8bitdo Ultimate 2 Bluetooth review: so close to perfect

Ever since I got my Bazzite HTPC running in good order earlier this year, I had been on the lookout for a quartet of controllers so I could get that full-fledged console experience. I had been keeping my eye on 8bitdo's Ultimate controllers for a good deal, but saw earlier this month that the Ultimate 2 Bluetooth was discounted pretty heavily, so I bought them. I've been using the U2B for about a month, and I'm pretty impressed, but also a little sad that 8bitdo stopped just short of sheer perfection.

To be clear, this is not a review for the similarly named Ultimate 2 Wireless, which has caused me and presumably lots of other people a good deal of confusion. The main differences between these controllers is that the U2W has the Xbox layout while the U2B has the Nintendo layout, and the U2B's Bluetooth support is for basically every kind of device while the U2W is mainly for PC and Android.

USB, Bluetooth, and charging stands

Anyways, for me the defining characteristic of this controller is the dual communication modes: 2.4 GHz wireless over a USB receiver and Bluetooth. The two modes can be easily toggled with a switch on the back of the controller. For most people, this feature is probably neat and offers a great level of compatibility with lots of hardware, but is otherwise not terribly useful.

Personally though, I think having both wireless USB and Bluetooth is the main thing that makes this a great controller. Like I said, I have a HTPC for gaming, but I also have a Switch 2, and I have the USB receivers plugged into the HTPC while in Bluetooth mode the controllers are paired to my Switch 2. One set of four controllers can be used seamlessly with two different consoles, which I think is a big deal for convenience and value.

The U2B also comes with a charging stand, which connects via USB-A to -C cable. What's cool is that the stand also has a plug-in for the USB receiver, meaning charging and communication requires just one port. I have all four of my charging stands on top of my console (as in furniture), right next to my TV, and I've corralled the wires into a cable management tube thing to make it look nicer. With previous controllers, they just had to exist somewhere like on top of a random surface or in a basket, but now there's a place for them all.

By default, the U2B turns on as soon as it leaves the charging stand, which was somewhat of a mixed bag in my experience. When I was just using it for my HTPC, it would instantly wake it up (though only after I created a script in Bazzite to enable this), and in turn would also wake up the TV and automatically switch the input thanks to CEC. Simply picking up a controller can drop you right into your console; it's very lazy and very cool.

However, it didn't take me long to realize that this setup has some issues. If I have a controller set to 2.4 GHz mode and want to play on my Switch 2, picking up the controller is going to automatically wake my HTPC. There's no button or switch or firmware setting that stops the U2B from waking up as soon as it's removed from the charging stand, so the only realistic workaround is flicking the mode back to Bluetooth every time the controller is placed on the stand.

Another power state issue is when the U2B powers off, which happens automatically if the device it's connected to turns off or goes to sleep. For some reason, the U2B takes a few seconds to fully power down, and while it's powering down, it's sending signals to its USB receiver. At least in the case of my HTPC, it goes to sleep before the U2B controller, receives its last communications, and promptly wakes back up. This makes it very hard to put a PC to sleep while using the U2B. There are some workarounds: switching to Bluetooth just before sleep happens, putting the controller on the stand and letting the PC go to sleep automatically, or simply turning off USB wakeup are all options.

I ended up just going with that last option. It was really cool to just pick up a controller and have to do nothing else, but it wasn't working for my setup. If 8bitdo had implemented a setting somewhere to toggle automatically waking up, everything would be perfect. Instead, I manually press the power button on my HTPC and Switch 2, then pick up a controller. It's not that much more effort, but it's a shame that just two issues that seem pretty fixable are getting in the way of my ideal setup.

The only other bug I've experienced in regards to powering on is weird: sometimes, the controller will get recognized as a Switch controller, not an 8bitdo controller (or according to Steam, an Xbox-like controller). For the most part this doesn't really impact anything, but I've already configured all my controller options on each one in Bazzite, so it's kind of annoying. I can solve this by power cycling, so it's not the worst thing in the world, but I would much prefer it just work out of the box.

And I have absolutely no idea how this could even be happening. It didn't start until kind of recently either. Perhaps the controller is starting up in a different state, the U2W has both XInput and DInput modes but as far as I can tell, the U2B doesn't, unless it does and it's just buggy? I really don't know.

