2000Hz WIRELESS Xbox Controller – MOJHON RAINBOW 3 Review

This thing has TWO really unique features that I haven’t seen in other controllers – this is the MOJHON RAINBOW 3, a potentially game-changing controller that isn’t even a bank-breaking purchase. This is one to pay attention to, because even if you don’t buy this exact controller, I suspect you’re going to be seeing some of these unique features in other controllers really soon. So, let’s take a look at this thing and see what exactly is so special. 

On the face of it, this looks like most Xbox One class controllers – minus the RGB lighting of course. There are a couple extra buttons on the front – we’ll come back to those in a second – but otherwise it’s fairly stock. The RGB lighting is pretty cool, with a cloudy faceplate allowing for the five or so RGB LEDs to really shine through and give a unique and pretty looking pattern. Personally I think RGB lighting on controllers is a little pointless – it’s under your hands, and even if it isn’t, it’s distracting – but it’s there if you want it. As for those extra buttons, the four on the sort of chin-bar are turbo, remap, macro and configs, plus the little triangle next to the right stick is FN. I’m not entirely sure I understand what the turbo mode does, from what I can gather from the manual it means it’ll press whatever button you set either 5, 10 or 20 times per second. This sure feels like cheating to me, but what do I know. I do know that macros are considered cheating in comp games, but this is built right into the controller! Oh, and the configs are the different profiles that you can cycle through for various games. The FN button is actually really cool. Double tapping it turns the LEDs off, and holding it and using the D Pad up and down controls your system’s volume. FN and right toggles the vibration motors, and FN and L3 or R3 toggles that joystick’s deadzone.

That isn’t all the extra buttons though. Looking on the back you’ll find two buttons tucked right in the crease where the grips meet the main body. They are placed pretty well and easy enough to hit, right where your middle fingers rest, but they aren’t so easy that you’ll hit them by mistake. There are actually two more buttons, up top, for claw grip players. All the buttons – stock ones included – all use microswitches, so are super clicky. The ABXY buttons have a rubber membrane in between, which actually leads to a bit of a weird feeling where the sound and click feel great, but the actual button itself doesn’t. It’s mushy, wobbly, and just a bit anaemic to me. The D Pad is much more tactile. Of course the bumpers are also microswitches, although the slide-in trigger locks in the hall effect triggers are also microswitches. Those both limit the travel, and give you a tactile click for FPS games – although there is still a surprising amount of travel from the locked trigger. It isn’t the end of the world, but doesn’t feel quite as nice as some of the other trigger locks I’ve used. 

As for the sticks… Well that’s where our first unique feature comes in. Most sticks these days are hall effect, or maybe TMR. Either way, they use magnets and sensors to never drift and offer better accuracy and control. These? These are capacitive. These are MOJHON’s own capacitive joysticks, and in theory these are even better than HE or TMR. Much like Ducky’s capacitive switch keyboard, this basically uses a bit of metal and a coil to work out where you’ve moved the stick to, and because there’s no contact, nor magnet to lose magnetism, these should be more reliable, potentially more efficient, and just as drift-free. While this doesn’t matter even slightly, I want to nit-pick their marketing page. They claim this is a 16 bit stick, but then claim 8000 level resolution. 8000 levels would be 13 bits. Even if it was 16 bits total, 65536 divided by the 4 directions is still 16384, or twice of what they are claiming. It doesn’t matter at all, it’s just funny to me. As for their actual feel, that’s fine enough, although there’s something just a tiny bit off about them. I can’t quite work out what doesn’t feel right, whether it’s a the replaceable tips (which yes you get a spare set, plus a taller set, in the box, and a flat D Pad cover), or the stick itself. Still, it’s fine. It does a good job, it feels nice enough in games. I can’t complain, and the replaceable tips are great. You can actually buy replacement tips too which is great. 

The actual feel of the controller is decent too. The gloss plastic on the front feels a little naff to me, but the textured overmolded rubber on the grips is what you actually feel and that’s great. It feels solid, and the vibration motors also feel pretty good too. They aren’t groundbreaking or anything, they are simply: good. Of course, if you want to tweak the vibration feel – or anything on the controller as it turns out – you’ll want to use their desktop software. They do have Android and iOS apps too, although only the desktop software can do firmware updates. The software is clearly somewhat poorly translated with text not fitting, or wording being a little confusing. For example, the controller has the option to use the built in 1000Hz gyro to emulate either joystick’s inputs. That’s a feature you must use the apps to enable, but your options are “Close”, “Simulate Left Stick” or “Simulate Right Stick”. A better word there would be “Off” or “Disabled”, rather than “Close”. It isn’t a big deal, but it’s worth noting that you might need to muddle through working out what some stuff does. Still, you can tweak the joysticks a fair bit, triggers, vibration motors, and remap any key to anything – including keyboard keys! You can create macros, and here’s the other key feature, set the 2,000Hz polling rate.

Now, a 2,000Hz polling rate isn’t completely unheard of in controllers – the ZD Gaming Ultimate Legend controller I checked out recently offers over 3,000Hz – but this does it… WIRELESSLY! I know! That’s rare. Most controllers do higher polling rates when connected via a USB cable, but stick to 250Hz (the console’s limit) wirelessly. This doesn’t, and that’s unique, and pretty cool. I tested it, and can confirm it does actually report at 2,000Hz wirelessly, or actually slightly above 2,000Hz when running wired. When it comes to the latency though, that isn’t amazing. It isn’t bad at 17 milliseconds on average, but it isn’t up there with the fastest controllers I’ve tested. This is the whole thing with polling rate not necessarily decreasing the latency. It helps, for sure, but doesn’t automatically make it better. Still this is more than adequate, and there are other benefits from higher polling rates, like smoother inputs especially for joysticks.

For actually gaming with it, it’s pretty good. For what I somewhat jokingly call ‘controller appropriate’ games – stuff like Dirt Rally 2.0 as my personal preference – this is great. The feel is solid, the triggers and sticks feel nice enough, the rumble is spot on. It’s a perfectly cromulent controller. For less ‘controller appropriate’ titles like Rainbow Six Siege, well it’s still fine. The slightly longer travel on the locked triggers does feels a little weird, and the joysticks do feel just a tad unusual to me, but as always my terrible playing experience is almost 100 percent a skill issue, not a controller issue. Realistically this is fine, and if you like Xbox One/Series style controllers, you’re probably going to like this a fair bit.

This thing sells for around £80 right now, seemingly primarily available through aliexpress – their own shop doesn’t have this listed yet. For that price this seems like a really cool controller. That’s obviously in the more premium bracket, but it’s about what the ZD Gaming comes in at. Personally I think I prefer the ZD though. That comes with the charging stand, rather than this one which is sold separately, and the ZD stand acts as a USB hub for both the dongle and for two extra ports on the back. Plus the replaceable joystick modules to adjust the feel… Yeah, that’s my preference. But this thing is still amazing, I think well priced, and has some really unique features that I suspect will wind their way into other controllers – namely those joysticks, and yeah maybe the polling rate too. This is a cool bit of kit, and by far the most customisable in terms of software and mapping I’ve had – and the only one that lets you do macros which can even include keyboard keys! Madness. Anyway, those are my thoughts, but I’d love to hear yours in the comments down below.