Razer Onza - Tournament Edition review [PC/ Xbox 360]

[jimtendo]

The long wait is finally over.
First glimpses of this controller were as far back as January 2010 and in August that year, being infamously banned from MLG tournaments before it's been released. Though I think they've backed down on that now.
Pre-orders for the pad (along with the standard edition) started this year commencing January 17th. Eventually they gave a date for when orders would be expected to ship, which was after February 28th... Now roll on March 29th I finally have it in my possession. Has it been worth the wait?
Well... kind of.

First of all, the details for those who aren't aware of this pad, here are the main features:

• Adjustable tension on both analog sticks.
• Two multi function buttons which are placed above the Right and Left Bumper buttons respectively.
• Backlit Hyper responsive face buttons.
• Tweaked digital pad and triggers.
• Rubberised grip.

I'll start with the good:

The analog sticks are quite good as they're raised a little higher than the default 360 pad and retains the concave indents. For what it's worth I prefer it because it allows a little more room for precision. Also the movement is quite smooth, but we shall see a few weeks down the line once it's been used a fair bit as to whether it retains the smoothness. Also I shall see whether it's cured the infamous analog drift (to the left and always on the left stick) that curses all of my official Microsoft wireless pads.

I've also been playing about with the tension adjusters and on the whole it's nice to have, as you can loosen (or tighten) the left or right sticks to your liking. I've settled on the default resistance as that's a good level. One thing must be mentioned is that clicking L3/ R3 has a bit more resistance than the default 360 pad.

With the face buttons, they've been made slimmer in profile, and also been given a much better feel to them when pressing them down. It's more in line with the resistance of clicking with a mouse. This for me is a god send, as now I can effortlessly thumb glide over buttons without having to press them firmly.

But the main draw has to be the remappable shoulder buttons. Every button on the controller can be mapped for these. Even the back/ start buttons. It takes a little while to get used to, as I'm still in the habit of hitting them instead of the traditional LB/ RB as the remappable buttons are the 'top' bumpers. To remap, it's as easy as holding the corresponding button (for whicever side) on the underside of the pad and then pressing the button you want to duplicate. The panel wil light up which button the LMB/ RMB is using. Also if you forget which button they're mapped to, holding either of the 'remap left/ right' buttons will tell you on the panel which one it's assigned to.

Now for all you 'Bumper Jumper' users who went back to the default control scheme and didn't wan't to 'claw' to be able to use the armour skills (without taking your right thumb off the stick) in Halo Reach, it's a luxury now having both the jump and armour abilities occupying both left bumpers. It does take a little practice as I spent most of the evening trying to get used to them (as I still kept on hitting the wrong bumper) It's definitely more comfortable using the rocket pack and aiming now.

Features I'm indifferent about:

The triggers have been tweaked by giving them slight prongs. It's nothing game breaking or anything, but just something to get used to. One other thing to get used to is the Back/ Start buttons are now placed between the digital pad and right analog stick.

Now the bad:

The digital pad.
As far as serving a purpose of selecting menus/ calling air strikes/ kill streaks/ turning on different heads up display modes, it's great. Mainly because the directions are segmented and really there should be no problem of accidently hitting a diagonal and selecting the wrong option in the heat of a firefight, which the Microsoft digital pad often does. And I presume the designers thought should be the main function of it.
However, if you want to play fighters or basically any game then forget it. It's pretty much worthless as you can't fluidly throw shoryukens/ sonic booms/ hadoukens, or even transition smoothly from straight directions to diagonals.

The headphones port.
For all those users who use the default 360 headset, you're out of luck, as the headphone connector only has the 3.5 mm jack. So you either have to buy the wireless headset, or a pair of Astro's/ Trittons/ Turtle Beach varieties.

Overall:

In the end, I would recommend the Razer Onza as it provides a decent alternative to the official pad. The multi function buttons will undoubtably win over those who are really into FPS' as the majority of features have been geared to this audience.
As for an overall all around pad, you're probably best suited to stick to the newer official pad with transforming digital pad. I've still yet to buy this yet as I was really waiting for my Onza.

[jimtendo]

Just a little update on this.

I've had to return this particular because the left analog stick was playing up somewhat. I started to notice it a day or so after getting it. The main problem stemmed from (what I think) is that somehow the spring underneath caught on the underside/ inside of the stick, so it sounded like it was catching on something and started to develop a clicking sound when moving the direction towards the down direction.

I didn't take too much notice of it at first, but during the course of a few days it deteriorated and started to make clicking sounds when motioning the up directionas well. Along with that, the left stick would sporadically tighten up in tension and then loosen. To solve this I had to rotate the stick a few times to get it back to normal. But before long it would come back again.

Also I tried to fully twist the tension to tight, then to loose to see if that would reset the springs it but to no avail. Eventually I emailed tech support and they were kind enough to send me a returns number. Although ideally i wanted a replacement, but they couldn't do that oddly, which meant I had to patiently wait for Razer to update their online store so I could order another one. And at the time, they were still on backorder.

