If you're on linux, DualSense controllers are awesome. I got mine for ~ $20 from a /r/buildapcsales post.

I have a dualshock 4 that I use wired x3.. honestly atm im just kinda waiting to see if a steam controller 2 comes out cause most of the controllers I saw on the market were lacking a decent bit of features, or basically the same as I have for double the price tho

I got a wired wired XBox360 controller at GameStop 10 years ago for a really good price and it works wonders! I'm on Windows 8.1 and for most games it doesn't require any sort of configuration either, I just plug it in and it works right away

If you don't care about anything but having a controller, I always recommend the Logitech F310. It's cheap and durable, it also supports both Xinput and DirectInput by changing a toggle switch on the bottom, so it can be used even in older games that don't have modern controller support without any external emulation layer.

The 8bitdo ultimate or 2C wired look like good options. I haven't used any of their controllers but I've heard good things about them, and they have hall effect joysticks!

Note: this controller not suitable for submarines.

I think the top tier controllers unfortunately have a rechargable battery in them, some can be hooked up wired and act as so but eventually some day in the future the battery will die from the constant charging and might bloat. If anyone still makes a top tier wired controller it prob wouldnt work with the switch so theyd be losing out on sales for a major console and price the controller higher to make up for it. Essentially wired controllers have become a nieche product. If you find anything wired as good as guilikits controllers though let me know as well since thatd be pretty sick.

They’re great on windows too, and the extra features like the triggers are really nice for the games they work in

Any XBOX style controller that uses TMR sensors for the sticks, so you don't ever have to worry about atick drift.

Most wireless controllers today have an integrated battery and can be used in either wired or wireless mode. So it's really just that the battery adds a bit of weight, and someday the thing will fail and maybe cause electrical failure of the gamepad. If that doesn't bother you, could get a dual one and just use it in wireless mode. That being said, I agree with the general principle that one should use wired unless there's a compelling reason otherwise. Avoids security problems, interference issues, and a mess of compatibility issues. I had a Logitech F710 that used a proprietary wireless 2.4 GHz protocol. It didn't support wired mode. At some point, something in my environment started blasting enough 2.4 GHz radio emissions that every now and then, the connection would briefly drop, which was absolutely infuriating, since it could cause one to lose in fast-paced action games. If you very specifically want a gamepad that is only wired...hmm. There are a bunch of low-end, generic wired-only controllers. I can't specifically recommend one of those; I've used a few, but all the ones I've used have had some things that annoy me, and probably a lot of the brands are throwaway ones that have gone under. If you want high-end...most of those are dual wired/wireless. IIRC, Thrustmaster has a high-end gamepad with swappable elements, and IIRC it's wired-only, remember seeing that and thinking "wow, weird, most high-end gamepads are dual". I haven't used it myself. *goes to look* Yeah, the Thrustmaster S eSwap Pro, and it's wired-only. https://eshop.thrustmaster.com/en_us/eswap-s-pro-controller.html Thrustmaster has a long history of making pricey-but-nice high-end game peripherals --- I think the first joystick I ever saw for sale was a nice metal thing from them at a computer expo in the early 1990s --- so I'd generally be willing to try them, if you can live with the price. I don't know if they have Hall effect analog sticks, which some people --- including myself --- like, as they're immune to drift. *kagis* It sounds like the gamepad ships with standard potentiometer-based analog sticks, but that if one is willing to throw even more money at the gamepad, they do sell optional Hall effect sticks that can be swapped in. https://www.thrustmaster.com/en-us/products/eswap-sh5-hall-stick-module/ However, the price is also pretty much in line with their history of being expensive. The basic gamepad is $140, and then *each* Hall effect analog stick module is another $40, which is very expensive for a gamepad; you can get inexpensive wired-only gamepads for something like $15, though they might not have amenities like rumble motors. I've never actually owned a Thrustmaster product myself. I mostly went with CH stuff (another long-running American game input device manufacturer; they tend to make less-expensive, less-nice stuff). But I've definitely heard no shortage of positive stuff about Thrustmaster products over the decades. Might be worth considering if you don't care about the price, specifically want wired, and are looking for high-end stuff.

