It seems the underlying technology it great, but the controllers are crap
342392
Ordered this drive via Prime, delivered within two days...a brick, controller doesn't even show up.  Called Samsung support and they confirmed.  Got RMA from Amazon, they cross shipped me a replacement.  ALSO A BRICK!  It seems the underlying technology it great, but the controllers are crap.
3595731
I'll never completely understand Sony's way of thinking.  Without going into a system war, the Xbox 360 was nice enough to toss in a completely serviceable remote with their offering.  And yet, for all of the high tech gloss and sheen the PS3 comes with they ask you to use your controller for a remote.  I hated the controller for the PS2's DVD playability and I hate it again with the PS3.  It's unwieldy, poorly implemented and a pain to use, especially for fast-forwarding.

Enter the PS3 Remote and...well it works like a remote should.  Set up is as easy as synching the bluetooth remote with the Playstation 3 and then, voila, you have the power of a remote in your hand.  Because it is bluetooth, it handily doesn't need to pick up and infrared sensor.  It just works, whether you're pointing at it, in another room or if you're outside your house.

The remote has a ton of buttons, which is crazy and completely useless for most users who simply want to be able to watch a movie.  One thing that was interesting to note was that, for all of the buttons, there's not one for turning on and off the PS3.  That said, you can navigate the Crossbar to turn off the PS3 or you can simply hold down the PS button on the remote, like you would your controller, to turn it off.  Easy work around, but still a curious choice.

Overall, I'm happy with the remote.  It does what it should, alleviates the need for draining a controller's battery and works like a remote should.  A good purchase, but I still think it should have been included with the unit.
2880048
This controller had so much promise, but the D-Pad is pretty much unusable. It is WAY too sensitive and registers diagonals when you only slight push towards the edge of any of the Up, Right, Down, or Left buttons. Which of course this happens most of the time and makes playing most games impossible. The build quality overall is nice and all the other buttons are perfect, but when one half of your controller is unusable due to hardware faults, it's spells for a really crappy controller.

And yes I even updated the firmware and it still was having troubles with the d-pad! DO NOT BUY THIS!
3410078
It's weird to say the least and most of my games don't work optimally with it when they should because of poor control mapping. Like GTA 5 for example, it inverted my vertical axis while driving and gave me no option to fix it without inverting my horizontal axis. Wtf, and it's worse for other games where the pad isn't even recognized. On Need for Speed Hot Pursuit I couldn't use the bumpers. Beyond that nearly any game I would play a controller with doesn't well with the steam controller. Oh, and while it's active it turns your steam menu into a nightmare you'd only expect on a console.
410010
I think the gear them selves are made well, however the controller is giving me issues . Every time i turn the radio on and power up the copter, i may get the gear in up position or down position with my radios switch the sane. It just depends on what the controller feels like that min.
3048708
It's a great concept, hence why I bought it, but the Wii system just isn't built for this type of stuff, in my opinion. The controls are pretty awkward in my experience. That being said, I would rather opt for a dedicated firearm controller thing, instead of an adapter for the Wii controllers.
937537
I do like this controller for the fact that when paired with the Whiz Bang Jr it accurately charges batteries using ending amps while still being able to run loads! Have not found that option anywhere else so far. My main issues are that the firmware, software, and mobile app are so broken and poorly coded by obvious amateurs that it'll make you feel physically ill about how much you paid for it and question the legitimacy of the company entirely. Just navigating the menus on the built in display can reset all history and logs and the LAN connection has also been freezing up daily and requiring me to go to the physical device to enter LAN settings just to press "ok" to get it working again. Then there's the manual that is also a bit of insult to injury being just some printed and stapled pages that barely explain the more in depth customization options. Now onto function. At first I thought I might have a bad unit because in the morning and evening when there's between 1-2Amps coming in the device starts cycling between "Bulk" (charging) and "Resting" (not charging) and cycling a rather loud relay while doing so, customer service said that this behavior is normal... To me, this seems like a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on such a relay, also I've never had a charge controller use a mechanical relay (that I could hear at least) to stop/start charging. Finally, the device is not as "efficient" as it claims or others that I have used and for some reason I have lost around 1-2Amps output since putting it to work. It also gets warm enough to be concerning even under 15A output in a 77F space, so I've placed a couple of small 24v fans over the screened "knockout" holes on the bottom that seem to help a lot at the cost of more lost efficiency... All in all though, like I said, I have not found another CC that will at least take care of my expensive batteries as well as this device does so I do recommend it and just add more panels to make up for the lost efficiency as I have.
3476598
The games for this system have been wonderful so far.

