Razer Wolverine V3 Pro Review – 1000Hz, Hall Effect Joysticks, Wireless

I reviewed Razer’s Wolverine V2 Chroma controller only a little over a month ago, and while I’m in no way vain enough to believe Razer made all the changes I asked for in that video to this, the Wolverine V3 Pro, because of me, they sure did make all the changes I asked for! This controller is nearly perfect – so let me show you around it so you can see what’s new, we’ll even put the new 1000 hertz polling rate mode to the test with my Open Source Latency Testing Tool (the new CS model no less!) and you can see if this bad boy is worth the cash. Let’s get into it!

Razer has made quite a few changes to the new V3 controller line, both physically and internally. One of my biggest gripes with the V2 controller was the placement and feel of the extra paddle buttons on the back of the controller. They were pretty centrally mounted, which meant even with my larger hands it was a bit of a struggle to reach them, and even when you did, they didn’t feel great. In my review, I asked Razer to move those buttons to the grips – much like the Xbox Elite Controller or even the Steam Controller’s rear paddles – and for this new V3 line, they have! They are right where you’d want them. They’re easy to press, the actual paddle itself feels nicer too, and even more impressively these are actually mouse buttons giving a satisfying and tactile click to them – have a listen.

That’s not the only thing that now clicks! Up on the triggers, Razer has had sliding trigger locks for a while now which essentially just limit the trigger’s range of motion so for FPS style games you can still shoot and aim, but it’s more of a hair-trigger. You don’t need to press the trigger the whole way down, or let go the whole way, just to have it register an action. It’s a nice feature for sure, but for the V3 Razer has made it better. Now when you slide the lock in place, the trigger becomes more of a bumper – they call them Pro HyperTriggers – basically it’s a mouse switch that slides into the trigger body to both block its motion, and give you an instant, tactile feel to your aim and trigger inputs. This is really pretty cool and frankly feels great.

While we’re up at the top, I should mention the extra two buttons Razer sticks up here. There are for claw grip players who hold the controller a little further up than you might expect, but they now feel the same as the bumpers – on the V2 there was a bit of a difference in sound and feel, whereas the V3 is much more similar. I don’t think that’s necessarily a good or bad thing, it’s just a change and something I thought I’d mention. They do feel good, a nice tactile click. The ABXY buttons are also Razer’s “Mecha-Tactile” buttons – basically a mix of rubber membrane pushing a mechanical switch. They feel pretty good, again a nice balance between feel and a satisfying tactile click, with a nice and high actuation point so you can still be lightning fast on the buttons.

Another one of the key requests I had in the V2 review was the joysticks – specifically the lack of hall effect joysticks being included. Well guess what? This bad boy is hall effect! I know, it’s like Christmas came early! For those that don’t know, all non-magnetic joysticks end up suffering from stick-drift and eventual failure, because the joysticks are made up of two potentiometers – basically brushes wiping over a circuit board. Those brushes wear out, as does the circuit board, and when they’ve worn out enough the controller stops knowing for sure where you’re holding it. Hall effect, and the more niche but likely better TMR, joysticks don’t suffer from drift or failure because they basically just have magnets that wave over a sensor. There is no contact, and so nothing to wear out, so no drift. This is great news, and these actually feel a touch better than the V2’s sticks too. The only catch is that these are hall effect and not TMR, which is generally a little more accurate, and more importantly for this battery-powered controller, draws less current than hall effect sensors do. This isn’t a massive deal, but I thought it was worth noting. 

Oh, and the whole replaceable joystick tops are still here too. They are a different style to the V2, but the inclusion of a taller stem concave tip and a convex tip is the same. These just pull off and clip back in, rather than the magnetic system the V2 used. I personally think I like the feel of the V2 tips ever so slightly better, mostly due to the addition of the directional strips that are now missing on the V3, but it’s really pretty minor so it’s no big deal. Another thing that the V2 did better was actually the grips. While the V3 Pro does have the nice textured rubber on the back, the front half of the grips are plain plastic, rather than the continued rubber on the V2. That makes the V2 feel just a bit nicer in the hand, which is a shame especially considering this is meant to be the “Pro” version. 

