After the whole fiasco with the Hori
FPS Assault Pad and the spectacular failure of the Razer
Onza part of me was a bit cautious about getting another ‘Better than the
standard controller’ controller. But I did.. and here it is.. the Razer Sabertooth.
One of the reason I decided to even consider buying the Sabertooth is the fact that
unlike the Assault Pad and the Onza, no where in any of the reviews online did I see
the line “It’s kinda big.” in their reviews. It was also proven to be correct
when I first picked it up and my hands didn’t feel like cramping up!
When I first held it in my gaming grip, it had the familiarity of the stock Xbox 360
controller, didn’t feel too big or small. Felt as if I was holding the stock controller.
And that’s a GOOD thing, because the stock 360 controller has a very
good feel when you hold it.
The other immediate improvement was with the position of the extra mappable buttons,
you get 2 on top nested deep inside between the bumpers and the triggers.
And FOUR under the controller
Basically the bottom switch is a loose see saw that can tilt towards either side so
you can 2 buttons for each switch.
The impressive thing about these buttons is the fact that previous pads like the Onza
put the extra buttons too close to the normal buttons, which meant that by sheer muscle
memory it would be VERY LIKELY for you to hit the buttons when you
didn’t want to.
But on the Sabertooth, it less of a problem depending on how you press the bumpers.
For me I’d hit the bumpers using the middle of my index finger, I don’t actually press
it with my finger tip. The extra top button is positioned in such a way that it’s
at my index finger tip instead of my knuckle so I wouldn’t accidentally press the
extra button.
The bottoms buttons have no standard buttons to get in the way of, and I don’t feel
that they get in the way of my small hands. Might be a problem for those with bigger
digits, so I guess that’s why Razer provided the ability of removing the bottom buttons
if you don’t need them.
Once you remove the button, you get a hole like the indention on the left, Razer was
nice enough to give some rubber stoppers to block the holes like the one on the right.
The problem is that I just couldn’t seem to press them into the hole tight enough
and kept feeling that they were going to fall off. The other interesting issue was
that as I was squeezing the stoppers in, the joystick gave out loud creaking noises…
Like the Onza the face buttons of the Sabertooth are still the good old caps ontop
of micro switches with minimal travel distance
The D-Pad is now four normal looking buttons instead the weird pie slice on the Onza.
Unfortunately because it is still four separate buttons, it still
doesn’t work very well for sweeping motion ala Street Fighter. Basically it’s hard
to get a Hadoken on, let’s not even talk about a Shoryuken!
The analog sticks on the Sabertooth feels just right to me, not too loose, not too
tight. The caps have a slight bumpy dot texture on them.
But if you really want better grip on the tips, Razer was kind enough to provide two
grippy silicon joystick caps for you so you can have a better grip on the sticks if
you want.
Let’s talk about the special features of the Sabertooth, the first thing to talk about
is of course the OLED screen that sits at the bottom of the stick.
This is probably one of the reasons why the Sabertooth is so expensive! But it allows
for some interesting features to be implemented because the screen is used to show
more information to the user.
The first obvious function is the ability to map the six extra buttons to any other
BUTTON on the stick.
Yes, you heard right you can map ANY button to the extra buttons, including the Start
and Back buttons as well as the triggers. Very useful indeed!
You are also able to adjust the sensitivity of the thumbsticks.
You can set sensitivity in the range of –10 to +10.
As I mentioned in my Hori
FPS Assault Pad review, joysticks report values as how far it’s pushed to the
edge where the center is 0% and the edge is 100%.
To further explain how joystick sensitivity tuning works we’ll need some diagrams!
The picture above represents how far the joystick is from the edge, so the left edge
is the joystick in the neutral position, and the right edge is when you push it fully
to either direction. The picture above depicts how a normal joystick reports how much
it’s pushed to the game, so normally when the stick is at rest it reports 0% and when
it’s pushed to the edge it reports 100%.
When we set the sensitivity to +3 this is what happens to your joystick
range
The point where the joystick tells the game that it’s been pushed to 100% get’s drop
to around 70% of its full range. This in theory would let you hit full turning speed
in FPS games much more faster. Would this give you a edge? Well I’m not that competitive
a gamer to know. 
Then if you set sensitivity to +7 you get the results below
So all you have to do is nudge the joystick a little and you get to move at full speed!
So that’s what the POSITIVE sensitivity values do to the stick, so
what about NEGATIVE values? Let’s take a look at the setting of –3
What happens when you set the sensitivity to a NEGATIVE value is
that the maximum reported distance of the joystick gets dropped, so even though you
might be pushing the joystick all the way it’ll only report 70%. This is helpful when
you need to move something slowly and you can’t trust yourself to not just slam the
stick into the corner ie. When you’re staring down a sniper scope.
A value of –7 would yield the following range
And for some reason, the setting of –10 yields a range of 0%
to 0%. It's either that, or because the reported range falls within the deadzone
region of the games I was testing on.
Since you might not want the sensitivity as –5 all the time, the
Sabertooth have 2 profile slots for settings. Swapping profiles can be done easily
by pressing the profile button. But if you’re going to do it on the fly while playing,
note that you’ll need to press it TWICE to swap. The first push brings up the profile
menu, the 2nd actually changes the profile
One more not so obvious feature which the Sabertooth has is the ability to access
a diagnostic menu and display the current values reported by the analog sticks (Reported
values are not influenced by the sensitivity settigns)
This is important to competitive players, because after time the analog sensors on
the sticks might deteroriate and give false reading or values, or they might be worried
that they’re victims of a slow-turn joystick. So with this onboard test menu it’s
extremely easy to confirm that your stick are all working properly.
Having used the Razer Sabertooth through Bioshock Infinite, I must say it’s not too
bad at all. Not having a cramp inducing shape helps alot of course, but the fact that
the mappable buttons are pretty much out of the way and being able to quickly and
accurately adjust joystick sensitivity. I would definitely recommend the Razer Sabertooth
without reservation…. if only it didn’t cost so much! The price will definitely cause
concern to potential buyers and the features while great still doesn’t make it an
absolute must buy yet.
That said if the only other controller you’re thinking of getting is the Razer Onza?
No man… just say no to Onza!
