A professional player. A top-level esports athlete. A recognized figure in competitive shooting circles; I am none of those things. But could that be due to my choice of driver? Could something that’s a step up from the standard Xbox pad I use for PC and console literally improve my gameplay?
Thrustmaster HEART (a rather roundabout acronym that stands for “Hall Effect AccuRate Technology”; more on what that means shortly) promises to do just that, offering greater precision and responsiveness to deliver improved gaming performance, without breaking the bank. . At its core, it aims to be an entry-level professional controller.
This may seem like an oxymoron, but it makes some sense once the HEART is in your hands. This is a pad that offers a familiar layout, the same as on Xbox, which has become almost the default for most games in recent years, plus two programmable paddle buttons on the back, with a feel (mostly) premium. A soft texture on the grips and triggers ensures fingers don’t slip, the thumbs have a satisfying degree of resistance, and those extra paddles sit comfortably under the middle finger of each hand. Its asymmetrical black and white design also catches the eye, reinforced by a single LED strip that splits each side when in use.
Photography: Thrustmaster
The only detractors from that premium feel are an ugly, bulky D-pad and the Xbox function buttons (view, menu, and share) that are too small. The D-pad is the worst and seems at odds with the elegant design approach that HEART takes. Their rounded tips result in a feeling that there is no real delineation between their directions and, with no texture on their surface, the thumb glides aimlessly over them. Meanwhile, the function buttons are small and shallow, making them look insubstantial.
Still, the design impresses for the most part and Thrustmaster builds it around improved parts compared to standard controllers. While it doesn’t have the sometimes overwhelming variety of interchangeable components and meticulous degrees of customization that the high-end likes from Microsoft Xbox Elite or Thrustmaster himself Exchange X2 As offered, the HEART’s mechanical buttons provide satisfying recoil with each press, its triggers feel smooth, and its control sticks slide under your thumbs.
magnetic attraction
It is in the joysticks where some of the pad’s cutting-edge technology is found. Most standard controllers determine the position of a lever using potentiometers, where (very simply) a touch pad measures resistance as you move the lever. The problem is that the friction of the process (thousands of micromovements in each gaming session, each of which rubs against the contacts) wears out the components over time. This results in “stick drift”, where your on-screen character or target can wander off on their own. The HEART, on the other hand, uses magnets, and the position of the stick is determined (again, very simply) by the direction in which electrons are pushed onto a sensor.
This is the acronym Hall effect, named after physicist Edwin Hall, who discovered it, and while he probably didn’t anticipate its application to better video game controllers in 1879, the key takeaway is that the process is frictionless. That means not only that the components don’t degrade over time, but that their position can be measured much more accurately in the first place: Thrustmaster says they can be tracked to within 0.01 degrees of movement. But does that really translate into better in-game performance?