Luckily about a week or so ago they started to appear in stock again, so I quickly bought another before they all sold out, which they duly did. I received my second one last Thursday, and (touch wood) everything is fine at the moment. It's just the fact that I love the smoothness of the analog sticks, face buttons and multifunction buttons that was a winner.

However I must mention something about the varying quality issues of the Onza. With this second pad, it looked like it came straight from the the production line, as there was still small remnants of dust residue on the surface of the pad, a few small nicks to the handle prongs, and the Xbox guide icon being a bit wonky. But nevertheless, it works.

I've read quick a few impressions from users mentioning the QA issues such as it being:

• dead on arrival.
• one or more face buttons malfunctioning (a single press will result in double or multiple presses) or not working at all.
• the aformentioned random tightening of tension from either stick.
• not powering on.

My advice would be to either wait a little, so hopefully the QA issues would be resolved later down the line.
But if you are in a pinch and want one soon, don't go to ebay as you really want an option to return it to either Razers online store, or a brick and mortar store as it's a roll of the dice as to whether you get a fully working pad or not.

Though I've noticed within the past week or so, the Razer store seems to be getting regular shipments of both:
Standard Edition
Tournament Edition
GAME/ play.com seem to be listing these as pre-orders now.

Overall verdict after a few weeks of use is still positive. Despite the quality issues which account for half of the downsides. The other half is that the Onza is very much a one trick pony in a sense that as an all round multipurpose pad it's hard to recommend as it's very much geared to the FPS side of things. You could possibly use it adequetly for racers as well. But for sports or action games, I still prefer the original Xbox 360 controller.

[spontaneoustom]

I've had my Onza for about 1 month now and after initial positive impressions, there are definately chronic quality issues:

1. Thumbsticks untightening through play
2. Thumbsticks' 'stick part' and containing area wearing down due to use
3. Triggers becoming barely responsive (seems to be cleared up by carefully dusting or cleaning behind the trigger)
4. After a steady month of Bad Company 2 online, I still accidentally hit the re-mappable shoulder buttons

Overall, it definately worth getting for first person perspective type games, especially shooters... but it is way overpriced. Hopefully when I wear this one into dust, a better quality successor will be available.

[jimtendo]

I've been meaning to update this as there's definitely some quality control issues with the Onza standard/ TE editions.

So far I've gone through 4 (count em') Onza's
3 x Tournament Editions
1 x Standard

All of the have slowturn in one form or another. I purchased them all through the official website at different times.

• The first one had a left stick issue where the tension would sporadically tighten and loosen. Plus the right analog stick had slowturn to the right.
  
• The second one was fine, albeit, have slowturn diagonal down-left. It was easily replicated by also moving the direction up and then down-left.
  
• The 3rd one (standard edition) had the same slowturn as #2 in the same direction.
  
• The 4th one also has the diagonal up-left slowturn as well.
  
• The X & Y axis for controllers 2/3/4 behaved properly. It just had slowturning diagonal movement.

There's the issue with slowturn which is really annoying, which is something they championed that the Onza will never have. But reading on various websites, that's the most common fault associated with it. Along with various other issues such as being dead on arrival/ face buttons bot working/ analog sticks not functioning as they should.

Since I couldn't send these back to Razer (gone past a month since I purchased them) so I decided to crack one open and fiddle about with it to cure the slow-turn. I've sanded both the left & right holes about 1mm extra and et voila, it seems to have done the trick.

Bear in mind I've never opened a pad before, I messed up one of the pads as I yanked the RB/RMFB circuit board a little too hard when trying to disassemble it, and the RB doesn't work.

So I decided to crack open the second Onza TE (which also had slowturn) and trying not to break this one. I used the newly sanded down joypad faceplate, and again, no slowturn for that one so far in my 10-15 minutes of testing the various stick rotations. So if anyone from Razer is viewing this thread, make sure the circumference is a little larger for sticks. Otherwise a load of people will be doing some home improvement to make sure their pad doesn't slowturn.

Now I've got the standard sticks (which I prefer) in the TE pad casing. The regular sticks don't have this weird resistance to them when you push the stick fully. It's hard to explain, but with the TE sticks when you push them at max distance they seem to hit this 'cushion' at the edges. Even when messing about with the adjustable tensions it doesn't really change things. The standard sticks doesn't do this.

There's the MLG Madcatz pad coming out later this year. Supposedly sometime in August they're going to showcase the design/ features of it, which apparently retains the same form factor in terms of pad shape across both console platforms. As long as it's nothing like the MW2 pad they put out.

[Charlie]

How much are these controllers?

[Daragon]

How much are these controllers?

Between ?40 and ?60 quid in most places.

Too much money is too much!

[Charlie]

Given their supposed quality issues, that is too much.