Gamesir G4 Pro Review

Here’s my Gamesir G4 Pro Review. Gamesir are a brand that I’ve become quite familiar with. I’ve reviewed a fair few things from them so far this year (2020) and each time I’ve been impressed. So, the G4 Pro at first glance looks to follow in the footsteps of Gamesirs other products, with a great build quality and a product packed with features.

I have a fair few controllers for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PC. And that’s the reason I have to have so many, none of them are compatible with each other, apart from the Xbox Controller. That’s where 3rd party controllers come in, they have the added benefit of being able to be used on a variety of different systems.

More often than not 3rd party controllers are a bit trash! I’ve often suffered from connection drop outs, input lag and complete hardware failure. There just aren’t that many universal gaming controllers on the market that are any good.

Because it can be used on loads of different gaming systems I finally had a genuine reason to play some games on a ton of different consoles, for ‘research purposes’. So, with that in mind, let’s get into the review and find out if the Gamesir G4 Pro lives up to my expectations.

Use the affiliate link to Check the price on Amazon here.

When I first opened up the outer box I was really pleasantly surprised by the branded packaging. Just like their Falcon F4, it’s been really well designed with particular attention paid to the overall look and feel.

Unboxing the controller was a delight, there is a bit of single use plastic, but not over the top amounts. I’m unsure if any improvements could be made at all in this area to be honest.

They can’t really reduce it further without impacting how protected the controller is inside the box. But, saying that, perhaps they could use a cardboard insert to hold the controller, instead of a plastic one.

The controller feels well built and has some neat features. The more I inspected the controller the more useful things I found. The neatly tucked away USB dongle for example is well thought out! And it’s not your cheap run of the mill off of the shelf dongle either, it’s been custom built and feels sturdy.

Also, in terms of my first impressions, I really like the black and red colours Gamesir have used on this pro controller. It looks fantastic and reminds me of the colour scheme on many of the Genesis Gaming products. And that’s certainly a good thing!

So far so good then, but let’s take a closer look at the build quality and design then.

Build Quality & Design

The GameSir G4 Pro is fairly typical in it’s design. It’s quite chunky, but not over the top. And, I’d have never have guessed that it had the fold out mobile phone holder built in, as it has been incorporated well into the design to not look obtuse or out of place.

First glance it sort of reminded me of a classic original Xbox controller, due to it’s size. I reckon it’d be fairly easy to pass it off as a 1st party controller for your Switch or Xbox, and that’s probably what the designers were trying to achieve when they came up with the concept.

The Gamesir G4 Pro fits into your hand nicely, it’s really ergonomic and doesn’t weigh as much as I thought it would. The weight of it really helps it to be more comfortable. This became more apparent when I played Zelda Breath Of The Wild for a couple of hours.

I noticed a clear difference over the Switch Joycons. The Switch Joycons, when docked into their holder (to be used as a controller rather than separate joycons), are a little too small for the size of my hands, sometimes this leads to mild discomfort when playing for longer than 30 minutes. Overall it’s far more comfortable than other 3rd party controllers I used.

The buttons are all magnetic which means you can swap the order to match whatever console you are playing, so for example if you use it on the PlayStation you’d put the X at the bottom.

I think it’d have been a great addition if Gamesir had included a couple of different button sets. This could even be an additional purchase to enable customers to go ahead and customize the controller to their own tastes. Without this, the magnetic buttons don’t really offer much as there is only the X button that you’d see on the PlayStation. (Make sure to check compatibility as some users online have mentioned it won’t work with the PS4 but does work with the PS3)

As well as the buttons you’ll find on most controllers there is also a Turbo mode, this allows you to create a one button macro sequence. You can have one button activate a particular function super fast. Be careful though as some game modes, such as competitive don’t allow the use of a turbo button.

The Gamesir G4 Pro also features a 6-axis gyroscope sensor that works just like the gyroscope function in a phone or Nintendo Wii controller, so you can steer without using joysticks or d-pad, which is a neat touch. I personally won’t get much use out of it, but some people will.

