Nintendo Switch Nyxi Hyperion Joy-Con Grips | Underwhelming but Flashy

In this episode, we unbox and test out the Nyxi Hyperion Joy-Con controllers for the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch OLED, and Nintendo Switch Lite.Show more

The Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons, people love them, and they love to hate them. Almost as soon as the Switch was announced, companies went to work to develop third party replacements. This became even more important when Joy-Con drift became a thing. Nyxi has produced a number of different options for years, and we just received their Hyperion controllers to test.

This version that they sent me features a transparent case so you can see all the inner workings. Something I actually really enjoy. The outer shell is a very smooth plastic, a little bit too slippery for my taste. Designed to be much larger in size than the original Joy-Cons, the left controller even features a traditional D-Pad instead of the up, down, left, right, buttons. The back of the controllers have been molded in such a way to give you a more positive grip without needing to utilize any sort of external case.

The Hyperion controllers include a number of interesting features. A set of LED lights are included for each of the controllers and can be changed from a constant color to a breathing mode where the LEDs fade in and out. You can also turn them off all together to save battery life. Each controller also includes turbo functionality, and back buttons.

Pairing to the Nintendo Switch or Switch OLED is fairly easy. Simply slide the controllers onto your Switch rails and they connect. You can now remove them to use them in the included joiner to create a pseudo wireless Pro Controller. While connected to the rails, the Hyperion controllers will charge, but they also both feature a USB-C port on the underside so you can charge them separately from the system.

Upon getting them paired and fired up I got to some handheld gameplay. One thing of note, this does make your Nintendo Switch considerably wider, so if you don't like how large the Switch is to begin with this makes it even more so.

Using my Street Fighter 2 test, both the analog stick and D-Pad seem to work okay, however I could not pull off the dragon uppercut consistently at all. It did not matter if I used the analog stick or the D-Pad, it just could not interpret the inputs correctly to pull off the move. This is kind of disappointing.

Next, I moved over to Super Mario 3D World, a game that is much less intensive for controller inputs. With a traditional 3D platformer, I had no issues whatsoever with the Hyperion. Mario jumped, bounced, and stomped enemies precisely as he should.

Next up, I wanted to put the turbo to the test with Star Fox on the Super Nintendo Switch online. This underscore to me how the left and the right Joy-Cons have no direct communication with each other, as I had to hit the turbo button on the corresponding right Joy-Con along with the fire button to get it to work properly. It's a minor annoyance, but something I wish they would improve. This also made me notice the fact that the LED breathing patterns were not synchronized from the left to the right controller.

In Star Fox, the turbo and autofire worked great, when it worked. I had more than a few occasions where the auto fire just stopped autofiring. I have no idea why this did this, and it was more than a little annoying.

Why it RoX:
- Feature packed
- Neat-looking LED lights
- Includes joiner to be used as a pro controller
- D-Pad instead of up down left right buttons on left Joy-Con
- Programmable back buttons
- Turbo

What could be improved
- Sticks do not utilize hall effect sensors
- Inconsistent performance in Street Fighter
- Left and right controllers do not communicate with each other to sync
- Over slippery design
- Does not wake Switch from sleep
- Not compatible with amiibo

Should you buy one?
While I have generally been a fan of Nyxi products in the past, this version of the Hyperion controller leaves quite a bit to be desired. The inconsistent performance of the analog stick and the D-Pad in fighting games is definitely noticeable. This version also does not include Hall effect sensors on the analog sticks, however, they do offer a version which does. In the grand scheme of things, I still think these are better than the split pad or the split pad proof by hori, but there are few too many things going on here for me to strongly recommend them at this time. In the end, I think they are Underwhelming but Flashy.

#NintendoSwitch #switcholed #Joycons #Nyxi #HallEffectSensors #Hyperion