Gadgetory

when it comes to human bodies there's no such thing as normal so how do you design something like a game controller that's meant to offer the highest performance possible to as many people as possible do you just kind of take the average well actually yeah that happens pretty often but if you do that you're naturally going to end up with a design that a lot of people really like I'm particularly fond of this one but that others simply cannot use at all thankfully Microsoft has given us another option the Xbox adaptive controller is not specifically designed for anyone so that it can be used by everyone the thermaltake a 500 aluminum mid-tower case features a minimalistic design brushed aluminum panels for a clean uninterrupted look hinged tempered glass windows on both sides and compatibility for radiators of up to 420 millimeters at the front get it today at the link in the video description okay so here I am I've got my adaptive controller and I'm connected to my Xbox one it's got wireless capabilities but it also comes with a nine foot USB cable that can plug into this USB type-c port that is also used for charging so the big d-pad here is for navigation and then I also have the menu view and Xbox buttons up here as usual but then like other than that there's not really a lot going on here I mean I've got these two big black buttons here that are labeled a and B which actually have like pretty nice tactile feedback and click reasonably consistently no matter where you press them but like so what am I expected to play with just two buttons and a d-pad Tetris blades of Steel it's like an S layout okay okay cool so this is sort of usable I've got my accelerator I've got my brake I've got but there's some issues like press white or rewind I don't have that I can't press handbrake or like yeah look behind me or or really much of anything so then odds are you'll want a few more buttons than this luckily Microsoft has given us a few options the easiest of which is called copilot this actually lets you use your adaptive controller and a conventional Xbox controller together as one player so for example if you have more mobility on one side than the other then you can use a mixed grip or you can even have a friend operate one controller while you operate the other one okay so here we go then so have the joystick so all skier yeah yes I'm gonna do gas and braking so then you'd be able to rewind if I was like yo I wanna I want to see that again oh that's pretty cool no no I got this I got this I got you fast yeah whatever screw these guys Oh so that's actually pretty cool but the real power of the adaptive controller comes here each of these three-and-a-half millimeter ports back here corresponds to a button that you would find on a conventional Xbox controller and there are actually two extra ones that are confusingly labeled as X 1 and X 2 so you end up with the X DX 1 DX 2 and the X Box let me tell you no one needs that many X's but I don't know it then again this was designed by the same people what brung you Xbox Xbox 360 and Xbox one anyway here's how it works if I want to be able to press Y I just plug in another switch like for example this one the adaptive controller works seamlessly with most input devices that have this three-and-a-half millimeter connection type and that's really important because there is such a wide range of ability within the gaming community and the perfect setup for you might not be the perfect setup for the next person cool so let's take a look then through a handful of the different switch types that you could use to build your unique set up so this one right here is kind of your basic buddy button in gator green so we've also got though this pillo button this one's cool so it's actually cushioned to make it comfortable to press with your head or with your cheek you can actually hear it actuate there we've also got this guy right here this is called a wobble switch and you can activate it a couple of different ways so you can swipe in any of four directions or press it down and this one right here is an ultra light switch is actually designed to be worn and you can see here it requires very little force to actuate so if you have it on the back of your finger or something and you push to gain something you would activate it quite easily then there's the little candy corn proximity sensor which can be activated without even actually touching it just by getting very very close finally this guy right here is a foot pedal that's actually typically marketed towards transcribers but see I mentioned this before it does work with our adaptive controller because it uses exactly the same connector okay so I've got all my different options here I guess I'm gonna start playing some Mortal Kombat excel okay so if I don't have any accessories at all all I pretty much have is punch other more different punch forward back jump and Crouch which is clearly well I don't haha but it's not gonna get me too far I'm just sticking with the epitaph boom okay so this is enough to beat an easy computer player especially with you know remapping these two buttons to the you know to things you want to do the most often but I can't even block so it's obviously not ideal now let's kick it up a notch starting with a foot pedal so I want this on what why okay I've got this plugs in but like people now where do I even put it okay let's go with here and this is crazy like I'm all of a sudden realizing just how many buttons there are on an Xbox controller like even if I only give myself four buttons here the adaptive controller is a hundred bucks the foot pedal is 25 and the buddy button is another $65 so we're at just shy of $200 and we still haven't even a mounted all of this stuff or be attached enough buttons to issue even half of the total number of commands fortunately though we don't have to add one button at a time so the adaptive controller also has USB ports on both the left and the right hand side so I could attach something like this which is basically like a an Xbox compatible we nunchuck controller or get this you can also use a device that you already have lying around like this joystick which could provide both directional movement and check this out a whole whack ton of buttons alright so we've kind of got all the ingredients now but this is where things get a little bit more complicated than what I would consider to be ideal so take the one-hand joystick for instance here we go it's got some shoulder buttons and when you click the joystick you can actually switch layers so that the shoulders have secondary functions not bad for 20 bucks but how do you remap it well instead of the joystick appearing as its own object in the accessories app you actually have to program it through the adaptive controller so doing this requires knowing that when you plug the joystick in the adaptive controller assigned certain buttons to it so these are x1 and x2 so changing these buttons then affects the USB device but also any switches that you plug into the x1 and x2 ports over here due to that same limitation that we discussed earlier then stay with me here guys if you plug the joystick into the other side it actually doesn't get mapped to x1 and x2 it gets mapped to view and menu now so it didn't take us too long to figure this out through a combination of checking the manual and trial and error since there's only a couple of buttons on this thing but then hold on a minute what about my other random joystick which has a bunch of buttons oof all right so the first thing to note is that the adaptive controller only supports eight buttons per USB device so step one is to identify which of the more than eight buttons are even being used then I guess what you'll have to do is just hop into a game that you're really familiar with grab a pen and paper and then start to map out what the eight buttons do when your joystick is plugged into the left and then repeat the whole process again when it's plugged into the right also if you don't like which eight buttons the adaptive controller decided to utilize like for example what if I only wanted to use these buttons down here instead of these ones up here well as far as I can tell you just don't get a choice one other word of caution - if you're using a high-powered device like one of these mouth mites you're going to need to make sure that you plug your adaptive controller into the wall so it has enough juice both for itself and any connected accessories now Microsoft wants $20 for this adapter in their store but they also helpfully clearly labeled the so you could just use any 5 volt 2 amp adapter so in conclusion then there is definitely some room to improve the user friendliness of the adaptive controller but honestly the main reason that we made this video wasn't to do an in-depth review of it necessarily but rather to bring a little bit more attention to how for all their flaws amazing it was that Microsoft spent both the engineering time and the money to make this thing in spite of the hundred dollar price being higher than a standard controller I can pretty much guarantee you that Microsoft is never going to break even on this thing let alone turn a profit so the only conclusion other than that ok the cynical among you might assume they did it just for the good PR but I'm not sure if I buy that I think I think it's fair to say that if nothing else someone or someone's over there worked really hard on this thing so that they could open up new possibilities for many many Xbox and PC gamers because the whole thing also works with Windows who haven't always had many good options no it's not perfect and yes a fully kitted out set up can end up with the same kind of ludicrous price tag that many other pieces of accessibility equipment suffer from but this is still a giant leap in the right direction and it's something that we hope to see more of what can you change with headphones other than the sound quality how about the materials using a piece of CNC carved walnut wood the math drop may say 99 know are closed headphones are definitely going to make you stand out they utilize a 40 millimeter driver with a warm rich bassy sound and included with the headphones are detachable cables a 1/8 to quarter inch plug adapter a woven nylon carrying case and a one-year warranty so check it out at the link below and join the drop today so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join