Nintendo launched this controller with the Switch in 2017, and a lot of the first ones are still in use. That is the most useful fact I can give you. Owners in a SlashGear round-up of user reports keep repeating the same story, and one puts it simply: “I’ve had mine since Christmas 2017, still works with no issues.”
Product image from the Amazon listing.
My short view: this is the controller to buy if you play long sessions on a docked Switch. On a Mac or PC it works, with more fuss than the box suggests, and its one serious weakness is the same stick drift that gave the Joy-Con a bad name.
Hours in the hand
Comfort is the main reason people pay for this over the small Joy-Con controllers. The Joy-Con grip works, but it is a compromise. The Pro Controller is a full-size pad with a proper shape, and the praise is consistent. A review from March 2017 called the ergonomics “fantastic” and reported about 30 hours of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with no tired hands.
The same review is fair about the rough parts. Its author found the shoulder buttons mushy and would have liked a clear click. The HD rumble felt weak to them, and they wished for a headphone jack, which the controller does not have. If you wear a headset on a console, plan for the audio to come from somewhere else.
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The D-pad earned the word “exceptional” there, and that matters more than it sounds. The Joy-Con has no true D-pad at all, so anyone playing 2D platformers or fighting games on a Switch gets a real upgrade here. For those games alone, I think this pad earns its place.
Owner reports on long-term wear are good. One Reddit user quoted by SlashGear said the white grips looked the same after five years. That counts for something on a controller that spends years in sweaty hands.
The battery is the easy part
Nothing in the reports I read suggests battery life is a problem. iFixit’s device page lists a 1300 mAh battery, with about 6 hours for a full charge and about 40 hours of use from it.
Owners back that number up better than owners of most gadgets do. SlashGear quotes one who charged twice across 110 hours of Tears of the Kingdom. Another reports 30 or more hours per charge after seven years of ownership, which suggests the cell ages slowly. Buyers on Best Buy tell similar stories, including a light player who charges about once a month.
Six hours is a slow charge, so plug it in overnight and not ten minutes before friends arrive. The battery is also a part you can change. iFixit has a guide for it, and it is the featured repair on that page.
Product image from the Amazon listing.
Drift is the real risk
Here the story turns less friendly. Drift means the stick reports movement when you are not touching it, so your character walks slowly off a ledge by itself. Several gamers report it on this controller, and SlashGear describes it as a common Nintendo problem, in the same family as Joy-Con drift.
The size of the risk is hard to judge. I found no good failure rate, only individual reports. One Best Buy owner says theirs lasted more than 3,000 hours of play before drift arrived, which is a long life by any standard. Other owners say they have never seen it. My reading is that drift here is a wear problem that shows up late, and that heavy players should expect it some day.
When it does show up, you have options that many controllers do not offer. SlashGear’s suggested order is sensible: clean around the sticks with an alcohol wipe or dust spray, press and spin them to shake out dirt, then try opening the shell and cleaning further. iFixit lists joystick replacement, plus guides for drift and for D-pad problems, along with replacement parts. Some of the work on that page calls for soldering tools, so check the guide before you start.
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One odd report is worth knowing, because it looks like drift and may be something else. In a Steam forum thread, a PC owner saw the cursor keep sliding after letting go of the stick. The same controller worked fine on a Switch. A later poster blamed Steam’s motion controls moving the mouse, and thought turning them off was the answer, though they could not remember for sure. If your pad misbehaves only on a PC, check that setting before you buy a new stick.
Wired mode has a catch
Many buyers assume a cable will make the controller faster. The evidence does not support that very well.
Gamepadla’s test of a single unit on a Windows PC measured an average button delay of 16.81 ms over Bluetooth and 21.81 ms over a cable. Stick delay was 21.14 ms and 22.15 ms. Bluetooth was slightly quicker on average, while the cable was a bit more even, and the worst Bluetooth stick reading reached about 65 ms against about 33 ms wired. The site says other units and firmware may give other results, so please read these as one sample. For anything short of serious competitive play, I doubt you would feel the gap.
On the console, a cable needs one setting. Nintendo’s support page says to turn on Pro Controller Wired Communication in System Settings. It also warns that the NFC touchpoint is disabled while you use wired mode. So if you scan amiibo, take the cable off first. The Switch Lite needs a licensed accessory for wired play.
Product image from the Amazon listing.
On a Mac or PC
The Bluetooth pairing itself is the easy part. The trouble comes after it, and the reports depend heavily on your software.
On the Mac, the history is messy. In a 2022 Apple Support Community thread, several owners on macOS Monterey could connect the controller but saw no input in games, and no fix appears there. One found that Steam’s Big Picture mode responded while the games did not. Later that year the picture improved on paper, as Lowyat reported that Apple’s system support for this controller was coming with iOS 16, iPadOS 16 and macOS Ventura.
Apple’s own controller page gives macOS Ventura 13 as the base version for customizing controllers on a Mac, but it names only Xbox and PlayStation pads, plus “other Bluetooth game controllers”. So I would treat Ventura as the sensible minimum and expect support to vary by game.
Steam has its own quirks. In a 2018 thread, a Mac owner’s controller went undetected by Steam, and a Valve developer explained that a Steam bug could stop controller data from reaching the interface. A restart fixed it for that owner. Another poster there had trouble reconnecting after moving the controller between a Mac and a Switch, and that thread gives no fix.
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PC owners report a different annoyance. One Steam user described delays of several seconds over Bluetooth, but only while Steam was running. A cable cured it. Please treat that as a single story. Some setup guides also blame cheap Bluetooth adapters for drops, and a PC with a poor one may be the problem more than the controller is.
For Windows gaming as your main use, there are simpler choices. For a Switch owner who also wants a pad for the odd Steam game, this one will do the job after some setup.
Where I land on the Pro Controller
Buy this if your Switch lives in a dock and you play for hours. The comfort, the D-pad and the battery all have years of owner goodwill behind them, and the launch price of about $70 looks more reasonable when people are still using the same unit many years later. It is also a good pick for anyone who cares about 2D games.
Skip it if you mostly play handheld, since you would pay for something you rarely use. Skip it too if you want a pad mainly for a Mac or Windows PC, because the setup stories above are a lot of trouble for a controller built for another system. And if you are the type who sends a controller back the first time a stick slips, know that drift is the known risk here, even if it may take years to appear.
For a docked Switch, the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller is the one I would choose, and I would keep a can of dust spray nearby for later. This is an affiliate link. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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