When you think of Nintendo Switch controllers your mind probably goes straight to joystick drift. Why wouldn’t it? They’ve known about it for years and their answer is basically “what do you want us to do about it?” And I don’t know about you, but when I splooged nearly £60 on the Pro controller, I didn’t expect to be playing Mario wondering why he keeps running off the platform to the left when I’m pushing the stick to the right after a few uses. It’s almost like they want people to be using alternatives. Which leads us to the GameSir T4 Mini. It’s much smaller than the Nintendo Switch Pro controller, but is it a worthy alternative?
A small controller for my large hands
I have weirdly big hands. I’m not a tall person. I’m a pretty standard 5 foot 11 inches. Yet my hands look like they belong on someone well over 6 feet which has been a problem in my life when it comes to gaming. The Nintendo 3DS is one of my all-time favourite devices, yet I couldn’t play on it for more than a few minutes without getting hand cramps. I had to buy one of those special add-ons that make the 3DS way bigger than it needed to be, but then I could play for hours. I thought the Switch would be okay, but even with that, it took me ages to get used to playing in the handheld mode without grips to stop my hands hurting. What can I say, I’m not used to handling small things.
So did I have some slight reservations about testing out a mini controller? Yes, yes I did. But look at it, it’s beautiful. How could I say no to that? Thankfully, my worries seem to be for nothing. Have I finally just grown into my big hands? Or is this controller comfier than it should be? Who really knows. All I know is that I love this little thing. Pro controller is going in the bin (not really, let’s not completely waste money here) because I have a new controller that I’ll be using a lot whilst the Nintendo Switch Pro controller gathers dust in a drawer.
The Hardware
The GameSir T4 Mini is designed for smaller hands. Not children… people. People with small hands. You know who you are. At little more than five and a half inches long and just over three inches wide, this lives up to the mini name. Have I seen smaller? Yeah, but not by much.
The T4 Mini has what you’d expect from a Nintendo Switch controller. It is endowed with a 6-axis gyro so you can make use of tilting and rotating the controller. It allows you to be more immersive. When you lean into corners on racing games (don’t deny you do it, everyone does!), the controller knows. So if the game allows it, you can make your leaning into corners actually do something, just like if you were holding the Switch.
It also contains motors for vibration on both sides of the controller, so if you’re someone that doesn’t turn that off in-game, you can enjoy it with this.
There is also a turbo button. Who doesn’t love a turbo button? Even if you don’t use it, it’s nice to be able to say that you have a turbo feature. It’s turbo, everyone knows that makes things better. Maybe you’re too good for turbo, but you will still brag about having the button anyway. The turbo option allows you to fire actions rapidly, without giving hard hits on the buttons continuously. I’m sure the buttons can take a good pounding, but this is about your precious fingers. Save them some fatigue, give that arthritis a rest and let the gamepad help you out. It’s equipped with multiple flexible Turbo setups that allow you to maximize Turbo customization. There are options that allow you to use different gaming strategies in different games to reach an ultimate gaming experience. What more could you want? It can’t do everything for you.
Design and Functionality
Remember back in the ’90s when see-through cases were all the rage? And then remember when someone decided that no, that’s no longer cool and now we’re sat here in our late 30’s looking at consoles with see-through cases being modded and thinking they look way better? Dbrand even gives you skins for phones that allow you to see what the insides look like. Because although some people don’t want to admit it, it’s never not been cool to see the insides of your electronics. GameSir knows it, and so they’ve designed their controllers with this in mind. If you look at that controller and think it would look better if you couldn’t see through it, then it’s about time we started accepting that opinions can just be plain wrong. See-through designs are cool, that’s just a fact.
It also has cool lights so that you can see what you’re doing in the dark. Because you know, who really knows what their hands are doing in the dark. Am I pressing the joystick or the arrow keys? No one knows! But now thanks to the lights, I do. Seriously though, I thought I’d dislike this part but it works really well. Lighting mixed with a see-through case? Love it. They’re not too bright and make it look beautiful.
The only part I’m not too keen on is the buttons. They feel nice and work well. But the letters are on the board and the buttons are big clear plastic tubes. When you look at it straight on it looks lovely. Then you move it away from your face at an angle and am I pressing X or Y? Can’t tell because I can’t see the letters. Why isn’t there a standard for button layout? Stop making my brain think so much when I switch from playing on my Xbox to my Nintendo Switch. I can’t blame the layout on GameSir, this is all on you Nintendo. No one looked at the Xbox controller and thought “you know what this needs? Buttons to be switched around”. Wait, is that why it’s called the Nintendo Switch? Have I solved a mystery?
The T4 Mini has a nice auto-sleep function built in to preserve battery life, so after the Switch console screen goes off so the controller. And a press of a button wakes everything back up. If only my morning wake-up routine was as simple as pressing a button. And talking of buttons, it has home and screenshot buttons as well as your plus and minus buttons that in some games are completely useless.
Connection and Software
Connecting the GameSir T4 Mini to a Nintendo Switch is pretty simple. A few taps on the screen and a button push and you’re away. This is something you could do easily enough even if you have just gotten out of bed and not had your morning coffee yet and you’re acting like a zombie. Now, I’m not saying that a zombie could do this as you’d need to have some kind of working brain that wants more than just something to eat. But I have every confidence that a regular human could do it. Sure, we all know some people that couldn’t, but really this would be the least of their problems.
It’s also not just a Switch controller, as it can connect to your Android or iPhone devices as well as a PC. But for this, I only care about it as a Nintendo Switch controller. With the buttons on it, it has to just be a Switch controller. You can do what you want with it though. Go wild. As a Switch controller though, I’m impressed. Connection is steady, it’s responsive and it does everything that you would want or need from a controller.
Conclusions
I love it. It’s my new controller of choice for my Switch. Hopefully, in a few months I won’t be fighting with it over which way a character is meant to be walking, but considering this isn’t made by Nintendo my hopes are higher than they would be otherwise. It looks great, and it’ll make your hands look bigger than they are, which I know isn’t what some men want to hear but I hear some of you are already used to holding small things so what’s one more? At least this won’t let you down with performance-related problems.
It gets a solid 9 out of 10 from me.
Head over to the GameSir website to buy one for yourself: GameSir T4 Mini Multi-platform Game Controller – GameSir Official Store. You deserve it.
A sample was kindly provided for us to review this.
