My Top 5 Best Game Controllers Of 2026 – Best Budget Under £30, Best Console, Most Customisable, Best Overall Gamepad
In the last year or so I’ve ended up testing a whole bunch of game controllers – enough that I actually have a good idea of what’s good and what’s not, and a decent enough selection to choose from – so with that in mind, I think it’s time to go over some of my favourites! Because this is YouTube, this is also a top five list! Each one is also its own category, so without further ado, let’s get into it! Starting with the cheap category – or in nicer words, the best budget controller under £30.
This is by far the most recent for me, as this is a controller I bought and reviewed last week, but it skated right to the top of my list with its impressive list of features and performance, all for £29.99. This is the GameSir Nova 2 Lite. This is a wireless, double hall effect (meaning both sticks AND both triggers are HE), has trigger locks, a 1000 hertz polling rate, clicky bumpers and D-Pad, and even has an optional extra charging stand too. This thing isn’t perfect, but man is it great for the money. For just £30, or £40 if you add in the stand, you get a remarkably well built controller with decent enough latency – not top tier but still good enough – and genuinely a pretty good feel. The fact the sticks will never drift is a big bonus too, considering the first party controllers haven’t caught up to that yet. All of this for just £30? Hot damn that’s a good value! Oh, and the perfectly form-fitting case with a space for the USB dongle is even better value! An honourable mention does have to go to the EasySMX X15, which when on sale will cost you just £16, although it doesn’t come with trigger locks, it feels a little cheaper, and no optional charging stand. When it’s on sale though, the fact that it’s still a 1000 hertz double hall effect controller is a great choice. When it isn’t on sale, the Nova 2 Lite I think is better for the same money.
As for the best controller for consoles – at least for Xbox anyway – and I think that’s this, “The Competitor” from Hyperkin. While this is a wired controller, it’s an officially licensed Xbox controller and hall effect everything. It’s also a PlayStation style controller, meaning the joysticks are in line rather than offset, which I know some people prefer. You get two extra buttons (which weirdly have button locks instead of trigger locks), a stellar build quality, and a great feel. As I said this is wired only, but it’s also only £40, making it a tenner less than an official controller, lower latency, and a drift-free option for life. I’d say that’s a pretty damn good deal! I haven’t tested many PlayStation options so I don’t want to recommend anything specific that I haven’t actually laid hands on, but there are a swath of wireless hall effect controllers on the market for £40-60 that you might want to check out.
If you want customisation, it’s a two way tie between the ZD Gaming Ultimate Legend and the Nacon Revolution X Unlimited. The former is around the £100 mark, comes with a USB hub charging dock, customisable joystick tips, D pad, ABXY buttons, a removable face plate, and the biggest thing is super easy-to-swap joystick modules. They just pop out once you have the faceplace off, and ZD will sell you a multitude of different joysticks. The default ones are TMR so you shouldn’t NEED to, but if you want a different feel? Well they have a different TMR choice, HE, and even potentiometer based sticks if you do badly want joystick drift. This is the one I actually use right now. It’s great, you can use an app to customise everything including joystick curves and button mappings, and it feels great. Plus it looks great too! If you want Xbox support too, and even more customisation, the Nacon Revolution X Unlimited is just insane. Physically you get different joystick tip heights, joystick shaft weights, and d pad plates. On the software front, this thing has a freaking LCD built in that lets you customise basically everything. Joystick curves, vibration, mapping, the works. This thing is next level cool – albeit expensive. This is more like the £200 mark, although does come with a very nice case, a hub charging dock, and that box of accessories too. Very cool bit of kit.
Some notable mentions include the Mojhon Rainbow 3, a £90 controller with the key benefit being the at-the-time unique capacitive joysticks, which don’t rely on magnets that wear and drift over time, instead basically a metal stick and some fancy circuitry to provide even more accurate control. That, though, is usurped by the much much cheaper PXN P5 8K, which also comes with capacitive sticks, a multi-thousand hertz polling rate, four macro buttons on the back, trigger locks and a generally decent feel, all for £30 right now. That’s impressive! When it comes to the best controller for pros – or those aspiring to be – I’d say that honour either goes to the Asus Raikiri II if you want PC or Xbox, or Razer’s Raiju V3 Pro (the PS version of the Wolverine). Both are truly well built, have HE sticks, and have a bunch of pro-level features.
My favourite though is likely still the Ultimate Legend. That’s the one I use now. It feels great in the hand, the buttons feel great, the trigger locks are amazing for the few games I want to use ‘em on, and the joysticks are amazing. The stand with the included USB port for the dongle means it has a permanent place on my desk without needing to remember to plug it in, it’s effortless. The connection is rock solid, and while the customisation has meant a few quirks like joysticks not registering properly, with the most recent firmware updates it’s been spot on. It isn’t the highest end controller in the world – the Wolverine V3 Pro feels a fair bit more premium in the hands – it does just as good – or better – a job for half the money. Plus you can swap the entire damn joysticks and it still looks like a normal controller! What’s not to love?
Of course those are my favourites, but I’d love to hear yours in the comments below! I’ll also leave links to all the controllers I mentioned in the description if you want to check them out!
