Being picky with controllers can be hell. It would be great if I could be satisfied with simply going to Best Buy and getting some mass produced shit off the shelf, but I’m not built like that. This has condemned me to an eternal search for my Forever Controller, one built to last and easy to repair. This led me to import a Chinese controller called the ZD-O+ Excellence, a totally modular controller that checked off all my criteria and came closer to perfection than any before it, just as the American economy is set to implode.
Before moving on, it’s worth elaborating on exactly what my criteria are for a good controller. For starters, it has to use at least Hall Effect or the newer TMR modules for its sticks– I refuse to invest good money in a controller that’s going to turn to shit from stick drift in a few years.
The second requirement is programmable back paddles. These make complex inputs that require you to move your hand between multiple face buttons while using the right analogue stick easier. At this point these should simply be standardized across the industry, with a minimum or two and upwards of six. I have written extensively about performing aftermarket mods for my PS5 controllers, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, nobody should have to do that.
The third requirement is build quality and performance. I’ve had many controllers simply turn to garbage over the years, even when the sticks are good on paper. Squeaky triggers, sticky buttons, the list goes on. I despise spending good money just to generate e-waste, and I have seen many an Xbox Elite and Scuf controller eat it, making them unsalvageable unless you know how to solder. An easy way around this is to make the entire controller modular, like the stick modules on the Dualsense Edge, although both the Edge and its modules are wildly overpriced, and the sticks inside those modules are old technology.
Lastly, I need a controller where the sticks are symmetrical. This is slightly harder to find, as the default layout for high-performance controllers skews towards the traditional Xbox layout, but there are controllers that almost fit the bill, like the 8BitDo Pro 2 (which only has two rear buttons). But I want something better than that. I want an Xbox Elite controller for half the price with better sticks, modular parts, lightning fast performance and a layout I prefer.
Taobao importing
The ZD-O+ Excellence is all of the above things and more. I first heard about it via a mutual friend who had heard rave reviews of it via the Discord for Gamepadla, a site devoted to testing the input latency of gamepads and a fantastic resource for open source tools for that purpose.
When I first saw reports about the ZD-O+ Excellence, the controller was only available in the States via Aliexpress. That was fine, but I wanted to get several of the modules that mod it to be symmetrical, similar to the PS5. The modules were slightly expensive, so I decided to purchase from Taobao via a proxy buying site, which hires a shipping agent to ship it to you. This turned out to be way more trouble than it was worth. The tariff situation meant that the controller got snagged in customs and spent several weeks lingering there. When it finally did arrive, it was sealed by big neon green tape informing me that US Customs had inspected it. Had I waited about a week, US-facing distributor GadgetHyper would have had it for sale domestically for a reasonable price (they seem like they still have it in stock for what I paid for it, as of writing this blog), but I was nervous and the escalating economic situation forced my hand. This concern was warranted, as the cost of the controller has shot up from roughly $90 to $180 on Aliexpress since then.
Though the controller comes in plain black and white, I decided to go with a clear transparent blue model that is aggressively more gamery, as well as several other modules, accessories and face buttons. All of this together was still less than the MSRP of Xbox Elite Series 2.
How it feels
Old Man Rob’s initial review, which is fantastic at showing the basic functionality of the device, although it had some pushback on Reddit and the comments.
The second I held the ZD-O+ Excellence I knew I was in love. It had that premium heft and shape that I associated with the Elite series. Even as stock, the controller feels excellent: the real paddles are where they should be, magnetically held in place. The triggers and shoulder buttons feel responsive, and the controller comes with built-in toggles very similar to the Xbox Elite to switch the triggers to clicky short throws, which I enjoy far more than I expected. There’s also an additional layer of shoulder buttons to the side of the shoulders and triggers that fall organically where the index fingers are. I have not gotten too obsessed with programming these, but this gives you far more options than most people will ever need.
The modularity of the controller is a joy. I’ve had to painfully convert a Dualsense before, and the experience was not for the faint of heart. But on the ZD-O+ the front shell just pops off, revealing a few easy-to-remove hex screws. Converting the controller from Xbox (asymmetrical) stick layout to PlayStation was as simple as swapping in a new module and a face plate. On top of this, they also sell different accessories like various stick lengths as well as different modular faceplates for the d-pad. I generally prefer a symmetrical layout with a polygonal Xbox Elite style D-pad, but the accessories give you a lot of options, including a cursed “3 stick” layout.
Old Man Rob’s follow-up review, upon installing the TMR modules, which solved many of his issues.
Modularity
Not only does the company offer multiple stick types (traditional ALPS, Hall Effect, TMR), they also offer multiple types of competing TMR sticks. This is only something that hardcore controller nerds have to contend with, but I went with “Jinful” because I had heard good things (a friend went with K-Silver and apparently got a lemon). The modules are, as of this writing, 10 dollars and not too difficult to take apart. Every test I have seen seems to indicate that the TMR modules outperform the stock Hall Effects by a country mile. It also appears to be possible to swap marginally better TMR sticks into the PCB and shell of the modules, provided you are good at soldering and desoldering. Knowing that you can do this without tearing apart and potentially ruining an $80-$100 dollar controller is deeply valuable. On top of this, user Meki has already created an open source PCB specifically to be compatible with standard stick pinouts, like the kind used in Xbox, Playstation and Switch controllers. I’m so happy that this controller not only has easy solutions for stick drift, but potentially for improvements in stick technology down the line.
