Turtle Beach Recon Controller for Xbox Review: ‘That’s a lot of buttons’

TURTLE BEACH RECON CONTROLLER REVIEW FOR XBOX SERIES X|S AND XBOX ONE.

Third-party controllers used to be infamously bad in the areas of comfort, quality, and overall effectiveness. Since then, third-party offerings have evolved to closely match official pads and even improve on them with certain features. This is the case with the Turtle Beach Recon Controller for Xbox, which has a bunch of bells and whistles that set it apart from the competition, along with a price tag that will please the budget-conscious gamers out there.

Go wired

I’ll get the bad news out of the way with first: the Turtle Beach Recon Controller is wired only. There is no wireless functionality to be had here. However, that really is the only downside to this gamepad.

Buy the Turtle Beach Recon Controller for Xbox on Amazon here.

Once you embrace the wired connection, which is pleasantly enhanced by the provided 10 ft braided USB-C cable, a wide range of features opens up to you.

Feels like home

When it comes to cheaper controllers, I’m always ready to feel some kind of compromise in the build. With the Recon Controller, however, I was immediately impressed. Switching between it and the Xbox Series pad, I was amazed at just how similar they felt.

The analog sticks feel similar, too, and I personally prefer the quieter, albeit mushier, D-Pad of the Recon Controller. The triggers on the Recon are great, too, with some welcome additional grippy texturing.

Back-button advantage

Two remappable “quick-action buttons” sit on the rear of the pad. These are perfectly implemented, with them being positioned directly beneath where my fingers naturally sit. They are well-tuned to be easy to hit when needed, without being overly sensitive for the moments where users might grip their controller too hard. They are seriously some of the best out there!

For those unfamiliar with the buttons on the rear of a controller, they allow for actions like jumping and melee/crouch to be activated without the need for users to take their thumbs off the analog sticks. This combination makes jumping while aiming possible and grants a tangible advantage in titles like Halo and Fortnite.

That’s a lot of buttons

As for the other buttons situated at the top of the controller’s face, I have mixed feelings. Functionality-wise, they are tremendously useful. So long as the user is wearing a wired headset that uses a 3.5 mm jack, the various functions come to life. There are individual game and chat volumes, EQ tuning, microphone muting and monitoring, and more. It’s unbelievable just how many functions are crammed into the controller itself.

While the functions are great, the sheer number of buttons does make for a very busy look. It’s certainly not the cleanest-looking controller around, though I feel like the black version gets away with it more than the white.

Of course, having a good-looking controller is hardly a priority when it comes to video games. And I don’t have any solutions for how Turtle Beach could have better implemented this. Having the buttons on the controller’s face makes them easy to see and they are already at their smallest size.

Turtle Beach Recon Controller Review: The final verdict

For $59.99, you really can’t go wrong with the Turtle Beach Recon Controller. Provided you’re happy with a wired pad, as well as a wired headset if you aim to take advantage of the audio functions, this is a top-tier option.

It might look a little funky, as it doesn’t hide the fact that it has a button for seemingly everything, but this is a cheap and cheerful controller that I would happily main for competitive titles like Halo Infinite, where those quick-action buttons are about to become mighty useful.

Recon Controller for Xbox review unit was provided by Turtle Beach.