> most of the controllers I saw on the market were lacking a decent bit of features Yeah, I've screwed that up on a number of occasions before. Didn't think about the fact that there's actually a set of features that I do care about, get a gamepad, get it, and then discover that it doesn't do everything I want. Wish that there was some checklist out there so that people at least think of them before buying, even if it's not features that they care about. Something like: * Wired mode of operation. * Wireless mode * Input latency. Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever seen game controller companies rate and provide this, though several of people have gone out and built measuring systems and then rated a variety of controllers. There is a surprising degree of variation in latency among gamepads. There's also some variation for a given controller (especially for wireless), and the latency is large enough to be noticeable, especially for Bluetooth. [Some discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/Controller/comments/17hj57j/4_ways_to_measure_gamepad_latency_and_one_of_them/), and a database of measured latencies from someone doing so: https://gamepadla.com/ * Rumble motors. This is one of my big "I don't think about it at purchase time and then get a gamepad that lacks a feature that I want" issues. * [Hall effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect) analog sticks. These avoid [stick drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_stick#Neutral_position_and_drifting). I still don't know what happened here, but twenty years ago, I had a Playstation 2 gamepad with analog sticks using regular old potentiometers that never saw drift. Today, a lot of the gamepads I do get, even when new, don't reliably reach a perfect zero when my thumb is off them. It might be that that older gamepad had a larger hardware-imposed dead zone, and that newer gamepads don't and expect one to deal with it at the PC level (which is obnoxious, IMHO), but it was enough to drive me bonkers. Hall effect analog sticks, unlike those with traditional potentiometers, don't have stick drift, will reliably zero. They do cost more, but I personally am fed up enough with modern, potentiometer-based sticks not zeroing that I always want this. * Hall effect buttons. I don't see the point -- button sensors don't have any problem, in my experience -- but some gamepads have these. * Gyro * RGB LED * Battery life * Weight * Additional buttons that one can tie macros or whatever to. * XBox-style face button layout vs Nintendo-style face button layout. If you don't care about correct button labels, Steam will let one swap these in Steam Input, but I've run into a couple of games that don't like Steam Input, and if you play games outside of Steam, that's not available, will need to do up some other form of mapping. * XBox-style vs Playstation-style analog/D-pad placement * DualSense-style haptic feedback. From memory, PC video game support for this is very rare, but some people might care. * Swappable, rather than built-in, batteries. Only an issue for wireless controllers. One reason I got a Logitech F710 some time back was because I wanted to have swappable AA batteries. Will add weight. * Depth of analog trigger pull. * Force required to depress buttons. I have had gamepads that are fatiguing. As far as I can tell, gamepad manufacturers don't normally list this (unlike keyboard manufacturers, where keyswitch manufacturers do a great job of providing a whole graph of pressure at various depression depths). * Slightly clicky face buttons. This has become more popular recently, as best I can tell. * Linux support. Not usually an issue, but I had a newly-released official XBox controller that had some kind of authentication thing that made it a pain to get working at one point. * Linux Bluetooth support. This actually *has*, surprisingly-enough, been an issue for me with some official console joysticks. I think it was a DualSense gamepad that I had a ton of trouble with, probably non-standard stuff from Sony. * Linux support for updating controller firmware. Not going to be an issue with no-name $15 controllers, since there won't be updates. I have had to use an XBox to update controller firmware before, after I couldn't convince Linux to do it, even with a passthrough USB Windows VM. * Rounded D-pads. If you've ever used the original NES controller, you know that you can really start to hurt with rigid, squared-off edges. Most modern controllers are a lot more-comfortable than that. * Headphones/headset jack. I don't route my headphones through my gamepad, but if you use a gamepad in wireless mode a long way from the computer along with wired headphones, it might be very desireable. * Can be disassembled. Some gamepads have all sorts of really weird security bits required.

I've had an old Xbox 360 style controller for PC for like 15 years probably and never had any problems with it. Just plug and play. I personally have always preferred Xbox style controllers, though having tried the bells and whistles like adaptive triggers on the PS5 controller does make me consider upgrading at some point.

PowerA Xbox controllers are wired, cheap and actually very nice to use.

They used the F710. If they had used the F310, they would all still be alive.

The cheap part of PowerA controllers is a little of why I asked, as I've not had an opportunity to ask anyone that's used them.

I have a 360 controller and Microsoft offers a USB wireless dongle that lets me hook up any standard 360 controller. It pretty much works like it of the box with any game.

Yeah in hindsight I'm kicking myself for not having gotten one like that, but I had trouble finding wired ones at the time (and didn't think I'd get tired of the battery maintenance), which surprised me.

This is a good list, but y'know a niche ya missed? Pressure sensitive buttons, only really useful for those emulating old games that used them, but still a fun feature to remember.

I've had troubles on my windows machine with the controller not registering in-game. I have to use a third party program DSX to make it work.