Cracking this fucker open for the first time is pretty scary, specifically on the sides where it needs unreasonably much force due to having both the plastic tabs and adhesive. I don’t really understand why the adhesive is there. The second time should be much smoother though.
i was skeptical about what I’d read about the bumper issues on Reddit threads, but it really is true. There’s this thin strip of white plastic between the switch and the bumper, serving no obvious purpose, but with some obvious wear on both sides. It’s literally the cheapest component I’ve ever seen in a piece of consumer electronics. Removing the strip fixes my issues, and seems to have no effect on how the bumpers feel.
Some people are doing things to reinforce or replace the plastic strip instead of removing it, but since there’s no believable explanation on what they’re for, I think I’ll just toss them out and see what happens.
Ok, without the plastic strips I get a lot of duplicate inputs, which were not obvious in a controller tester but are in-game. Keeping them in but rotating them so that the worn out parts are not facing the contact surface seems to be better. Still not happy about the construction quality for this specific bit.
(And yes, opening it up took less than a minute the second time around.)
Lol that first time though, I know what you mean. I was like, “well, I’m clearly going to break this, but whatever it’s broken and not under warranty.”
For issues with the bumper, I recommend spraying some of that contact cleaner directly into the sensor. I had a similar issue and that resolved it, whereas fiddling with the white plastic strip did not help.
I think the plastic strip is just there to prevent direct rubbing on the sensor, instead forcing the button’s force to be directed down into the sensor, due to the kind of indirect lever action that is taking place (which is actually a nice design for when you need to clean that sensor because you don’t need to remove the shoulder buttons themselves).
Interesting! I’m a big fan of the Elite 2 and Razer’s Wolverine 2 (I use the former wirelessly from the couch and the latter when at my PC) so would be interested if there’s any enhancements/improvements there.
Honestly, the main thing I want right now is better software configuration. I would love to configure a paddle button to something other than a single existing gamepad button (when playing on PC, that is). Even being able to configure a paddle for Y+B (for Monster Hunter) would be terrific. Coming from the PC world of macros and programmable keyboards, the configuration for these seems so limited!
Hall effect sensors have come back to the zeitgeist recently; basically they use magnets not potentiometers so they will never drift. I’d like to see every controller use them, but the elite’s price point makes it a natural fit.
Yeah, there’s not really a lot of improvement I’d need for the controller itself… it’s only the drift issue that’s been problematic (although after the last cleaning, mine hasn’t given me any trouble for months now).
As I understand it, potentiometer-based sticks (and triggers) physically rub pieces together so they inevitably degrade over time. Hall effect sticks address that. And it isn’t new technology, the Dreamcast used it.
The trick that I’ve found, that made the fix more permanent, was that I actually used a tiny little swab to physically rub down the contacts inside the potentiometer.
What happens is that metal actually rubs off onto the sensors, and it seems like actually scrubbing it off with a swab (I had some little non-cotton swabby things for cleaning electronics) seems like it gave a longer term fix than just spraying it with the contact cleaner.
That makes sense, but ultimately you do have pieces rubbing together and that friction will degrade them over time. That’s why I want to see everybody switching to those hall sensors.
They look like they’re pretty much the same. You don’t want them to be too big to get in there.
One thing though… when I did the deep cleaning that finally “fixed” it, at least for a few months, it knocked the copper ring thing out, and I had to fiddle with it a bit to get it back in there seated correctly. At one point I thought maybe I had broken the sensor, but nope. Just be careful after you’ve been in there, when you are trying to close the potentiometer back up. You may need to make sure the internal ring is seated right, and if you push too hard to get it to close, when it’s not seated, you could break it.
I hope they do. The fact that people are having to resort to this sort of thing on premium and outrageously priced hardware is ridiculous, especially since this is the second revision.
The good news is that it’s less expensive. The bad news is that they did that by making all the extras that were previously included optional. So if you want the replaceable thumbsticks and the case and the charging dock it’s $60 more.
The better news is that they said they made it “more reliable”, so hopefully sturdier components.
