Comment by Strom
3 years ago
Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft. That said, Logitech does make products in a wide price range and the low end isn't competitive with their own high end.
3 years ago
Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft. That said, Logitech does make products in a wide price range and the low end isn't competitive with their own high end.
"Low end" and "high end" in the gaming market doesn't necessarily equate to "reliability," however. "Style" and "customizability" are very high on the differentiators between low/high for gaming peripherals, neither of which are necessary on a sub.
The reviews for the controller (mentioned by name in the article, so easy to look up) are generally great (4.2/5 with thousands of reviews), and the 1/2-star reviews are as frequently about ergonomic issues as they are about reliability. Every batch of controllers is going to have some unreliable ones, so the fact that that doesn't stand out as the common complaint dragging the reviews down says something.
A lot of the rest of the choices for the sub sound sus, but not bothering to splurge on a game controller that cycles RGB is not worthy of a headline, IMO.
It’s not about having a RGB controller, it’s the fact you can get a COTS controller built for boats which is vastly less likely to crap out unexpectedly due to say condensation in an enclosed environment where people are exhaling water vapor.
You might generally be fine, but many crash investigation involved some cheap component failing as part of a longer sequence. Ie something fails and humidity increases then XYZ fails until eventually your margin of safety is gone and everyone dies.
The bigger issue is that it's a handheld controller, and looks wireless.
What happens if you drop it, it lands sticks-down, giving a sudden large control input to the thrusters? Given those stick extensions (which look 3D printed), the controls must be fairly sensitive?
Or if the wireless connection drops out (or the battery dies) when you're close to a shipwreck or other hazard that you don't want to get entangled in?
Sure, but the headlines are always "$30 video game controller" or "low-end videogame controller", not "videogame controller". I agree that that's the real problem, that using a videogame controller for life-or-death control is a bad idea, but I'm just peeved by the headlines that seem more upset that the videogame controller being used is inexpensive, and seem to insinuate that if they'd used an XBox Elite controller, maaaaybe that'd have been okay.
> Logitech has orders of magnitude more experience in manufacturing peripherals than Microsoft.
You know that saying that anybody can build a bridge, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands? From what I've seen and heard, Logitech has used their experience to make peripherals that barely last longer than the warranty/return period.
FWIW my 22 year old optical intellimouse from Microsoft is still going strong.
I have both a Logitech Gamepad and Logitech headset that are going ~15 years no issues. I wound up setting aside one of the MX mice after like a decade so I could have a mouse that had sensitivity buttons. It's my daily driver on my work system still.
Maybe those changes are recent but IME you've always had to figure out which are the quality lines of product from any peripheral manufacturer. I've seen dozens of the cheapo Logitech headsets broken and tossed over the years both at work and among friends. Meanwhile my G35 headset bought in 2009 has required two sets of replacement cushions in that time and still works great.
Even MS back in the Sidewinder days had their warts -- their gamepad was complete garbage while their Joystick was awesome (I still have mine).
I think GP's overall point though that peripherals like this aren't exactly unsuitable shouldn't be ignored. There's a huge advantage to something inexpensive that you can cheaply carry replacement parts for or whole replacement devices for. Once you go fly by wire (or dive by wire I guess in this case) it's not clear to me what advantage there is in designing your own bespoke system.
Well my G500s is working fine for last 10.
Also that controller is getting like 1/50th of use it would get under normal gamer so that's insanely weird detail to focus on.
I'd also imagine dropping ballast would need a controller in the first place.
From what I've seen Logitech stuff is next to indestructible (believe me I've tried).
Unfortunately, the cables on their newer headphones are made of the crappiest rubber possible. That part annihilated itself incredibly quickly.
Other than the mouse clickers going bad in about a year 4 times in a row...
there’s a logitech bluetooth silent mouse i really like and would carry it on my laptop at work from meeting room to meeting room. i had 3 in 2 years, dropped each once, they were all broken on the first fall.
kinda wish they were able to withstand falls onto hard surfaces but it’s also a) my fault, and b) not an expectation i have of a mouse in general.
but it’s also a good reason to not just take any consumer device onto a sub, because functioning after a drop would absolutely be a requirement.
Logitech has a lot of experience, i give you that. My MX518 lasted over 10 years, many other owners reported the same. More recent products by them die often before five years of use. Perverse incentives, news at 11. Sorry for the snark.
I've replaced the 518 with a g300 (I think) and while it was a good mouse, it broke down way too quick for my liking. Now a happy user of a deathadder hyperspeed.
The mx518 (and mx400 before it) were godlike but the newer stuff has been distinctly mediocre.
I had to return a mx master 3 after a year when the left click button wore out.
The article mentions that this gamepad was released in 2010, but also it's just a slight iteration on Logitech's Wireless RumblePad 2, a wireless version of the RumblePad 2 released around 2004.
The newer models just add X-input, change the button faces from 1234 to ABXY, and made the wireless receiver smaller.
I still have my rumblepad 2, it is a fine controller. Why they would use wireless here is beyond me however.
Yeah, the wireless is not good. My initial thought on the headline was Logitech's F310 controller which is wired and missing rumble, but besides that basically identical.
Even high end Logitech peripherals aren't exactly great. I bought a Logitech wireless keyboard with backlighting a few years ago. It was nice but there was some hardware bug and when not in use the lights would be flashing all day and night until the batteries run out [0]. I certainly hope their gamepads are more energy efficient than that!
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/LogitechG/comments/pt0fkp/logitech_...
I have the same keyboard (MX Keys). I didn't have the flashing-light problem, but the lights nevertheless would constantly turn themselves off, after a very short (~5s?) period of inactivity.
I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time trying to find a fix, including removing an internal cable and putting electrical tape over the top. Nothing worked. The closest I got was keeping the wireless keyboard plugged into its USB-C charger so that the timeout period before shutoff was longer than it was in battery-only mode.
All of which is annoying, because it's not cheap (>$100), and the fix is so stupefyingly simple - an addition of one or two settings in the configuration software. And, yes, countless people have reported this to Logitech and their 'support' consists, at best, of saying "I'll pass this on to The Team".
Never have I been more tempted to go all-in and become a firmware hacker, though the feasibility in time and probability of success are both quite low.
FWIW, I'd estimate that Microsoft has sold something like 200 million Xbox controllers.
To be fair, Microsoft also sold a lot of Xboxes that were misdesigned from a thermal perspective, and thus red ringed themselves.
The thermals weren't misdesigned exactly, but the solder was below expected performance in several key attributes. It is not the only product that got screwed by new leadfree solder being not the best at the time.
This type/class of wireless controllers are noticeably less dense and flimsier. They are not necessarily built worse, but this is "get what you pay for" product, which is to say it's great for undergraduate robotics projects that Microsoft or Sony designs at ~$65 is either an overkill or too complicated to interface with.
My work Logitech G502 wired mouse is in its 7th month of light use (only used on in-office days) and the cable has already split where it connects to the mouse.
Mass manufactured devices - particularly when they're mature - have the costs squeezed out of them to maximize profit. That means they ride the line close to failure to end of warranty.
I think I've seen Microsoft selling Logitech devices with Microsoft logos on them.