With its latest professional PS5 controller, Nacon is asking gamers a question – ‘how much do you care about the core feature set of the Sony DualSense controller and would you be willing to give some of them up in favour of all-new, premium functionality?’. In truth, this question feels like a design philosophy which began with the release of its previous pro PS5 controller, the Nacon Revolution 5 Pro. This was a controller which gave up seemingly keystone features such as the touch pad interface and adaptive triggers in favour of other technologies such as hall effect controls which prevented stick drift and customisable weights that could be used to alter the heft and physical feel of the controller.
Now that its flagship successor, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller has found its way into our laps and hands, Nacon is doubling down on that gamble about eschewing typical DualSense features in favour of new innovations and the sort of modular functionality that have been missing from Sony’s in-house line-up of PS5 controllers.
NACON Revolution 5 Unlimited Controller Review
In this NACON Revolution 5 Unlimited Controller review
Form Factor, Comfort & Overall Design
As soon as you grip the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller in your hands, it’s clear that this is very much a PS5 controller that feels really rather different from Sony’s own DualSense Edge controller. Where this observation is most keenly felt, at least to me initially, is in the command display which sits where you would normally expect to find a touchpad. This command centre essentially acts as an on-the-fly tailoring suite for the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller, enabling players to muck around with things like button remapping, tune controller stick dead zones, controller profiles, connectivity and things of that nature.
Of course though, the cost that you pay for having this fancy little screen front and centre of your controller (and it does look very fancy, truth be told), is that you’ll no longer have access to anything resembling a traditional touchpad. Now, while you can reassign the button functionality of the touchpad to one of the many other button inputs on the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller, the pad cannot and does not natively support any kind of swiping gestures, meaning that in order to engage with the mechanics which use that functionality (such as Ghost of Yotei’s guiding winds, for example), the only workaround you really have is to tweak the accessibility within those games to shift those mechanics from the touch pad to another input on the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller.
If this is something that doesn’t especially bother you and you’re very much of the school of thought that gesture swiping was a gimmick to begin with, then it is doubtful you’ll be shedding many tears over its removal from Nacon’s latest professional controller effort. The separation from the traditional DualSense continues yet further still when you look at the build of the thing. Obviously keen to jettison the parallel sticks visual template of the DualSense family of controllers, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited instead goes for an asymmetric look which on first glance arguably echoes the aesthetic of an Xbox Series controller more than that of a traditional PlayStation pad.
Personally, I’m quite fond of the form factor and especially for first-person shooters, and the controller itself fits comfortably in the hands, with snug grips that sit cozily in the hands and a wealth of buttons and switches on the underside of the controller that never feel extraneous or in the way. The Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller feels like a luxurious offering then, and make no mistake.
Speaking of form factor, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller steps away from the standard membrane which defines the face buttons and triggers of the DualSense controllers, and instead opts micro-switch face buttons and physical mechanical triggers for the shoulder buttons. The direct result of this is that while it takes a little some getting used to, the clicking sensation that you get from using these buttons and triggers, all feel substantially more palpable than their equivalents on Sony’s DualSense controllers.
Much like Nacon’s previous offering, the Revolution 5 Unlimited controller also has a handful of modular weights that can be incrementally installed into the pad to tailor its heft to your liking. The weight spectrum here is also surprisingly broad, with the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller actually being a little lighter out of the box without the weights when compared to the DualSense Edge (at 322g versus 325g). While packing in the full set of weights can put the pad in excess of 345g, making it decidedly heavier than the Edge, but again, it all depends on your mileage – which seems to be something of a mantra which can be applied to this controller more broadly.
The other area in which Nacon’s latest controller distinguishes itself from its professional peers is in the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, or lack thereof. Being a third-party licensed PlayStation controller, this means that as an accessory manufacturer Nacon is not permitted to incorporate Sony’s DualSense haptic feedback and adaptive trigger functionality into its own design. The upshot then, is that though Nacon’s controller doesn’t feature adaptive triggers at all, it nonetheless does substitute the haptic feedback for fairly standard rumble motors, which even though they do the job admirably enough, feel a little whiny in comparison and a definite step down from the solution offered by Sony’s DualSense controllers.
