see this is enclosed right here on either side and a lot of times. Your speaker for your phone is either on the back, which is completely exposed here or the bottom.

What they decided to do is put these little kind of holes here and here, and that way it reroutes the sound around and actually points it at you, which is nice, because when I was listening to it, it's pretty loud like it reroutes it really well at you. So you can see here it has good volume, despite being kind of enclosed in either side of the controller, so not bad there. So, let's talk about these analog triggers now, of course, because they're analog triggers you can kind of press slowly, and you'll, get that feathered, throttle effect, or you can absolutely crush it and just go flying right that that is all there. The full range works fine in an x-cloud, something like forza horizon 4. Now I did notice something when I'm pressing them it has this weird.

I don't know if it's like this grinding noise, I'm not really sure, but if I hold it up here to the microphone, you might be able to hear it a bit better. Now that is something you hear every time you press it down, you kind of feel it a little too. I don't know if it's is it actually is like pressing against something, and it's rubbing against it, making that kind of plastic grinding noise- it's very strange, but they have some tension to them. It's not as much tension as what's with the Xbox One controller, but it's enough so that it feels like it's a quality analog trigger the thing that's throwing me off is that that rubbing, noise uh, maybe over time it gets broken in, and it goes away because, like new plastic pieces or something from manufacturing, it's just an odd thing that I noticed, so I'll keep an eye on that. I guess, as I use that in the coming months now my question: I have with a lot of these devices that clip on or have your phone have something clipped to it.

Can you still use your phone if you get a phone call, although no one really talks on the phone anymore? Do they? So can you still use your phone? If somebody texts you or something- and I mean it's all there- you would just look like this trying to do it. So, okay, I mean technically, yes, you can still text you can still. I can still take pictures the camera's over here. It kind of depends on where, obviously, that is on your phone, but yeah I mean you could still use it. You just might look a bit ridiculous with these controller pieces hanging off.

I guess you could technically talk on the phone, but it's also going to depend on where your microphone, your earpiece, is, and all that as well. So the fact that at least leaves everything exposed on the front here. Yes, it is still usable, although I don't think a case depending on which one you have would fit in here. It does grab the phone fairly tight, so that would mean if you want to pop your phone in here, you'd probably have to take the case off as well, and that does seem like a fairly large inconvenience. I know it's going to be hard for them to account for all the different cases that are out there.

I mean you look on Amazon, there's like what thousands of cases, but it is something to keep in mind with this uh. If you have a case, even if it's a fairly small thin case that wraps around it, you might still have to take that off just to fit this into the racer fish all right. Now, let's take this racer fish apart, take a look inside. It's its a bit odd because it looks like there's just. I guess two sides to it of course: attached right in the middle here with this band and the game pass logo on the side there they are using tricking screws on the bottom, probably because they wanted to annoy me, but we should be able to get a few of these off and get our first look at this d-pad with those screws removed and a few clips kind of popped up, because they decided to also clip it together.

We can oh, it's a little cable run in there. There we go. We can get this guy apart here now. I will have to unclip this because they do still have to attach them. It is running through, remember one USB port on the side when it plugs in, so they still needed to come up with a way to do that and what they did was.

They just ran a cable through the band here, and then it comes around, and I'm sure it attaches on the other side there, so that does have at least something running between them connecting now in order to make sure that cable doesn't snag, it looks like they have plenty of slack here along with these two springs, and you can see it just kind of pulls it along, so it at least thought of that, and it would have stopped by now. I'm pulling it beyond what it would have clipped here, so that way that cable doesn't get ripped despite your kind of going into the open and closed position several times now. This is the main side that I'm most interested in, because it has that d-pad there. Of course, it has the full stick, and it has our analog trigger here, which does seem to have its own spot right at the top. So let's take that off all right.

There we go only four screws, two silver at the top, and then we have two of the black screws at the bottom there to hold the board in along with the analog trigger. You should flip this over and take a look at it, and we also have our analog stick. It looks yeah. It looks very similar to a standard Xbox One analog. Stick here, nothing crazy! It is.

I mean it's a full analog. Stick, so that's nice to have that on the go for shooters, like we were doing with destiny now on the d-pad, they did put these pads pretty far apart here. They also labeled them up left right down, which is nice, but unfortunately I guess the membrane they went with or something it just. It feels just so mushy compared to other d-pads and the d-pad itself is pretty large. I mean you can see from the side.

That is a big d-pad. It has to go, it has to drop pretty far and that maybe that has something to do with it as well, and they also put a fairly decent spike in the middle here it just. It doesn't feel great when you're using it compared to some other d-pads, but, like I said it should be at least serviceable for these x-cloud games. Now, as for the analog triggers, this is, of course, l2 the way they make that work in a lower profile. Controller like this.

Are you see this little spot here? It's l, you can see it rotate as I press down, so it has different degrees of movement. You can see here, and they have a little piece of plastic. I can see right in here rotating as I press down so what's happening. Is it can tell how far I'm pressing using that? And that might also be where that grinding noise is kind of coming from when I press down on it that it feels like it's like, I said, rubbing against something in there, maybe over time as I press it, it will maybe get to the point where it's shaved down on one side, and it won't be making contact anymore, but not not a bad way to get an analog trigger into that racer fish controller. That's trying to keep it lower profile.

All the way around. I will point out. The board itself is pretty flimsy fairly thin, so it's not the best built motherboard. I will say that inside of this controller and, ladies and gentlemen, that's going to do it here for the racer key sheet controller for your android device and cloud. Now you have to decide if this is worth 80 dollars to you considering a clip is 15 and if you already have the Xbox controller you're good to go.

I do like the form factor, though, with this style, where the controls are on either side of the phone, and it's directly in the middle feels much more sturdy. Think of like the original game, boy advance versus the SP, that's kind of the way. I look at this versus like a clip that has your phone just kind of hanging at the top there. The strong points of this controller would be the full analog sticks that are very similar to an Xbox One controller and even the front facing a b x and y, with probably the weakest point of this being its d-pad, and the analog triggers aren't bad if it wasn't for the noise that they make. But let me know what you guys think about the racer fish controller down below.

Thank you. So much for watching, and I'll see you next time. You.

Source : Spawn Wave