If you would like to watch a Japanese YouTuber show off this controller for an hour, here you go.
Different button options are also on the table. The default tactile buttons in the controller I got feel quite good, far better than most controllers. Both the D-Pad as well as the default face buttons use surface mount variants of mouse switches, the kind usually used on the side clicks of the mouse (specifically HCNHK blues, having disassembled the module). There is also an optional module that has optical mouse switches, which many people contend are superior and longer lasting. Based on how they look, they appear to be these ones made by a company called Raesha, which I have heard mixed things about from true mouse perverts, but are still better than many controller buttons on the market.
Above: Here’s the same YouTuber just talking about just the stick modules.
If all of this is above your head, just know that these are generally serious parts that will last a while and be inexpensive to replace or repair if they ever fail. Given that the reason I stop using many controllers is “the buttons just feel super shitty now,” that catapults the ZD-O+ Excellence to the top of my list. In addition to this, the back paddles appear to be compatible with ones offered by brands like Scuff, which I plan on investigating because I have bigger hands and the stock paddles are just a hair too small for me personally. My controller also features RGB lighting, which I immediately turned off, and gyroscopic controls, which I don’t need but could imagine being useful if I ever got super into Splatoon again.
It is absolutely crucial to properly calibrate your controller, and on the ZD-O+ that is even more important due to the modularity of its design. Different stick modules will perform differently. Calibration is done internally by pressing the triangle button in the middle, up and “A” at the same time, spinning the sticks three times, then hitting the triggers three times and pressing the middle triangle button again. Hardwaretester is very useful for this as it will give you a sense of the circularity of your controller. By default the right stick seems to have more of a square deadzone, which I understand many players prefer particularly when it comes to FPSes. But if you want a more traditional circular deadzone you are going to need to make some deadzone adjustments in the app.
Some hiccoughs
The ZD-O+ 's companion app is not the worst I’ve ever used, but when I first bought the controller it was exclusively in Chinese. By default this is still the case, although this week they updated it with additional languages. I have an iPhone, and so had to search “搜索 致动游戏地带” on the iOS store, although apparently it’s not available in every country unless you use a VPN. There’s also a version on testflight as far as I know, and you can download an Android version on their website. There is no desktop or web app for this controller, just iOS and Android, which is by far my biggest pet peeve, although once you connect it to your phone the process is pretty seamless. Though the trigger buttons can be programmed without the app, the app allows you to program extensive inputs on the fly, which is clutch for PC gaming. I pray for a world where every button in your house can be programmed to do basically anything if you’re committed and perverted enough.
The largest failing of the ZD-O+ appears to be its wireless connectivity. It seems to poll at a maximum of about 250-260Hz according to community testing as well as my own and has middling jitter even with the included dongle. If you are like me and basically only use your controller wired, then that’s functionally a non-issue, but I hope that either updated firmware or an improved dongle can fix whatever is causing this, because this is otherwise as close to a perfect controller that I have ever seen. I have never been less mad at an input device, which is impressive given that since the manual is in Chinese I have to look up a YouTuber’s video every time I need to change something.
On China and the future
On some level, many of my hurdles with this controller stem from the fact that it feels like it wasn’t aimed at me. I only learned about it because I’m in a Discord devoted to testing controllers and someone raved about it. Many Americans like to humor ourselves and think that China tailors its products closely to US tastes, and while this has been true in the past more and more of the best deals out there in hardware are made with the Chinese domestic market in mind. In the peripheral space this is clearly true if you look at the explosion in good, affordable Hall Effect keyboards. More broadly, just look at Chinese EVs, which are so far ahead of American domestic offerings that they’re functionally impossible for most people here to own. We are not the center of the world, and rarely are we the center of innovation as much of our money and productive capacity has shifted towards the task of creating endless AI garbage.
As I write this, the United States is on a path to economic self immolation. If nothing changes and Trump doesn’t buckle or get overthrown in some treat-based version of January 6th, it’s going to be catastrophic for everyone. Everything is getting expensive for no coherent reason and container ships have more or less halted entirely. Watching this car crash in slow motion has made the prospect of writing about hardware difficult. How do you cover the tech space in the face of “The Death of Affordable Computing,” as Gamer’s Nexus called their three-hour long documentary? How can you assess the value of an object if you don’t know what it’ll cost or if it will be available tomorrow? Does the task itself become frivolous given how many industries are poised to collapse? Or does it become more relevant to talk about as it becomes clear that we have radically overestimated the degree to which China actually needs us?
Even if we all survive geopolitically, it does not change the fact that American hardware companies are thoroughly washed. I could never conceive of Logitech or Razer putting out a product so innovative or reasonable for anywhere close to this price and without some gargantuan caveat. No Western company would ever think to make a product so thoroughly repairable, modular, and anti-obsolescence. The ZD-O+ Excellence is a tinkerer’s dream, S-tier in repairability, close to the quality of an Elite for half the price and compatible with already existing parts on the market. It’s Taobao excellence, a potential Forever Controller, the dream of a thousand Reddit posters and Discord lurkers. Though it has real flaws that need to be addressed and other controllers may beat it in individual metrics, it is so close to being perfect that it hurts to think about. I am so happy I purchased it when it was reasonable to do so. And if you’re already in China or a country they export to that’s sane, like Canada, that almost perfect controller can still be yours for a song.
