Nacon’s Revolution 5 Pro for Playstation: Is it worth it?

I recently had the chance to bring home Nacon’s newest Revolution 5 controller and give it a shot. Honestly, I’m one of those people that use the original manufacturer’s controllers so I figured I’d be able to see the difference really well here.

One of the first things I noticed upon taking it out of the box is just the large amount of things in the box with it. In addition to the obvious things like booklets and the like, it came with a very durable zip up shell case, a cleaning cloth, and a smaller container filled with things like alternate controllers, d-pad options, an add on for an external headset, and even small weights.

I had never really seen weights for a controller before so the very first thing I did was popped off the backing and inserted the heaviest weights it came with. I figured I’d just go all in.

Having played with it I need to say this is the feature I got the least amount of anything from. Looking up the reasons for the weights online brought me to many different articles from people on both sides of the camp where some people purposely take apart their controllers and add weights because they feel it feels cheap if they haven’t busted them in half and glued weights inside. And the people who feel like a heavy controller is obnoxious after prolonged play.

Maybe I’m just buffer than I remember but after a very very long play session I didn’t really feel much of a difference with the heaviest weight. I kept them in mostly because it felt really odd to take them out and just leave an open cavity in there.

The ability to easily customize the joysticks and d-pad were nice. I made the right stick a lot longer and I honestly felt a significant improvement with how well I was able to look about. But I was really disappointed when I found out that I couldn’t swap out the d-pad and the joystick. Were I to spend $200 on a Playstation controller and get an XBox controller I might be a bit sore. I don’t like having the left joystick all the way up there so it felt really weird for me. I was hoping to have the ability to remove and swap the two around.

This brings me to the triggers. Now, the triggers had a really nice feature where flipping a switch makes it so you barely have to pull the trigger to get it to input which was nice in games where you fire as fast as you pull the trigger. But I did also find out that the controller also did not have the Dualshock’s Adaptive Triggers. I know that this is more than likely proprietary tech but when I’m playing something like Gran Turismo 7 I like to feel the ground I’m breaking on. Honestly, sometimes I don’t remember I’m on a rougher road than normal is when that trigger feels like there is dirt under it.

In fact, it feels like the Revolution 5 Pro was actually designed specifically for the Playstation 4, despite the 5 in its name. For example, the controller does have a vibrate feature, but, the vibrate feature only works if you’re using it with a PC or PS4. The PS5 turns the vibrate off which is a huge bummer. I get that pro controllers are mostly so people on shooters can get a little confidence boost and the main thing is the ability to aim and shoot but it still felt weird to have a “pro” experience at the cost of the advanced features I came to love from my much cheaper system default controller.

That’s not to say that the experience with this controller was all bad though. The controller is absolutely overly flowing with features. A simple look at the back will show you all you need to know.

There are additional back buttons that, once I got used too were actually kind of fun to use, and best of all there were pre-set profiles for different types of games. For example, I turned on the “Fighting” profile when hoping into Street Fighter 6 and I did find it was significantly easier for me to do a lot of the standard moves. I was busting out Zangief’s Spinning Piledriver as if I had channeled the spirit of Oono Akira.

In the week I spent playing through my library with this controller I found that while it was not going to become my default controller, games like fighting games and FPS’s will see me busting this out. Ultimately though, I think this is going to come down to what you need this controller for.

If you’re a PC gamer or a PS4 gamer looking for a solid controller, this is great. The $199 might seem steep but with the incredible feeling “magnetic Hall Effect” joysticks it feels like this thing will last you MUCH longer than your default controllers. If you’re on the PS5, however, unless you are absolutely in need of an edge in your FPS I’d debate it for a bit because the lack of features that make the PS5 controller special, mixed with the fact that the joystick is at an awkward XBox configuration, makes this a bit iffy of a price of $199.