This I feel continues the overarching theme of not just the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller but Nacon’s accessory design philosophy in general – as you’re essentially being asked to trade in what is essentially an older set of features, for a newer set that are much more narrowly focused and calibrated for competitive play.
One of the best ‘trades’ that you’ll make when switching to this controller from a Sony DualSense pad is that stick drift just doesn’t go here anymore. Equipped with drift-immune magnetic TMR sensors, you’ll never have to worry about stick drift (or the $20 cost of replacing your sticks should it occur), while the greater number of additional mappable buttons when compared to the DualSense Edge will prove especially useful to those who use shortcuts to thrive in competitive play.
Performance
Like its predecessor before it, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller is very much geared toward high-end, competitive play across first-person and third-person shooter genres. This means that if you spend many a night competitively playing the likes of Call of Duty: Warzone, Battlefield 6 or Fortnite, then this controller has very much been designed with your ilk in mind.
A big aspect of the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited’s overall offering, as could be argued I suppose with its predecessors, is that Nacon has taken the time to invest in its own supporting app in order to extend the customisation possibilities of its latest controller beyond what it can do right out of the box. In practice, the R5U Navigator app is something of a functionality swiss-knife which allows players to deeply tweak and customise everything from button mapping and shortcuts, to stick and trigger tuning, audio and equaliser management, gyroscope and advanced sensor configuration and finally, firmware updates.
In truth, the R5U Navigator app feels like a proper value add to the whole Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited package as I found it really useful to tailor and tweak the minutiae of functionality while doing something else entirely without actually using the controller.
When it comes to wireless performance, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller also provides an extremely low latency experience via its bundled 2.4 GHz USB adapter. In my time with the pad, I never once felt any lag or any noticeable glitches in responsiveness which would be a death knell during online competitive play. If I died, it was because I sucked at the game – which in the case of Call of Duty: Warzone is both expected and entirely true.
Battery Life
When it comes to battery life, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller has the DualSense Edge comprehensively beat, and is not only even roundly competitive with the standard Sony DualSense controller as well, but beats both pads with battery life features right out of the box to boot. Clocking in at up to ten hours of battery life, versus up to six for the DualSense Edge (and that’s at a push), it would seem that absence of haptic feedback and adaptive trigger sensitivity all help Nacon’s pad to claw back hours of precious battery life during heavy usage, making it more suitable for longer game sessions than its immediate competition.
In addition to superior battery life, the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited also has a couple of additional flourishes to underscore its advantage in this area yet further still. Not only does the fancy command display provide a readout of your battery life without pressing the PlayStation home button to check, but the controller also comes bundled with a wireless charging dock as well, offering players more options for charging their controller out of the box than Sony’s DualSense Edge.
Value
As soon as you open the packaging for the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller, your eyes are greeted with an assuredly premium sight. In addition to the controller itself, Nacon has packed in a generous amount of goodies including a really rather fancy carry case for the pad, an accessory storage box, a charging station, replaceable directional pads and analogue sticks, a wireless adapter, cleaning cloth and a clutch of metal joystick rings.
Indeed, weighing in at around £179.99/$229.99, it’s still also true that the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller is very much in that ‘professional’ price bracket and yet, on the evidence of everything that is included with the package in tandem with the technologies such as the drift-resistant sticks (meaning you’ll be saving in the long term too, thanks to the lack of stick replacements due to stick drift), command screen and so on. To say that you get a lot for your money would be something of an understatement in the case of the Nacon Revolution 5 Unlimited controller.
Final Words
If you find yourself hopelessly wedded to the traditional Sony DualSense template when it comes to PS5 controller functionality, Nacon’s latest aggressive push in the opposite direction will likely do little to free you from your moorings. However, for those looking to move away from aspects of that now six year design to a professional, highly customisable PS5 controller which isn’t afraid to innovate and which is packed to the gills with features, Nacon have conjured up another compelling controller, albeit one which eschews some of the functionality players might expect.
https://youtu.be/bK1WUCRrhyo
The NACON Revolution 5 Unlimited Controller is out now.
Review sample kindly provided by PR.