Super Mario 3D World (one of the best mario games onpar with Galaxy)
New Super Mario Bros U (the best one in the series)
Sonic Lost World (a fun experimental Sonic game onpar with Colors)
NES Remix (classic, and creative, innovative)
etc...

The miiverse functionality is great, the web browser is fast, my main issue though is the Wii U Gamepad. They just cant stop these gimmicks. They could have sold a 250 dollar Wii U with the Pro Controller and made a lot of happy gamers, but instead they wanted to resort to gimmicks, so we pay 100 extra for the controller and run out and buy pro controllers. It's getting tiring. Nobodys going to play smashbros with the gamepad Nintendo, you all know it. Nintendo should focus on fun and creative games (and they do!) but stop feeding us hardware gimmicks. We DO NOT WANT THEM.

anyways the systems great, but wait for the price to drop, because the 100 dollar paperweight that is the gamepad is expensive.
3491290
The Steam Controller is a great piece of hardware. I unfortunately got a broken version that conveniently stopped working exactly a year and a day after purchase, effectively rending the device a giant paperweight that I can't exchange for a working version.
63180
The controllers stall, they are not authentic and they suck.
4525029
I may need to spend some time to have this configured properly.
I got it a month ago when my brother was in town and the goal was to have some good time with old games.
Playing them on a computer is better as the graphics are boosted up to 1080) so in a 42" tv they look awesome (you can see the polygons but not the pixels, as they are now rendered for high definition, instead of 360 or 480 as Nintendo 64 did).

It always take a while to setup a laptop to play something in the screen, but this time calibrating the N64 controllers was unpleasant and took away the first minutes magic of what we were about to do.

That night I ended up giving up and we used XBOX controllers. They are good but not excellent for games like perfect dark or goldeneye. Plus I have a special controller I bought for N64 in his golden years, a Nikko pad, which is very well made (it has lasted up to now). So far I have only spent about 1 hour trying to have this thing work, by doing what the internet says about calibrating it and setting up the Project properly. Didn't work (not even with the original controllers).

As soon as I find a proper way to have them work I'll update or I'll update that you can't play.

Update: (I remember having done this before but for some reason the update is lost).
The problem was with my controller, not with this thing.
It works now, although I haven't managed to calibrate it exactly with the same precision as for Goldeneye (that or I'm losing aiming). Doesn't matter, you can play fairly good any game out there :)
3155267
I love the controller but it lacks response! ME and the kids get frustrated alot. When we are navigating through the menus or playing when you press on the left or down key it does another thing. i am very disatisfied with it.
3219963
EDIT: I've lived with this controller now for a bit, and used it with a Steam Link on my TV. The touchpad joystick function is just...very weird to me. I've spent a lot of time trying to dial in the sensitivity to be JUST right, but it's not really happening. I've been using an XBox One controller at my desk, and this at my couch, and the difference is pretty striking. If anybody has pointers for how to make the touchpad sticks feel more controllable (right now they yaw between "unresponsive" and "twitchy"), I'd love to hear them. It seems to be an issue in the software. Maybe it's just something you have to "relearn" if you're used to a different style of control. At this rate, the controller feels like a fun peripheral in more casual games (such as Portal 2, or Ori and the Blind Forest), but I wouldn't want to use it in a twitch-shooter or something similar, where my inability to accurately position the camera is just killing me.

------------------------------------

I would like to preface this whole review with with the fact that I am a desk-bound gamer, and I primarily use controllers for flying in games while sitting at my desk (I will often leave a controller next to my mouse so I can fly in GTA 5, for example). I do not normally play from the couch, and I did not review this controller while playing from the couch as I'm not trying to be balanced, I'm reviewing it from how I typically use controllers.

