Victrix Pro KO Leverless Fight Stick review: a must-have controller for pros

Leverless combat sticks have gained plenty of traction over the previous few years, and veteran esports opponents with many years of arcade stick expertise have been switching over to all-button controllers. The Victrix Professional KO Leverless Battle Stick has been designed with high-level opponents like this in thoughts, making a controller that may be personalized and fine-tuned inside a matter of minutes.

Victrix (owned by Turtle Seaside) is thought for its premium combat sticks that unsurprisingly include costly worth tags. Nevertheless, the leverless market just isn’t the identical because it was solely a few years in the past. These days, gamers have extra choices than ever earlier than in the case of selecting the very best PC controller, which makes it more durable to face out from the gang. Priced at $249.99 / £229.99, the Professional KO gives you with choices by no means earlier than seen on a leverless controller, however will you truly profit from these additions?

Specs

Options

When in comparison with cheaper leverless controllers from the likes of Sehawei and Mayflash, the Professional KO’s function set seems to be largely the identical. Functionally talking, there isn’t a lot to separate the Professional KO from its opponents: RGB lighting, a number of SODC (Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Instructions) choices, and high-quality switches for the buttons are pretty commonplace. It’s the finer particulars of the Professional KO that focus the machine in the direction of aggressive gamers that make this leverless controller shine.

Low cost leverless controllers normally solely assist PC and a handful of earlier technology consoles, whereas the Professional KO is available in two varieties relying in your console of selection. Whereas this gained’t trigger any points when you solely intend to play at residence, having assist for the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Collection X|S is crucial in the case of aggressive play. Identical to the Razer Kitsune, which additionally encompasses a comparable worth, albeit with out the extra buttons, leverless controllers with assist for present technology consoles at all times come at a premium.

The standout function of the Professional KO is its customizability, making it attainable so as to add 4 extra buttons to the combat stick. You can too reassign any button to any enter, together with shortcut instructions inside your favourite combating video games. All the things you might want to customise your controller has been constructed immediately into the machine, a function we’ve seen in arcade sticks however by no means in a tool as slim because the Professional KO. Included throughout the combat stick is a change puller device, much like what you may obtain with a gaming keyboard, in addition to 4 buttons, full with Cherry MX Velocity Silver RGB switches.

With video games resembling Avenue Fighter 6 that includes a number of mechanics tied up in button mixtures, some gamers choose assigning devoted buttons to every command. This merely wasn’t attainable utilizing conventional combat stick layouts, as each button has already been assigned. Some skilled gamers have gone so far as to mod their combat sticks, however this includes drilling into your controller and changing the PCB to assist extra buttons. The Professional KO unlocks this potential for aspiring skilled gamers, permitting you to resolve whether or not you want additional buttons.

The Professional KO additionally comes with a 3m braided USB-C cable, and also you gained’t have to fret about random drop-outs out of your cable disconnecting because it’s securely hooked up utilizing a locking mechanism. Following the aggressive design philosophy, there’s additionally a event lock change that disables the combat stick’s smaller buttons, resembling Begin and Choose. This ensures you’ll by no means lose a spherical or match primarily based on an unintended button press.

Design

The Professional KO’s format deviates from the norm with its placement of the 4 additional buttons, inserting three across the soar button, and the final positioned in the direction of the left of the motion keys. Victrix says legendary combating recreation champion Yusuke Momochi helped optimize the location of those buttons, and it’s helpful to have them out there when you have gaming duties you possibly can assign to them.

I attempted out the most typical format skilled Avenue Fighter 6 gamers use, getting access to a shortcut for Drive Parry and Drive Affect. It’s clear from the get-go that these shortcuts are helpful within the warmth of battle, they usually’re positioned in spots the place you gained’t have any issues by chance hitting them.

In the meantime, the Professional KO’s detachable high plate is comprised of aluminum, paying homage to the sensation of a MacBook Professional. Much like a MacBook Professional, the Professional KO is pretty boring to have a look at, with the one markings on the plate being the Victrix brand and button labels. The Professional KO’s premium construct high quality is what separates it from the competitors, contemplating a lot of the cheaper controllers on the market go for plastic somewhat than metallic.

As a premium model throughout the gaming house, Victrix is thought for its understated designs on its combat sticks. In a considerably unusual transfer, the buttons on the Professional KO additionally function RGB lighting if you would like that typical gamer aesthetic. Whereas this may look good with sure colour schemes, it’s all the way down to the consumer to not go for something tasteless just like the horrible gentle present mode preset. Provided that your complete combat stick is customizable, although, there’s an opportunity these button labels gained’t be related to you once you begin transferring issues round. The RGB gentle rings surrounding every button can be individually personalized utilizing the Victrix Management Hub software program, extra on that later.

Now that I’ve seen the Professional KO’s RGB lighting, I now perceive why Razer determined to maintain it restricted to a single strip of sunshine alongside the sides of the Kitsune. The inventory model of the Razer Kitsune appears to be like much like the Professional KO, although I choose the classier Kitsune on this respect. The Professional KO’s lighting may be personalized with random colours and brightness settings to make it look foolish, whereas you’ll be hard-pressed to make the Kitsune look something however fashionable.