The controller really does have a premium feel to it. It’s really strong and when I tried to twist it, there was little to no flex in it at all, which is good news. There are a few small issues that I’ve noticed but nothing to cause too much concern.

The first is that the rubber coating on the analog stick feels a little bit too thin. I haven’t been able to test it for months before writing this review, but it does feel quite a bit thinner than that of the analog stick rubber on the official PlayStation controller for example. The only reason for the comparison is that I’ve had issues with the rubber pealing off before, so it’s worth pointing out.

And, the second issue is the fold out arm that holds your phone. The bit that you stretch open to slide your phone into feels like a weak point on an otherwise well built device. Only time will tell if it holds up to extensive daily use. The phone clamp was also unable to hold the iPhone 11 Pro in place without falling over when you set the arm to it’s fully extended position.

Other than those two small issues, I’m really happy with how it’s designed and manufactured. All of the pieces fit together well without any sharp edges or defects.

The GameSir G4 Pro has a 800 mAh battery that recharges using the included USB-C cable. It takes around 2.5 / 3 hours to fully charge. And from that full charge you’ll get about 30 hours of play time.

Those 30 hours of playtime are achieved using two power saving modes. The first one automatically puts the controller into sleep mode when it notices you haven’t used it within 10 minutes.

The G4 Pro controller will also go into sleep mode within 2 minutes of receiving no input from a game. So, if you start the game and turn on the controller but it doesn’t connect it’ll go to sleep.

Wired or Wireless

On the back of the controller is a USB-C port which you can use to charge the 800mAh lithium battery. The port is also used to play wired, but the included charging cable isn’t that long which is slightly disappointing. So, you’ll either need to get a third party USB-C cable such as the Syncwire USB-C cable or play wirelessly using the included wireless USB dongle.

Gamesir G4 Pro Review: You can fit an Iphone 11 Pro.

How Does It Perform?

The main concern with a controller marked as ‘pro’ is input lag. Those milliseconds in competitive games where a slight edge can turn the tide in the heat of battle.

Thankfully, input lag is completely non-existent- well none that I noticed anyway. You press a button and the action is instantly performed. For example when playing Call Of Duty Warzone, you need to be really quick on the buttons and this lack of input lag helps with that.

I’m a little concerned about the D-pad though. It feels a bit spongy and when trying to play a game where precision is key, such as Call Of Duty it takes a while to get used to trying to point your weapon onto the target.

Now, for me that’s not too much of a problem, but professional gamers are used to a particular way of playing; they expect a controller to be precise right out of the box. They don’t want to tweak their playing style to suit the controller.

Analog Stick Dead Zones

There is genuinely no deadzone what so ever and to some people they’ll think that’s fantastic! But for me it’s not and I’ll explain why. Not having a dead zone means that when you play a FPS your character and/or camera will move a hell of a lot with the tiniest of analog stick input.

There’s a reason big name controllers have deadzones pre-configured and it’s exactly to reduce this issue. What would have been better is if they kept a really small dead zone, but allowed you to customize it to suit which ever game you are playing.

If you’re not sure what dead zones are check this analog stick drift article where I explain it.

How Much & Where To Buy?

You can buy the G4 Pro from Amazon, it’ll cost you around $49.99 / £39.99 which is most definitely a bargain. Hit the affiliate link here to go to Amazon and find out more.

Unboxing

Here’s an unboxing video to accompany our Gamesir G4 Pro Review. You can see how great the packaging looks and how well designed the overall unboxing experience is.

Gamesir G4 Pro Review Summary & Verdict

Score: 7.5 / 10

It’s so far ahead of other third-party controllers in terms of comfort but a couple of tiny build issues and the lack of dead zone configuration left me feeling a little deflated.

The beautiful design and the cross-platform compatibility make it worth purchasing, so by no means is it a poor controller, in fact it’s great but I’m not sure if it’s worth the ‘pro’ tagline.