8BitDo's Anniversary Celebration Includes Gold And Silver Controllers

Any experience with these controllers on Switch? I hear pairing is an issue so I’m steering clear. I’d consider a wired one though.

@Blast16

Have diffrrent Controllers from 8Bitdo, they are great.
To pair you have to go to the menu were you change who is player 1/2 instead of the pairing menu and press the L/R Buttons.

Nothing that of an issue

@Azuris thanks for the response. I may look into these. I have a wireless pad, I think M30 that works well with Genesis and MegaSG.

@Blast16 I won't say it's as easy as pairing a switch controller, but my sn30 pro is by far the best all purpose controller I've ever used. And the ability to switch between modes at will basically means I have an extra controller for four different things.

@Poodlestargenerica Very handy, thanks for your input! 😎

@Blast16 Pairing used to be an issue, but not these days. Other than that, it'll be the Bluetooth lag that gets you - they're some of the slowest controllers I've ever experienced on the Switch, either wired or wireless.

Which is a shame, because they are perfect otherwise. I love the amazing build quality, buttons, d-pad and all the rest.

They really need to get onto a 2.4ghz variant.

Hopefully they've fixed the d-pads. Tons of false diagonals on both of mine that just got worse as they aged, to the point I don't use them anymore. Poorly designed and using materials that don't age well. The button membranes also aren't very durable, so I try to stay away from the SNES-styled stuff from 8bitdo. A shame since the SNES controller is one of my favourites, and while it worked, I loved having something in that form factor that could still play modern games.
I wound up replacing it with two controllers and have been having a good time with Retrobit's 2.4Ghz Saturn pad for 2D and retro, and the Kingkong 3 for modern stuff.

Love the arcade stick from 8bitdo, they can definitely make good stuff, but I won't buy another SNES-style pad unless I see one torn down to see if they've addressed the issues.

SN30 Pro is yesterday's news, make a metal Pro 2 and maybe I'll care
Or better yet, a Pro 3, with the same layout and four remappable back buttons, hand it over!

@Blast16 I don’t know if I am missing something or everybody else did, but the controllers discussed in this article are wired.

As for experience with the controller, I havent used these wired versions, but the wireless variant has bad dpads. You’ll get a lot of accidental diagonals that make Contra and Tetris a nightmare to play.

@DestructoDisk Ah, I think I may have missed that detail earlier. Either way, accidental diagonals sound very frustrating. Hopefully they don’t affect all versions of the controller.

@AJB83

My SN30 pro has a big lag Issue if i have Audio over Bluetooth.
But i think it is a Problem with the Switch itself, not the Controller, as that one and others work flawlessly on other Systems, be it PC, Mister or else.
And as said, it disappears when i deactivate the Bluetooth Audio.

I think there is a Reason, why it took Nintendo so long to get us the Option of Bluetooth Audio.

It is better if you use the 8Bitdo Dongle to pair it.

@Azuris I think you're right that it's on the Switch's end. Even my oldest 8bitdo controllers, an early model of the Zero and the old 2015 FC30 have very good Bluetooth performance with minimal lag. That the Bluetooth audio is what triggers it pretty much confirms it.

@Azuris It's laggy on even PC. And I've never used bluetooth audio on the Switch ever, mine is used 100% docked.

To be honest though, I refuse to use any Bluetooth controller these days anyways. There are better Bluetooth controllers than any of the the 8bitdo units in regards to lag (the best I've found on Switch were the BigBig Won Blitz and the PXN 9607x), but over the years, I've come to despise it as a controller technology - if a controller doesn't come with a 2.4ghz dongle, then it's out for me.

@AJB83 I've lag tested my own 8bitdo controllers in an emulation setup a couple of months ago. To my own surprise all the pads I tested, including some old ones, have so little added latency they are functionally identical to using them wired and other wired controllers I used for comparison. They added no additional frames of lag. That isn't to say 2.4GHz wouldn't be better, but as far as lag goes, their controllers are excellent, at least the handful of models I have. Perhaps there's more going on with regard to Bluetooth that is causing the lag such as particular Bluetooth hardware on the host device. Either way, I still vastly prefer wired, just for peace of mind.