Smallest Bluetooth Controller Ever? 8Bitdo ZERO GamePad Review - Rerez

Once in a while we get products sent in from a company called 8Bitdo. In the past we've covered their FC 30 pro controller and the NES 30 pro controller which were two Bluetooth controllers I was pretty positive about. Now they've sent us another controller which you kind of have to see to believe. Of all the controllers we've ever featured on Rerez this is by far the smallest. This is called the 8bitdo Zero Gamepad. It's a pretty cool little tiny device but it also happens to be the smallest Bluetooth controller I've ever used.

The design mimics a Super Nintendo controller with a directional pad and six face buttons comprised of start, select, X, Y, A, B as well as left and right shoulder buttons. With that design you would be able to control any emulation software you might have that runs Super Nintendo games, NES games and any other console that has a controller similar to this layout. So it's got the looks of a classic video game controller but the only way to really test out one of these things is to play a bunch of video games with it and play I did. Despite this controller’s small size it feels like a really solid build. Even though it is comprised completely of plastic the buttons felt incredibly responsive as did the D-pad and the top shoulder buttons were clicky which I wasn't really expecting. But when you hold the controller and play games with it that clicky responsiveness is good because it's so small you may not realize otherwise that you're not actually pushing them in. I never felt once like I could crush this controller and break it with my hand because it was so well built. But even then it felt incredibly light. It actually weighs less than two AA batteries despite the fact that it actually has a battery inside of it that lasts according to 8bitdo for about 20 hours. But I couldn't test it for that long for one really good reason. I don't claim to have the biggest hands in the world but this controller felt so small that it was actually kind of uncomfortable to hold it. After about 30 minutes my hands started to cramp up because I just wasn't used to using a controller this small.

Despite the fact it has a microUSB at the top for connecting and charging it actually doesn't connect to your computer through the USB port. So unless your computer has Bluetooth and mine didn't you won't be able to connect it that way. Fortunately though I do have a Macbook that has Bluetooth on it and it did connect. But this came into my next problem. See this Bluetooth controller doesn't get recognized as a gamepad. It gets recognized as a keyboard which can be a problem for regular consumers that don't know how to remap their keyboards. And in many instances you'll find that there are a lot of PC games out there that do offer remap settings in the options menus but there are enough out there that it's probably not going to be an option for everyone. So if you're an advanced user and know how to remap buttons you're in the clear. But if you're not you might want to avoid this controller if you're looking to get it for PC gaming. Where this controller shines though is when it's being used for mobile games on iOS and Android mobile phones. I had a lot of fun playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my cell phone because it just worked so well. And you can download tons of software that makes use of this controller perfectly. And because the controller is so small it's ultra portable meaning that you probably could carry it right beside your cell phone and never notice it being there. And for Android at least it uses the exact same charge cable that my cell phone does being microUSB. So if I ever went on a trip I wouldn’t have to bring with me more cables I just needed the one which was kind of a nice perk. The controller also has the ability to be used as a shutter release for certain cameras that support it but I couldn't get it to work. Because once again this controller like the other 8bitdo controllers we've seen simply has one of the worst ways to connect to devices and I'm really not a fan of it. It's kind of cryptic you have to hold a certain selection of buttons and wait for a certain light to go on at a certain time to tell you that things are connected and it's kind of difficult. I guess that's a common theme with a lot of Bluetooth controllers that they're not the most easiest thing to hook up to certain devices. But this one specifically was pretty hard.

I've used tiny controllers in the past but nothing nearly as small as this. This controller is just super, super small and it's cool. Like we said in the review though that whole problem with connecting to devices still plagues this. The FC 30 pro and the NES 30 pro had the same kind of connectivity issues and I'm really not a fan of that stuff. Outside of that if you're looking for a really, really, tiny controller that fits just about anywhere this is the kind of controller you probably want to get. Or if you have like baby hands, like really small hands.

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