GuliKit TT Pro review: The ideal Switch 2 controller for players on the go

Engadget

RATING : 8 / 10

If GuliKit's TT Max is the granddaddy of Switch 2 controllers, the TT Pro is what happens when grandpa goes on a diet. It's slightly leaner than the TT Max in terms of accessories, technical flexibility and price point, but it features the same skeleton and baseline capabilities. GuliKit's TT Pro is perfect for players who take their games on the road, offering a sturdy, precise and professional-feeling wireless gamepad that works across PC, Switch, Switch 2, Android and iOS. Plus, it comes with a hard case so you can throw it in your bag without worry. Sometimes, it's the simplest things that make — and prevent — the biggest impact.

Compared with most other Switch 2 controllers and specifically Nintendo's $90 Pro Controller, the TT Pro is large, loud and versatile. It has aligned joysticks like Sony's DualSense controller, but also the facial chunkiness of an Xbox gamepad. It feels solid and well-balanced, featuring gyro controls and never-drift TMR joysticks with adjustable stepless tension. The sticks have a slick glide and they press in with an easy click, while their rubberized caps are barely concave, like stout, thumbpad-sized mushrooms.

The TT Pro has flared triggers tipped with tiny circles of texture, mirroring the bumps that line the rear grips. You can readily swap the triggers between high-precision Hall effect or microswitch inputs using physical toggles on the backside of the controller. In Hall effect mode, the triggers have an ultra-smooth pull and a lovely bounciness, while the microswitch setting is clean and subtly clicky.

The bumpers on the TT Pro are wide, while its face buttons are smooth plastic circles. Out of the box, the TT Pro features the Switch 2 button layout, but it comes with a set of PC-layout buttons that you can install with a little bit of elbow grease. A keycap puller is also included, alongside a tension adjustment tool for the sticks, a more traditional D-pad, a Hyperlink 2 wireless USB adapter, a charging cable, four mappable metal rear paddles that can pop into the gamepad's chassis and the translucent-black protective case that perfectly fits the curves of the TT Pro. The extra D-pad lives at the bottom of the controller case, the cable is loose and the adapter comes in its own disposable sleeve. All of the remaining accessories are packed together in a clear box that's roughly the size of a deck of cards, making travel with the TT Pro a seamless, grab-and-go process.

GuliKit

Unlike the TT Max, there's no way to quickly swap face button layouts on the software side of the TT Pro, but you should be able to correctly map the controller at the individual game level or via your OS. There's also no baked-in 4-way mode for the TT Pro's D-pad, so 8-way with a plus-sign circular pad will have to do for your old-school games and platformers. GuliKit's TT Max also includes three joystick sensitivity modes, while the TT Pro is fixed at 100 percent. On top of a few extra accessories and high-level software capabilities, those are the main differences between the TT Max and TT Pro. Of course, there's also the price: The TT Max costs $70, while the TT Pro is $60. Both offer great value for their technical specs and depth of functionality, and they're well-suited for players with large hands, especially with the back paddles attached.

The TT Pro has three haptic modes — rotary motor, maglev haptics and HD vibration — with three separate intensity settings. These are adjustable on the fly by holding the small settings button in the middle of the gamepad and then pressing down or up on the D-pad. While the TT Pro's haptics are great all around, they're fairly noisy across all modes and intensities, with mechanical grinding and whooshing sounds emanating from inside the grips. This gamepad is definitely louder than the Switch 2 Pro Controller in terms of vibrations and stick sounds, but it's also $30 cheaper than Nintendo's offering.

A ring of RGB lighting encircles each analog stick on GuliKit's TT Pro and there's a small LED-lit logo above those. You're able to set the lights to one of five modes: steady blue, joystick-activated flow, rainbow river, trigger-activated flow or fully off. My favorite is the rainbow river because I'm a self-admitted RGB pervert.

Even with the haptics turned up and rainbow lights activated, I haven't encountered battery-life issues with the TT Pro. It charges quickly via a USB-C port and can last up to 26 hours with the lights off, according to GuliKit. The TT Pro apparently features the much-loved ability to wake up the Switch 2, though enabling this feature is a sensitive process that has confounded plenty of players, including myself. While I've successfully made the TT Max wake up the Switch 2, I've been unable to get this feature working with the TT Pro, no matter how many tutorials I follow down to the letter. Others online have reported that the feature does in fact exist in the TT Pro, so I have to assume this is user error or perhaps a wonky update that'll be addressed in the future.

The TT Pro comes in black with neon green highlights on the face buttons, or SNES-gray with matching purple face buttons, two cool colorways that aren't available in GuliKit's TT Max.