72 hours with the Flydigi Apex 4. My thoughts...

3 month update: Absolutely no changes to my review. Still going strong! I've opened it up, replaced the back buttons with paddles, dropped it once or twice and adjusted the thumbstick tension multiple times.

TLDR; It's probably the best controller I've ever owned!

Ok, I'll assume you've already seen some of the reviews so I won't waste your time with things you probably already know about this thing (Such as Hall Effect sticks or adaptive triggers) and start talking about others instead.

1: The battery life on this thing is no joke. I kept it on all day yesterday and accidentally fell asleep with it on (about 18-20 hours powered on, full RGB on, screen as gif always on) and when I checked the battery life, it still had about 30% left! Definite improvement over the Turtle Beach Stealth Ultra where I only had 10 hours with everything turned off.

2: The Bluetooth mode is 500hz on switch and dinput, connecting to the PC via switch mode allows 500hz gyro Polling rate which can be configured in the steam controller config menu (probably rewasd too, as steam just thinks it's a Switch pro controller). This is important because: There are some people out there (myself included) that would prefer to configure gyro using Steam itself rather than using the Flydigi application to do it all.

3: It's very heavy. Heavier than the Dualsense. Personally, I love the weight to it. It's preference, some people prefer a lighter pad, others a heavier one. I'm in the latter group.

4: It feels very premium! From the materials to the grip on the back that feels really nice tbh. I haven't felt a controller with this kind of grip feel before. The removable faceplate is also a nice touch.

5: If you look at images for this controller, you'll notice that the thumbsticks have a gap at the sides. Initially this was a concern of mine because I don't want random stuff falling down the sides over time but luckily, when I received it I noticed that removable faceplate is there.

6: You can press all 4 Dpad directions at the same time BUT you'd need to really go out of your way to do so. It's not at all easy to do to the point where it would concern fighting games. On the topic of Dpads this one is hands down my favorite Dpad of all time. Super satisfying to spam 😂

7: The controllers screen can be changed to English language.

8: The sticks have an interesting "snap" to help them recenter. The sound is almost like one of those old coiled door stoppers that had a "boing" to them. Doesn't concern me at all and it's not something I notice in-game.

9: You can kind of turn the screen off (not really) by creating a custom 300x150 solid black image and then using the software to upload an image to use as the screen. Doing this, in tandem with lowering the screen brightness to the lowest setting, is a way to achieve this but if you look closely you can still see that it's a screen. Other than this I have not found a way to turn the screen off.

10: The "Start" and "Select" buttons, while not perfect, are actually in a better position than I thought they would be. Initially, I compared the positions of them to the Gamesir T4 Kaleid, and while they are similar, the Apex 4 actually brings the buttons in closer to the middle vs the T4 Kaleid which results in a much better and very noticeable improvement. Still not as good as normal positions, but a heck of a step up in comfort compared to previous similar button positions. The "Start" and "Select" buttons are also weirdly nice to press.

11: The on-board profiles should cover you between it's 4 profiles. Example: You can set Config 1 to use no trigger profiles, and A, B, X, Y on the rear buttons. If you decide to switch to config 2 which has hair triggers and Dpad directions instead, then pressing the button combo for profile 2 will activate all of this. You can also do this all manually from the controller itself and stick with only 1 profile. This just makes it easier to switch between games.

In my case, I have a "General" (Config 1) profile with default triggers and A, B, X, Y on the rear buttons. Then I have my "Shooter" (Config 2) profile which has vibration triggers on L2 and R2 and I also use my hair triggers (trigger stops) on profile 3.

Switching between my general and shooter profile is as easy as holding "Select" and then pressing "B" for config 2 (Shooter). When I'm done and want to go back to "General" I hold "Select" and then press "A" for config 1. Again, you can do this from the controller menu if you want to swap to these profiles without controller combos.

12: The triggers different types built in to the controller are more than sufficient for me. Here are the modes: Normal, Race, Sniper, Recoil, Trigger lock, Vibration.

Normal = No resistance on triggers.

Race = Low resistance on triggers (Like a brake pedal).

Sniper = Feels like pulling a trigger. Some resistance to start followed by no resistance after a threshold. Snappy.

Recoil = Generic full automatic gun emulation. It's OK but vibration is better imo.

Trigger lock = Trigger locks. Hair triggers. A point you set to tell a game "I can't be bothered to fully press this trigger so if I tap it a bit, that means I've pressed it fully" (basically). Can choose between 3 trigger locks on the controller itself or go into the software to dive deep into configuring it.

Vibration = Not exactly what you think. It does vibrate, sure, but it's more than that. It seems to take into account the current vibration motor and possibly use that data to emulate a dynamic adaptive trigger than can apply dynamic vibrations, dynamic adjustments to the resistances and is also able to emulate gunfire (not incredibly accurately but still very good nonetheless considering it can be used on any game). This has to be my favorite tbh. I alternate between "Normal", "Trigger lock" and "Vibration". Playing something like Call of Duty brings on a very similar experience to the official Dualsense support for the game. It's nowhere near on that same level but it's still very good!

13: Any button on the controller can be used on the rear buttons. Remapping the buttons can be done on the fly from the controller itself. The turtle beach stealth ultra could not remap "Start" or "Select" so this is a big W for me.

14: You can control "Screen Brightness", "Vibration strength", "Screen Language", "Hibernation" Timer (controller auto power off) and factory reset all from the controller screen itself.

15: The vibration is DEEP. It's a very premium, deep, rumble. Impressed.

There are other posts about this controller diving into the average error rate of the sticks, etc so I decided to skip that info in my post. If you want to find more information like that then search this sub for the "Flydigi Apex 4" and you'll see a few posts.

Overall, I wholeheartedly give this pad the thumbs up!

Edit: I've encountered an issue with the adaptive triggers in the space station application, if you're reading this and you're experiencing the same issue i had with the app crashing when trying to open the list of games with adaptive triggers then check out my fix here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Controller/comments/1bt02z5/ive_found_a_fix_for_the_flydigi_apex_4_adaptive/