Efficiency

Swapping out buttons on the Professional KO is an extremely easy course of. The combat stick has 4 safety clips behind the machine, and when you set these to the unlock place, the highest cowl may be pulled away to disclose the spare elements. Utilizing the change puller, it takes lower than a minute to take away every button from the combat stick.

The Professional KO options scorching swappable switches, versus Sanwa buttons that many arcade sticks are identified to make use of. Sanwa elements was once the gold commonplace for arcade sticks, however keyboard switches have advanced in leaps and bounds over the previous decade, creating a spread of choices to fit your actual choice. One other benefit of utilizing keyboard switches is that it’s cheaper to exchange a button if it occurs to interrupt, with most switches costing underneath a greenback. Even when you don’t see your self as the kind of individual to experiment with new switches, this can be a large deal in the case of the machine’s repairability, as this course of may be carried out by anybody.

I discovered the Cherry MX Velocity Silver switches included with the Professional KO to be nice for combating video games. They strike the appropriate steadiness of being each satisfying to hit and delicate sufficient that you simply gained’t blame the controller for not responding to your instructions. I changed the Cherry switches with Gazzew U4T Thocky tactile switches to see how they fared compared, and this resulted in a significantly squishier expertise. It doesn’t matter what change you employ, the buttons on the Professional KO get fairly noisy when hammering in combos, so that you’ll have to take that under consideration when you’re round any gentle sleepers.

Software program

The Victrix Management Hub software program permits you to fine-tune the Professional KO to your liking. You’re in a position to replace the machine’s firmware, run diagnostics to make sure all of your buttons are working appropriately, and configure the combat stick. The software program allows you to reassign any button to any command to create the controller scheme format you’ve at all times needed. This might let you create setups that go towards aggressive rule units, so we advocate checking to see what’s tournament-legal beforehand.

For instance, Capcom’s rule set for Avenue Fighter 6 states you can not have two inputs assigned as the identical assault command. Whilst you’re prohibited from setting this up in-game, you possibly can force-customize the Professional KO to bypass these guidelines. Extra importantly, you might have the choice to vary the Professional KO’s SODC mode, making certain you might have a combat stick that may play each fashionable and traditional combating video games with none points.

As for the lighting, you possibly can tweak every button to have its personal colour, velocity, and brightness worth. You can too change between 4 lighting profiles, a useful function when hopping between combating video games as you’re in a position to make use of the lighting zones to assist map your buttons. Lastly, the software program allows you to regulate your controller’s audio settings to mute your headset’s microphone, in addition to regulate the sport and chat audio steadiness.

Victrix has clearly given plenty of thought to how folks will use the Professional KO, and that turns into much more obvious once you be taught that almost all of its options may be accessed with out ever putting in the software program. The one factor you possibly can’t do with out the software program is change the lighting on the combat stick, however nearly all the things else may be completed utilizing audio, lighting, and performance buttons. That is improbable for skilled gamers, as you’re in a position to preserve the Professional KO’s full function set without having a pc.

Value

The Professional KO worth is $249.99 / £249.99, inserting it on the larger finish of leverless controllers. There’s an evening and day distinction in construct high quality and performance between the Professional KO and its opponents from the likes of Sehawei and Mayflash, although, so it’s not a shock to see why there’s such a large worth disparity. Along with the assist for present technology consoles, the Professional KO’s user-friendliness makes it straightforward to customise with out having to seek for tutorials made by the combating recreation group.

Alternate options

Razer Kitsune

In a conflict of the heavyweight leverless combat sticks, the Razer Kitsune stands reverse the Professional KO as its predominant competitor. The Kitsune doesn’t formally assist changing the hot-swappable switches just like the Professional KO, nor does it provide any customization choices in the case of remapping buttons. They’re each nice choices when you’re trying to compete towards the very best gamers round, simply needless to say the Kitsune isn’t as versatile because the Professional KO.

Learn our Razer Kitsune evaluation right here.

Verdict

The Victrix Professional KO Leverless Battle Stick brings collectively the very best components of top-tier arcade sticks and all-button controllers, making it straightforward for newbies to dabble into areas that had been beforehand locked off to extraordinary folks. The method of including buttons to the Professional KO is lifeless easy, and the truth that all of the elements are saved throughout the controller itself, regardless of its smooth construct, is exceptional.

There are leverless controllers with comparable options to the Professional KO at half the worth. Nevertheless, you gained’t discover the identical degree of thoughtfulness in the case of catering to aggressive gamers. From the light-weight and slim design that makes it straightforward to hold, to the built-in instruments in case you might want to swap out a damaged change, Victrix has considered all the things knowledgeable participant wants on the highway.

Should you’re on the lookout for the very best of the very best proper now, the one off-putting issue of the Professional KO is the worth. That mentioned, you gained’t discover a leverless controller that helps present technology consoles out of the field with out paying a hefty charge. The Razer Kitsune is the Professional KO’s solely rival at this worth level, so the choice between the 2 leverless controllers comes all the way down to how a lot you’ll profit from the additional buttons. For our cash, we’d somewhat have the additional options supplied by the Professional KO, even when which means paying barely extra for the privilege.