Weighing in at a relatively wallet emptying £179/$209 respectively, Turtle Beach’s latest entry in its Victrix controller range, the Pro BFG Reloaded Wireless Modular variant, certainly is not a product that is aimed towards the casual audience (or indeed folks who like their controllers to have short names). Furthermore, it’s also true that this controller also does not embrace many of the features that have been synonymous with Sony’s own DualSense controller for the last five years or so. That means no haptic feedback and certainly no adaptive triggers.
Now on the face of it, the absence of such features that many folks might consider as ‘standard’ in this generation, together with that chunky price tag may well add up to an unappealing prospect on first glance. Like most things in life however, there’s more to Turtle Beach’s latest controller than what meets the eye, or indeed, the fingers – and you’ll be glad you took a deeper look.
Turtle Beach Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded Wireless Modular Controller Review
In this Turtle Beach Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded Wireless Modular Controller review
Form Factor, Comfort & Overall Design
Straight away, the first thing you notice after unpacking the Pro BFG Reloaded is that the packaging and presentation is absolutely stellar, not to mention exactly what you would expect to see after paying a chunk of change for a high-end controller like this which also carries the PlayStation official licensed product insignia. After freeing the sliding compartment of the box from its overall cardboard housing, a stylish carry case soon presents itself, containing the controller and some other bits inside that I’ll get into shortly.
Put simply, though it might seem only like a relatively insignificant thing in the grand scheme of things, having that sort of packaging and portable carry case for the controller lends the Pro BFG Reloaded a distinctly premium feel that I hadn’t really experienced since I took Sony’s own high-end DualSense Edge out for a spin a couple of years ago. Once released from the surrounding packaging, the first thing which struck me about the controller was how thick and angular it is when compared to Sony’s own DualSense controller, with a notably broader stretch of material existing beneath the analogue sticks, lending the Pro BFG Reloaded a wider profile than Sony’s flagship PS5 pad.
At nearly 25g heavier than the latest and most slimline version of the DualSense controller, the Pro BFG Reloaded is also clearly more of a unit on paper too. However, when you actually hold the thing in your hands, a number of revelations become readily apparent. The first of these is that Turtle Beach’s controller somehow feels lighter, at least to me, when compared to the DualSense controller. Certainly, it’s almost as if the weight has been better distributed across the entirety of the controller, making it feel – again to me – a little lighter in the hand than the numbers would suggest.
In particular, the extended controller grips at the extreme ends of the pad are a delight to hold too, and in fact feel a good deal more comfortable to use than the default grips which ship with Sony’s own DualSense controller, especially when using it for longer sessions of play. Peering across the other buttons on the controller, the Pro BFG Reloaded acquits itself similarly well with face buttons that feel appropriately good and responsive to click in with the fingers, though it’s difficult not to lament the triggers given the lack of adaptative technology in place. Elsewhere, the controller is also absolutely decked out with additional buttons on the underside of the pad, which proves extremely handy for mapping shortcut commands onto, while the thumb sticks are also perfectly cozy on the thumbs to use across an extended period of time.
Flexible yet solid and light yet substantial, to be clear, the Pro BFG Reloaded is a super comfortable pad and one that very much exudes a premium quality feel while also at once feeling quite apart from Sony’s own internally manufactured offerings. Though if there was one aspect of its design right of the box which really didn’t appeal to me very much, it would be the feel of the directional pad buttons. Much too flat and lacking the raised edges that I’d normally expect and ultimately prefer, this ended up being something of a moot point thanks to the modular design of the Pro BFG Reloaded which allowed me to swap out the direction pad and other face buttons and even sticks on the controller.
Performance
Made possible by the super handy module swap tool which comes bundled with the controller, the process of swapping out face buttons, directional face buttons or stick modules is a relatively effortless one. All that is required is a loosening of the fixings, the removal of the old modules and/or buttons and then fixing the new layout into place. All told (and I am a clumsy sort at the best of times), the whole process took my poorly coordinated digits around 90 seconds to accomplish, making it feel appropriately breezy and not convoluted at all.
Much more than a gimmick, the modular nature of the Pro BFG Reloaded controller is part of a broader design approach to make the Pro BFG Reloaded much more closely aligned with professional eSports level play. This means that as well as the previously disclosed additional buttons on the underside of the controller, one of the modular layouts which can be applied is a 6-button fight pad module which aims to mimic a similar functional alignment and is successful in doing so – though the fact remains obviously that a full fat arcade controller stick setup is still going to be the superior option for professional level fighting game play.
However, when it comes to first-person shooter play the Pro BFG Reloaded is a joy to use with delightfully light triggers, appropriately tactile buttons and responsive analogue sticks that make performing feats of short and long-range firearms violence refreshingly easy. Indeed, if you want to go absolutely nuts with the customisation side of things, you can install the Victrix Control Hub App onto your PC and tailor everything from dead zones and button mappings, to firmware updates and more functionality besides. Essentially the Pro BFG Reloaded controller banishes the idea that you’re somehow at a disadvantage when using it against those wielding other controllers, not least because it is so malleable on a functional level that it excels when playing games from all manner of genres.
Battery Life
With the Pro BFG Reloaded wireless controller packing in its own 500 MHz Dual-core ARM-7 processor, cutting edge Bluetooth receiver and a larger power draw overall, it makes sense that battery life is little less than what you would see in a less capable controller. Basically, your battery life will vary greatly depending on how you’re using the Pro BFG Reloaded controller. Ultimately though after my testing using the default layout on a full charge (thanks to the handily included three meter long USB-C charge cable), I had roughly 17 hours or so of play with that number steadily decreasing the more fiddling I was doing with extended button mappings, use of wired headsets via the 3.5mm audio jack and stuff like that.
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Though not an incredible amount of battery life when taken out of context, the Pro BFG Reloaded controller nonetheless offers up far more juice than Sony’s own DualSense Edge controller and is broadly comparable to what you would expect from other PS5 controllers on the market right now which give you far less from a feature perspective.
Value
I think it’s fair to say that the value proposition of the Pro BFG Reloaded controller is not especially straightforward for casual players, especially given the eschewing of standardised DualSense features when combined with a lofty price point. Then again, it’s also true that these aren’t folks which Turtle Beach were looking to court with this controller anyway.
Though I think it could be argued that the standard DualSense features are for the most part, and certainly outside of games that make a point of using them in anger such as Sony’s own Astro Bot, largely a nice to have in the grand scheme of things, the Pro BFG Reloaded controller instead goes down a different avenue. As I discussed earlier in this review, this is a controller that is very much intended to appeal to professional and high-level players where things like haptic feedback and adaptive triggers matter far less than comfortable controls, compelling ergonomics and low latency.
As such, I think that you will struggle to find a better rounded, more premium controller that plays effortlessly well across a variety of genres and which offers such a broad level of customisation, and especially one that matches up favourably against Sony’s own DualSense Edge controller – so long as you’re willing to give up that more traditional DualSense controller feature set.
Final Words
The Turtle Beach Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded wireless modular controller arguably puts its own spin on the concept of a premium controller. A multi-talented controller that acquits itself especially well in first-person shooters at a competitive level, the absence of DualSense functionality is a more acceptable price to pay for such a comfortable and finely tuned offering as this. To ape Sony’s own slogan, this controller is absolutely for the players.
The Turtle Beach Victrix Pro BFG Wireless Controller is out now.
Review sample kindly provided by PR.