EasySMX X05 Wireless Controller

Why Did I Give 3 Stars: This controller is very good for the price point and I would actually recommend it. My interpretation of 3 stars is "I had thoughts in response to the product that made me unhappy" whereas 5 stars is I was never made unhappy. I gave 3 stars for 3 reasons: my controller refuses to auto-reconnect to my PC dongle after turning itself off after 5 minutes of inactivity without me manually putting the dongle and controller into pair mode, there is no way to get a battery charge indicator if you're playing/charging on PC because it goes into wired mode which they intentionally don't show battery for (presuming you're intending to play "wired" which makes sense but is flawed for this reason), and because the button to power off the controller requires me to open xbox home on my PC every time since it is also the "console/home" button (MINOR inconvenience yes, but still annoying and compounds the previous issues). Pros: - Form factor feels good. I intentionally bought it looking for an xbox feeling experience and got that. - Quality feels sturdy. Coming from expecting this price point to give me something like a Logitech F310 or MadCatz semi-transparent looking garbage, this doesn't feel like a piece of trash. - The frame doesn't creak or flex. - The ABXY buttons have acceptable wiggle tolerance. - The joysticks feel how I would expect (not too long of a neck, and smooth movement as you'd expect). - More subjectively, the bumpers are tactile with a click, but sound muffled which I like. - Also subjectively, the dpad has unique directional buttons rather than the new diagonal design xbox leans into. I MUCH prefer the unique directions over the xbox approach. People everyone online complain they're mushy. They are objectively mushier than the ABXY but I wouldn't have even noticed if everyone wasn't crying about it. It's perfectly fine imo. Cons: - The first functional con leading to a 3 star is my controller refuses to auto-reconnect to my PC dongle if the controller is turned off via 5 minutes of inactivity. If *I* turn it off, it works fine. But if it turns itself off, it refuses to reconnect without me manually putting controller and dongle into pair mode. Perhaps it's a unique edge case software wise with my configuration, but regardless it's annoying. - The second functional con leading to my 3 star is that there is no way to get a battery charge indicator if you are using the controller on PC and charging via the PC. When you play on PC wired, it shows no battery indicator "because you're wired" which intuitively makes sense. But the flaw in the logic is if I'm typically charging the controller on my PC to play wirelessly on my PC. The instruction manual suggests ways to see charge, but for my specific use case it seems impossible and this annoys me very much. - The third functional con leading to my 3 star is the power button is the "console/home" button. Every time I want to turn my controller off on my PC, it opens the xbox hub. Functionally, not too big of an issue in terms of impact or effort to fix, but it shouldn't be an issue at all imo. - This next point is aesthetic subjectivity. I chose the black and pink model. Aesthetically, the black looks pretty matte perhaps from the color itself, but the entire backplate *feels* like plastic. More reflective than I'd like. - This is less of a complaint because it could have not been a feature at all, and more of a "constructive criticism to consider moving forward on innovations." The configuration steps for lights and modes are pretty random feeling. If I lose my manual, I hope their website offers a digital replacement or I am in trouble. Also, if you're going to allow stick left and right to change tolerances for other things, why lock the joystick deadzones to "0 or default"? Why not allow a configurable range? Yeah it would probably be confusing to configure, but so is everything else. - Most reviews suggest you should get teflon tape strips for your joysticks. I never would have used them so this is DEFINITELY a petty thing to note, but for what it's worth I did not receive them if you care about that.