Hyperkin Duke Xbox One Controller Review

One big boi.

Xbox controllers have long held a reputation of being some of the best in terms of comfort and feel. The sleek yet slightly chunky shape feels great in the hands while the button and stick layout feels strangely natural. Nowadays you can get them in any combination of color you'd like, or a ludicrously expensive model you might not actually need, yet things weren't always this way. Back in 2001 when Microsoft was just dipping their toes into the console game, they released a controller so reviled that they replaced it less than a year after it released, and now it's back. This is the Duke, everybody's favorite terrible game controller.

Size compared to it's subsequent spawn. The Duke lives up to it's name.

If you look at old photos of the original Duke sitting next to other gamepads from that time period, especially the DualShock 2, it's pretty easy to see why it was met with so much scorn upon the Xbox's release. Unless you had hands that could palm a basketball, the Duke was simply uncomfortable as hell for people with below average sized hands, especially kids. Microsoft quickly replaced it with the smaller Japanese exclusive "S" controller that formed the basis for all later Xbox controllers. Flash forward to 2018 and early-2000s nostalgia is in full swing; people are suddenly looking at the Duke with genuine fondness. So is this new version any better?

As someone who grew up on PlayStation and 360, the Duke's size is no joke. This thing is stupid massive and the moment you pick it up, all the complaints about it's size suddenly feel validated. After messing around with it for a while, the Duke really doesn't feel that bad. I have relatively average sized hands and to be honest, the large grips feel pretty dang good and my thumbs fall right where the buttons and left stick go. The D-pad and right stick do feel a little too far apart however and it's easy to see that they addressed this fault on the later generation controllers. Kind of surprising really, though if you have smaller hands it's still  probably going to feel all kinds of wrong.

The old memory card slots are long gone.

There are some major changes to the Duke's design however. Obviously the vestigial memory card slots are gone but more importantly are the addition of two bumper buttons to the top of the controller. These basically compliment the old black and white buttons and they're mapped the same but these make a huge difference in the Duke's usability for modern games. They are a little bit of stretch to reach and don't feel quite as nice as the bumpers on the regular Xbox One controller but I'd much rather have them than not. Honestly couldn't imagine throwing a grenade without access to the right stick.

The Duke now sports a headphone jack so you can yell at your teammates in Halo 2 Anniversary.

The Duke now also sports a detachable microUSB cable instead of a fixed cable. This is honestly kind of a mixed blessing to me since I've had controllers develop bad ports from having microUSB cables yanked out of them. Having a detachable cable is also a little weird since the Duke isn't wireless, which is pretty odd because, just look how big the damn thing is. I honestly can't blame Hyperkin for not having this feature since Microsoft has some sort of proprietary license on their wireless technology but it is a little funny that Microsoft didn't let it slide for a remake of their own product. Whatever, I usually forget to unplug my wireless controllers anyways so I didn't find this to be a huge problem.

Powered up.

The improvements go beyond these additions to including a 3.5mm headphone jack for chat and turning the old center jewel into a big dashboard button. Hyperkin decided to have a little fun with this however and shoved an OLED screen into the thing that plays the original Xbox boot screen when you press it. It doesn't serve much of purpose other than to tickle your nostalgia and to be honest, it would be pretty cool to see it do more especially for PC users. Maybe some knucklehead can figure out how to run Doom on it.

In actual use though, the Duke doesn't feel some novelty gag item; it feels like a damn good controller. If you don't mind the size of the thing, you'll find that the Duke feels rock solid. The triggers are smooth, the sticks feel great, and the face buttons have a nice audible click when you press them. I played several hours of Rainbow Six Siege, Battlefield 1, and Call of Duty Infinite Warfare with the Duke and found it works fantastically. The size, coupled with how spread out some of the inputs are and the skewed button layout will take some getting used to but the Duke feels like a legitimate controller and it honestly took me by surprise.

The Duke is a piece of Xbox history and a pretty interesting peripheral at that. While I've never used the original, I can say that Hyperkin did a very good job with this remake as the Duke feels great to use and has many meaningful improvements to make it more pleasant to use. I honestly think that if by some freak chance you find the regular Xbox One controller too small, the Duke can be a solution to that problem. That being said, if you didn't like the original, there's a good chance you won't like the remake either. It's also quite expensive at $70 for a slightly unconventional controller that doesn't even feature wireless. Regardless, the Duke is fun way to revisit one of the darker times in Xbox's history and if you're like me, there's a chance you might even like the thing.

Summary

• It's big.
• Rock solid build quality, and the inputs feel great.
• The OLED screen in the dashboard button is silly but fun.
• Bumpers are a great addition, though they feel a little tacked on.
• Not wireless, though this is mainly Microsoft's fault.
• If you hated the ergonomics of the original, you'll hate this.
• It's $70 which is a little steep.
• Did I mention it's big?