Corsair is the latest company to enter the fighting game controller market, and they've certainly hit their stride with the Novablade Pro. It's one of the most feature-rich leverless controllers on the market, featuring wireless functionality right out of the box and eight customizable buttons (three on the surface of the controller and five on the side). It's also a sight to behold, with lots of really cool lighting modes to play with and an easily removable and customizable bezel to highlight the highlights. With a very competitive and reasonable price tag of $250, the question of the best leverless controller is a little harder to answer.
Let's start with how the controller actually feels – it's almost comparable in size and weight to a controller. Winner Pro KO with exactly the same size (13.35 x 9.23 x 0.80 inches), but it weighs about twice as much at about 4.0 pounds. Granted, it's not that big of a difference, and even though it's the heaviest leverless controller I've ever used, it was still very comfortable to carry in my backpack when I went to a local tournament, and carried it with me while I waited to play.
There are a total of 15 buttons on the controller's face, which is three more than a standard leverless controller, giving you three buttons on the face that you can assign as you wish. You may want to place the L3 button above the left, down, and right buttons to provide a quick reset or record button in workout mode; or maybe assign L2 to one of the buttons next to your thumb and give yourself an easy to access button for parrying in Street Fighter 6, just to name a few examples. They're easy to match to what you need, in case you're like me and accidentally stumble upon them in a pinch.
The buttons also have a very nice feel to them—they're quieter than standard arcade buttons, but still loud enough that you can hear the combo rhythm when you press them. If you Really If you want to dig into the weeds, the Novablade Pro also allows you to customize the button actuation points. So if you want the move to come out, instantaneous you touch the button, you can set it to 0.1mm actuation point. Or, if you think it's too sensitive, you can set it higher, all the way up to a full 4.0mm, which will reduce the chance of accidentally pressing a button if your finger brushes against it slightly.
Along with this is a rapid fire switch that resets the button input to a neutral position as soon as it starts to move up, allowing you to press the button even faster than normally possible. To be completely honest, these features weren't particularly noticeable to me in games like Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8, but in other games that reward you with extra damage the more you mash a button, I could see it providing some benefit.
One of the cool features of the Novablade Pro is that it allows you to very quickly customize how the controller handles simultaneous button presses in opposite directions, also known as SOCD. The ability to press and hold up and down or left and right at the same time is a unique feature of a leverless controller, and there are many different ways to send these inputs to the game you're playing. Novablade Pro allows you to easily switch between all of these options; from the default method where no input is sent when SOCD buttons are pressed. Inputs like “deny priority” so you can hold the button and jump back to block low, but also press up to jump back if there's a gap in your opponent's pressure; giving priority to the first button pressed; give priority to the last button pressed; or simply sending both inputs and letting the game's own program decide what to do with the two simultaneous button presses are the unique advantages provided by this type of controller.
There are use cases for all of this, and being able to easily switch between them depending on what game you're playing is quite nice. However, some of them are actual cheats in competitive play and will result in disqualification from a real tournament if you are caught using them. Luckily, there's a Game Mode switch that immediately sets the controller to its default tournament-ready settings.
Navigating all of these features is easy thanks to the five buttons on the right side of the controller, which can also be assigned. It can be easy to accidentally press these buttons when picking up or passing the controller, thereby unintentionally messing up your settings, but the convenience of being able to easily customize these features is certainly worth the accidental and easily corrected button press.
The Novablade also has some of the best lighting effects of any leverless controller I've played. There are six built-in lighting effects that you can switch between, of which my favorite is the one that lights up both the individual button and the colored ring around the controller each time the button is pressed.
The Novablade Pro's big competitive advantage is its wireless functionality, which most of its competitors don't have. By removing the aluminum faceplate, you can put the controller into Bluetooth PC mode or set it to low latency wireless mode and connect the included dongle to your PS4, PS5, or PC.