From a hardware perspective, the Steam Controller is pretty fantastic. The trackpads are responsive, the joystick has a nice tactile feel to it (like a slightly up-market version of a 360 controller), and there are two "paddle" buttons behind the grips that give you some extra commands. I like putting a push-to-talk button on one of them, as my biggest gripe with other controllers is not having a PTT without adjusting the whole layout. The trackpads were responsive, and had a great feedback feature that actually worked well in letting you know where your finger was in relation to the border of the pad. From a hardware perspective, I really liked this controller. It also paired pretty much instantly to my computer. Pushed the center button, good to go.

However, the Steam Controller is laid low by the fact that you really can only utilize it with Steam Big Picture. The controller cannot be customized outside the Big Picture interface, and it becomes unresponsive if you don't start a game in Big Picture. They warn you when you turn it on that you should use Big Picture to get the most from your controller, but that was a heck of an understatement: they should've told you the controller doesn't work outside Big Picture mode.

The other problem I found was with the software behind the touchpads. They are two-zone touchpads and this is not clearly marked. The inside is a precision control zone, much like a laptop touchpad, and the exterior is a continuous hold, much like a joystick. I found that when you crossed the border between these two zones, your reticle "jerked" a bit, making sniping and other precision activities very difficult. It got frustrating enough that I just made them joysticks, defeating the purpose of the precision touchpad.

I really wanted to love the controller, but there's no reason to use Big Picture while sitting at a keyboard in front of your computer, and the software behind it had too many flaws that creeped into the controller in so-minor-to-bother-you ways. I'm sure this controller is a good fit for players used to using console controllers, and probably opens a whole new world for those who play from the couch. For me, as somebody playing from their desk and looking to upgrade my old Xbox 360 controllers, it just didn't work.
1644067
Got this game and absolutely loved the arcade style of gameplay.  Lots to shoot and infinite ammo...what more can you ask for?  Very addictive gameplay, but the controller is really the weak link in this product.  First, you need a lot of room to play. I could not get the sensor bar to calibrate my controller unless I was 2 yards from the sensor.  Second, there is a MAJOR ISSUE with using a second controller.  I liked the game so much that I dropped another fifty bucks for another controller.  The issue is that the second controller cannot calibrate properly.  Something is screwed up with the game software because the second controller becomes grossly inaccurate when you calibrate it.  Another interesting fact, calibrating the second controller throws off the calibration of the first controller a couple of inches.  I made sure it was not one of the controllers that was broken too. They are dead on accurate in single player, and the calibration problem only happens to the second player, even if you reset the game and switch controllers.  You can also make it somewhat playable by just not calibrating the second player's controller.  This will make player 1's controller dead on accurate like in single player, but the second player can't use the scope (aim is off by 6 inches to 1 foot) making it not very fun at all.  I returned the second controller, but i'm keeping the first one b/c the single player is still that good.
1469530
The control works fine, and I've wasted some good hours on Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Banjo-Kazooie and so on. However, there are 3 issues that I find with it.
1) The main one are the stupid blue lights. they are on the top of the controller, thus directly shinning into the face of whoever is holding the controller. They are excessively bright, and after a few minutes become almost unbearable, so playing in the dark is hard, unless you open up the controller and cover them with tape like I did.

2) Although the analogue stick is of some sort of metal, the restrain surrounding it isn't so after some intense playing there will be some dust in there, of the metal eating away at the plastic.

3) Finally, the left and right extensions are shorter than those of the original N64 controller. Thus it is uncomfortable to hold on to the controller if you have big hands.
1531493
Yeah theses controllers are sh*t.  Bought one and worked out ok w/an occasional lag.  So then I bought a pair which turned out to be a mistake the charging port disconnected.  Sh*tty construction you get what you pay for
4899233
I didn't check closely until it got here.  It is not the Microsoft controller.  The buttons have to be mashed pretty hard for some of them to register,  the right (or aim) joystick is very sloppy, the triggers are noisy, as are the bumpers.  You have been warned.