8BitDo Wireless Adapter 2

> Switch, Windows, Raspberry Pi (so, linux?), Android

// 2024-03-25, 4 min read, #review #hardware #gaming

I was having a pretty rough night last week and made an emotional financial purchase. It was small, about $20. You see, after we had cleaned up our entertainment center we also put in a small HDMI switch and hooked up the Wii U again finally.

Wound Up (when we cleaned up our entertainment center)

I ended up playing a few games on it and got sucked back into how fun Hyrule Warriors is. It's such a love letter to the Zelda series. However, on Wii U, I own none of the DLC, plus I can really only play it on the big TV in the living room. Yeah, I can play handheld using the GamePad, but the 2.4ghz spectrum is so saturated these days that as I'm writing this my Bluetooth earbuds keep cutting in and out, and last week we had to reconfigure our entire Zigbee network to use a new channel because of new and overwhelming interference. I highly doubt the GamePad will reach to my bedroom. The Vita struggles to do Remote Play to my PS4 that far away as well.

So I purchased Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition on Switch. I guess I made two purchases actually. This post isn't actually about the game, but as I was playing it on the Switch with the Switch Pro Controller, it just felt, wrong, and also after using the Wii U again I remembered just how comfortable the Wii U Pro Controller is – it is the comfiest controller I have ever used. So I purchased the 8BitDo Wireless Adapter 2.

8BitDo Wireless Adapter 2

Wow, that was a long preamble. I should work on how verbose I am. Anyway. I'm incredibly impressed by this thing. The marketing page did list "virtually no lag," which had me a tad concerned, but in my testing I have noticed, virtually no lag. It's at the point where I'm testing response times by switching back and forth between my Switch Pro Controller and coming up with "well, I don't know, maybe, barely, ish?" as my only determination. It's so negligible that I just can't even determine if it's there. Which is pretty impressive. Last night I got into a bit of a test between how it fared versus the Switch in handheld mode with joycons physically connected to the system. That was unfair, but even then the difference was negligible, and the bluetooth Switch Pro Controller would also lose to that.

However, interestingly, I feel like what little perceived lag that existed with the adapter on Switch (again, comparable to the existing Switch Pro Controller), that completely disappeared on PC. I plugged it into this little ThinkCentre we have on our TV and there was absolutely no discernible input lag.

So far I've used it to play:

Hyrule Warriors (Switch)

Link's Awakening (Switch)

Princess Peach: Showtime! (Switch)

Perfect Dark (Windows, PC decompilation)

Get in the Car, Loser! (Windows)

Princess Peach is a bit of a weird one because the whole game has input lag and minor frame dropping at various points. Did Nintendo get lazy and use Unreal Engine again?

It just works. It feels right, and rumble works beautifully. And I can finally use the Wii U Pro Controller on my computer! It's never worked plug-and-play like this. My only disappointments are minor:

There is no screenshot button on the Wii U Pro Controller

The button layout on Windows is Xbox layout, whereas a Switch controller over bluetooth is Nintendo layout.

The first is easily solved by using an Xbox controller or a PlayStation 3/4/5 controller or just keeping a joycon at my side. Oh yeah, it can do all those controllers too. In case you have a tough time using PlayStation controllers on your computer (I know under Windows they can sometimes be finicky). Or if you want to play Switch games with an Xbox or PlayStation controller. It can even use the PlayStation controllers' motion controls on Switch.

I've been very impressed, the set up is dead simple. You plug it in to your USB port, put your controller into pairing mode, press the sync button on the dongle, and they're paired. On Switch you do have to do one extra minor thing: go to Settings -> Controllers and Sensors -> Pro Controller Wired Communication: On. That's it.

Each dongle can only associate with one controller, so if you're looking to use multiple controllers like this, you will have to buy multiple dongles. A minor downside, but they're pretty cheap.

I intend to keep using this to play Switch games, it's quickly become my primary for any game that does not need motion controls (still pissed Nintendo never put those in the Wii U PRO Controller when even the Wii U GamePad had it). And just moving the dongle around makes it super easy to plug into my TV computer for emulation and Steam games. I definitely intend to make this one of my primary emulation controllers for anything that's too heavy for my RG353V handheld (I swear I have a review of that coming too).

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