This Excellent Switch Controller Promises Its Magnetic Joysticks Will Never Drift
Although it seemingly had little negative impact on console sales, every Nintendo Switch owner might one day experience the dreaded phenomenon of Joy-Con Drift. The only real solution to the issue so far has been to send your Joy-Cons and controllers back to Nintendo for repair, or just routinely replace them. GuliKit has another option: a third-party Switch controller that it promises will never succumb to joystick drift (the generic name for the issue). It’s a bold promise, and one that’s backed up by some truly excellent hardware.
Joystick drift is a phenomenon where a controller’s analog joystick seems to detect inputs even when a player isn’t touching the stick at all. For those lucky enough to have avoided it so far, as it’s fairly common in the Switch’s first-party controllers, imagine carefully guiding a video game character through a dangerous dungeon only to find they continue to slowly walk towards certain peril after you release the joystick. It’s a major issue that can make a console unplayable if you don’t have a backup controller on hand.
Joystick drift has a few potential causes, but it mostly seems related to components in modern controllers called potentiometers that simply aren’t as durable as they used to be and don’t last as long they need to. It’s an issue that affects controllers from all the major console makers, but it’s been a particular headache for the Nintendo Switch, as billions of people suddenly found themselves with lots of extra free time to obsess over games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons when the pandemic started. Both the Switch’s Joy-Cons and the optional Pro Controller can succumb to joystick drift at a fairly high rate, to the point where there’s a whole separate term for it: Joy-Con drift. Despite this nickname, it’s an issue all of the big console makers need to seriously address in the future. For now, GuliKit has beaten them to the punch.
Most joystick drift happens because the components inside the base of the sticks that are constantly rubbing against each other to detect movements eventually wear down to the point where they malfunction. This is why you constantly change the oil in your car; to prevent components in the engine that are always rubbing together from breaking down. But there’s no such maintenance that can be done for a controller’s joysticks.
The joysticks in the KingKong Pro 2 instead take advantage of something called the Hall Effect, where the presence of a magnetic field can be detected by sensors and used to trigger an electronic function. The case with the lid that protects and automatically wakes your iPad when opened? That uses the Hall effect. But here, both permanent magnets and electromagnets are used to measure the position and movements of a joystick without any physical contact between the moving parts.
For years, third-party controller options were almost never as good as the controller hardware that shipped with consoles. If you’re old enough to remember getting stuck with that weirder, cheaper, non-Nintendo SNES gamepad or N64 controller when visiting a friend’s house, you’ll know what I mean. That’s no longer the case, and I actually find myself preferring the KingKong Pro 2 over the Switch Pro Controller.