DRAKONG Challenger Review – New Brand, Same Controller

You don’t know this brand yet, but you know their parent company. Hyperkin makes some awesome controllers – I’ve personally reviewed their rather pretentiously named “The Competitor” which is great – but now they’ve got this, the Drakong Challenger. Drakong is their new even more budget brand focusing on offering, as their marketing slides say, “Premium features at an unbeatable price”. The Challenger controller is their only product right now, although a Fender branded guitar hero controller is apparently coming soon, and it bears a striking resemblance to The Competitor, down to what are clearly the exact same rear macro buttons. But considering this thing costs just $35 – or $31 on Amazon right now – this might be the single best value controller on the market. Let’s take a look and find out!

The Challenger, unlike The Competitor, is a traditional Xbox style controller. It’s got the offset sticks, an Xbox main button, even a green secondary tone. This is also compatible with Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, and Windows. But unlike other $30 controllers, this isn’t your bog-standard affair. These joysticks – behind the slightly cheap feeling tips – are hall effect. Both! Not only that, but both triggers are also hall effect. The two most failure-prone points are as close to failure free as possible. That’s sweet for this price. Sadly there aren’t any tactile mechanical switches for ABXY or the D-Pad, but they still feel pretty nice. The D pad isn’t too mushy, and the buttons have a decent amount of travel and tactile feel. I should also note that the bumpers and triggers have a laser textured surface which actually feels pretty nice – remarkably premium – and the overall hand-feel is really good. It isn’t as nice as, say, a Wolverine V3 Pro, especially since it’s lacking both weight and rubber overmolded grips, but from just the plastic shell it’s impressively nice in the hand. The back buttons are also perfectly placed, and while they don’t come with the lockout that The Competitor’s ones do, they’re still plenty nice enough. Oh, and I should note that in the box you get a one month gamepass trial and an impressively long, if cheap feeling, USB A to C cable. This is a wired only controller afterall. You do still get a headset jack on the bottom though which is pretty sweet for something this well priced!

Naturally you might be wondering what corners they’ve cut to get what seems on the face of it to be a very impressive and high end controller to cost as little as it does, and it’s kind of a bunch of little things. The tips on the otherwise very nice and smooth joysticks are just a little cheaper, a little shinier, than The Competitor’s. The plastic is fine but the textured finish on the back is more limited. There’s no trigger (or macro button) locks, no replaceable joystick tips, and frankly the vibration motors in there are on the weaker and less potent side. Like they’re fine, but you won’t be immersed in the world so much as feeling your phone vibrate in your hands. There’s obviously no wireless connectivity either which for some might be a deal breaker, but I’ve generally been using my controllers wired anyway so it’s no biggie for me. Still I’d argue the complete picture of this thing is that it’s remarkably well built and decent feeling. 

Naturally I did test the latency, and it’s finnnneeeeee. It’s on the slower end at 16.8 milliseconds which is a decent bit slower than The Competitor which took just 13.7 milliseconds instead. Still it’s far from the slowest controller I’ve tested, although it is the slowest wired only controller I’ve tested. Still not what I’d call a deal breaker. As for actually gaming on it, that’s pretty good. For a game like Dirt Rally 2.0 it’s nice enough, as I mentioned the rumble is a little flat, but the triggers feel good, the thumb sticks are smooth and responsive. There’s no hitching or anything, it’s all pretty good. For FPS games I noticed a bit more of a deadzone than usual – I tweaked it in Siege’s settings to make it a bit more responsive, but it still feels maybe a tiny bit numb in the middle. I got it to feel about as good as any I’ve used, although I’m no FPS on controller expect. The lack of trigger locks might also be a deal-breaker for some, but otherwise that’s about it.

The fact that these are hall effect sticks and triggers in a controller that costs just $30 is the biggest point here. The zero stick drift is huge, and compared to similarly cheap controllers like the EasySMX X15, while The Challenger is missing wireless, it does feel a little nicer in the hand and everything from the laser textured bumpers and triggers to the AXBY buttons just feel a little nicer too. This isn’t the perfect or ultimate controller, but for the price it sure does feel hard to beat. I can’t say I truly understand why Hyperkin chose to start building an entire other brand just to sell the same sort of controller for less than they would, but hey it’s cool for us that we now have this as an option! I like this thing, and if you’re after a good quality and reliable wired controller for cheap, consider this one.