Of course, being a wireless controller you get Razer’s HyperSpeed wireless dongle meaning you can use this with both PC and Xbox, although the new feature is a little more rare. This thing has a wired-only PC tournament mode that lets it run at a full 1000 hertz polling rate. I was shocked to find out that the Xbox limits it’s controller inputs to 250 hertz, which is just a quarter of the average PC peripheral, and a fraction of what PC components now offer – namely Razer’s Viper 8KHz mouse which as the name suggests has an 8,000 hertz polling rate. The biggest reason for why 250 hertz isn’t great is the latency. At 250 hertz there is 4 milliseconds between each packet, and since you’re likely to miss the most recent packet, you end up with a minimum of 8 milliseconds of latency. At 1000 hertz each packet takes 1 millisecond, so a real world rate of 2 milliseconds – and of course at 8,000 hertz it’s more like 0.25 milliseconds. That can be a significant disadvantage, so to see this has a 1000 hertz mode, well it peaked my interest. 

Luckily, I just added support for both the newest version of my open source latency testing tool, OSLTT CS, and controller testing, to my latency testing software – if you want to sign up for one of these new latency tools by the way, I’m planning on launching these very soon, so head to OSRTT.com and drop your email in the box at the bottom of the page and you’ll get an email when they are available! Anyway, I tested basically every Xbox style controller I have in the house, and here’s how it plays out. The third party wireless xbox 360 style controllers from Acer and MSI are pretty slow, with the Acer one taking nearly 40 milliseconds to register an input on average. That is just not acceptable. MSI is a little better at 30 milliseconds, but that’s still naff, then there’s this V3 Pro in its wireless mode. That took just 20 milliseconds, which is much better, although still far from perfect, and pretty far from the best so far too. My original wired Xbox 360 controller came in next at 16.6 milliseconds – faster than the V3 Pro wireless – although if you plug the V3 Pro in using the USB C port on the top you’ll get even better performance at 13.8 milliseconds. The V2 Chroma has that beat though at 12.3 milliseconds, which actually ties with the V3 Pro in its 1000 hertz PC tournament mode, also at 12.3 milliseconds on average. That’s a little disappointing – I was hoping for single-digit results from the V3 Pro at 1000 hertz. Now it is worth noting that I’m testing all of this before this controller officially launches, with, at least according to the Razer Controller app, firmware version 0.0.0.0, so there is a not insignificant chance this is just bugged and better performance is just a firmware update away, but as it stands on launch day, this is the performance you’ll get. It’s the best I’ve tested, by a fraction of a millisecond. 

Of course, actually playing games on it is a different story. This is an excellent experience. It fits my hands perfectly. The rear button placements help make it a really enjoyable experience to use, and the sensitivity clutch feature – basically limiting the joystick’s output range so you can be more precise – is really handy especially for racing games. The new hall effect joysticks feel a little weightier, exactly what I wanted compared to the V2, and make for a fantastic time gaming with it. I’m definitely not well enough versed with a controller to feel the difference between 12 and 20 milliseconds of latency, but if you do game on console, I think you’ll enjoy this thing.

Oh, before I forget, the Razer Controller app – a hateful bit of UWP programming – lets you remap the six extra buttons to anything controller related, or to the sensitivity clutch, although there still isn’t macro support as these are meant to be pro/tournament controllers. The clutch can be adjusted to a number of levels, as can the joystick deadzones, from ultra-sensitive to dead as a dodo, you can even change the ‘circularity mode’, which basically lets you go from it reporting a square pattern to a circle. This is pretty cool and not something I’ve seen before. Oh and you can hit “prevent double deadzones” to compensate for software deadzones in games. Again, pretty cool. When it’s plugged in via USB you get an extra menu option for “Wired Controller Settings” that basically lets you enable the 1000 hertz mode, which interestingly means you can’t use the Razer Controller app with it. That’s a little strange!

The biggest catch by far with the Wolverine V3 Pro is the price tag. This is set at £200, $200 or 230 Euros at launch. That’s an awful lot of money, especially considering an official Xbox Elite Controller Series 2 is only £150. Luckily there is a V3 Tournament Edition coming out too which is wired only but is otherwise the same – the same hall effect joysticks, the same HyperTriggers, same back paddles, it’s just wired only, and that comes in at a much much more reasonable £100, $100 or 120 Euros. That’s the one I’d get for sure – although the V2 Chroma being more like £80 to £90 might be tempting, even if the sticks will eventually drift while these V3 ones won’t. I do really like the Wolverine V3 Pro – Razer have made a lot of steps in the right direction here, but it isn’t quite perfect. The full rubber covers would be great, TMR sticks would be nice, lower latency would be great, and christ a lower price tag might do it too.