PXN P5 8K Controller Review – A Step Backwards?

This is the PXN P5 8K, a deceptively named 2000 hertz wireless game controller with some genuinely cool features, and a frankly incredible price tag. I reviewed the standard P5 a while ago, and generally liked it, so let’s see if this 8K version is a notable improvement, or strangely a step backwards. The first and most obvious thing to do is have a look around. Besides the colour change (white grey and black for the P5, and dark grey, purple and green for the 8K), the design and layout is identical. The same offset joystick layout, the same quad macro buttons on the back, the same trigger locks. Everything is the same here. It’s all the stuff under the surface that’s changed. 

The first, and I’d argue is possibly the most important, change are the joysticks. The P5 had hall effect sticks, this uses capacitive sticks. In theory anyway, these are more accurate, lower power, and even longer lasting. These are K-Silver capacitive sticks that poll at 2000 hertz, and if nothing else are essentially immune to any magnetic interference. These don’t rely on a magnet’s force, which changes over time, which in theory means these are a further upgrade over the already excellent mag-based sticks from the P5. In practice I can’t say I can feel much of a difference, both in physical feel and in in-game control. If anything this feels a little worse to use, but that’s also very possibly a me problem. 

The only other major change is the microcontroller that handles the polling and wireless communication – and the wireless dongle. The standard P5 runs at up to 1000 hertz – an already massive upgrade over the standard 250 hertz the official Xbox controllers run at – so this thing running at anything above 1000 hertz is a nice-to-have. The weird part here is that while they claim the chip has an 8000 hertz polling rate, they claim everywhere else that it’s actually a 2000 hertz controller, and my own testing weirdly has it at around 2500 hertz. It’s well below 8000 hertz though, and I’ve had controllers hit closer to 4000 hertz with this methodology so I can confirm both wired and wireless that this thing is 2000 to 2500 hertz. I find it strange, and a little misleading, that they’ve named this – and branded the USB dongle – as an “8K” controller, but it isn’t 8K. It’s 2K. 2.5K at best. Weird.

Weirdly, there is one other change that is notable, and not in a good way. The D-pad on the standard P5 is fine. It isn’t clicky, it’s a little mushy actually, but it’s fine. On the 8K? It’s stiff, with no discernible feedback at all. Assuming this isn’t just a fault with my controller, this is a major downgrade. While at this price point I don’t expect a nice clicky and tactile pad, some amount of movement and feel would be nice, and this has none. While I’m laying out my gripes I should note the trigger locks. These are identical to the standard P5, which is still kinda naff. There is still a whole lot of movement from the trigger when locked, and there’s no tactile switch slid in here, just a physical travel limiter. Again, for the price point that is hardly a deal breaker, but it’s something you might want to know. Otherwise everything from the grip feel, rear button placement, and ABXY button feel is decent. Those buttons are a little long in the travel for my tastes, but it’s perfectly fine.

Happily, thanks to testing with my very own open source latency testing tool (available at OSRTT.com by the way, link in the description), I can report that the button latency is much improved – especially over the wireless connection. The standard P5 is the slowest controller I’ve tested when using the 2.4 GHz dongle at 23.5 milliseconds, whereas the 8K is just 15.4 milliseconds – over a millisecond faster than the standard P5 when connected via a cable! If you plug the 8K in you’ll get just 13 milliseconds of latency, making it the fourth fastest controller I’ve tested, behind the Nacon Revolution X Unlimited (a £200 controller), the Asus Raikiri II (a £200 controller), and the ZD Ultimate Legend (a £90 controller). Considering this will set you back a blistering £37 on Amazon right now, that’s a pretty good result.

For actually gaming on it though, well as I alluded to earlier, this feels like a bit of a step back in feel and usability. Sure, it’s lower latency and that’s great, but the stick feel, and the control especially in a game like Dirt Rally 2.0 just didn’t feel quite right to me. It isn’t outright bad, and I’m sure if I spent enough time with it I’d come around to it – I have been using the ZD controller basically every day recently – but this isn’t exactly my favourite. For FPS games the sensitivity curve on the stick really caught me out. Little movements were fine, but jam the stick to the side and that thing is whipping you round real fast. While you can download a frankly sketchy app to change settings on the controller, no PC or web app to do that makes that a non-starter for me. Maybe on an airgapped phone, but not on my primary. Couple that with the sticky D-pad and I don’t know how much better this thing is over the original. Sure, it is lower latency and has theoretically better sticks, but 1000 hertz is already plenty and the latency wasn’t exactly horrendous on the P5. I don’t know, I’m not sold on this one quite so much, although for that frankly insane price tag – just £37 not even on sale – most of those concerns kinda melt away. What do you mean I can get a top-spec wireless low latency controller for less than an official one? That’s a damn good deal, even if you do need to tweak the stick curves to really enjoy it.