The buttons are pretty nice

I'm not exactly a huge controller enthusiast, so I'm sure my description here will be lacking, but the buttons on the U2B feel great to me. We have the normal assortment here: ABXY, a D-pad, sticks (Hall Effect too, so no drifting), plus and minus (or select and start), a home/power button, shoulder and trigger buttons, but also some extra buttons in the form of two smaller shoulder buttons next to the normal ones, two grip buttons like the Steam Deck has, and some settings-related buttons. The trigger buttons also have a toggle for whether they're analog or digital, which I didn't even know was possible.

I really like the feel 8bitdo achieved with these buttons. ABXY have that blended clicky and bouncy feeling you'd like to have (or at least that's what I like), the D-pad is on the clickier side which I think is good, and basically all the other buttons have a very tactile, clicky response that is certainly loud, but feels really good and is very satisfying. This is the kind of controller I love to push buttons on just for the sake of it.

Then there's the non-standard buttons 8bitdo included. Well, one of them is somewhat standard: the square button, which on PC and the Switch is used for screenshots and recordings. Then there's the star and profile buttons. The latter is pretty straightforward, it switches the controller to one of three profiles that can be created in 8bitdo's Ultimate Software V2 (more on that later).

The star button is used for tons of custom stuff that doesn't require that Ultimate Software V2 app. It's used to interact with turbo mode, to bind the extra shoulder and grip buttons to other buttons, and to customize the RGB settings for the LED rings around the sticks (personally, I turned them off).

The on-the-fly keybinding stuff is pretty neat, and I've found it quite useful in Enter the Gungeon which I picked up again recently. In Gungeon, I found myself having to go from right shoulder to right trigger if I wanted to take advantage of my active items (which can be pretty important), and in my experience this is kinda hard to do in a firefight. But I mapped the right extra shoulder button to right trigger, and now it's much easier.

There's also another item in game that can be used either by clicking both sticks in or with a normal button; I used to do the former, but am now doing the latter with the Y button (which I never used) and the left extra shoulder is bound to Y. Basically, my index fingers are glued to the shoulder and extra shoulder buttons, which is really nice. Makes me wonder why this isn't standard, the whole trigger concept seems kind of silly now.

I have encountered situations where my controller just forgets its keybinds after I put it back on the charging stand. It's not a huge deal, but it'd be nice if this didn't happen, especially since I don't know for sure until I check it myself. On the plus side, an LED on the front of the controller pulsates whenever a programmed extra button is being pressed; if it doesn't flash, it's not programmed.

One of the things that stops the U2B from being more or less perfect is the lack of true recognition of the extra buttons directly in Steam with Steam Input. They don't show up alongside A, L2, or up on the D-pad for instance; the extra buttons can only be bound to other buttons. This is apparently not the case for the U2W, which Steam has built-in support for and recognizes as a U2W and not just another Xbox controller or whatever.

This isn't a huge deal, but it would be nice to have a way to customize my controls per-game rather than having to do so on-the-fly or use one of the three profile slots that can only be programmed with an app. And if the U2W has this, surely the U2B could have also gotten this functionality? I really hope it's not just a firmware thing, because then there's just no reason why this controller has been out for so long without such a basic feature.

The Ultimate Software V2 app is kinda useless to me for a couple of reasons

So 8bitdo has this Ultimate Software V2 thing you can use to customize your controller, and it's only for Windows and MacOS. While I could see myself getting a Mac in the distant future, my HTPC runs Bazzite and my laptop has dual boot with CachyOS and Windows, except I rarely ever use Windows now. As far as I'm concerned, Ultimate Software V2 basically doesn't exist.

I don't think I'm missing out on much though. I did grab it for my Windows installation, but only to update all the controllers. Past that, the only other functionality I could get is programming my button profiles, but I'm not playing multiple games right now, and even if I were I'd be surprised if I was playing multiple games that needed custom buttons. Sure, it's useful in Gungeon, but that's a game where your index fingers are almost always on the shoulder and trigger buttons while your thumbs are on the sticks. I'm perfectly happy with just the usual buttons in nearly every other game.

Were there more to Ultimate Software V2, I'd probably be more irritated about it not having Linux support. Really, the only thing I'm hoping 8bitdo will do down the line is enable the extra buttons to work directly with Steam Input, which would just sideline Ultimate Software V2 even further. Right now, the whole profile thing is just a workaround, and not a particularly useful one for me when I can just reprogram the buttons with the controller alone.

8bitdo did a nearly perfect job with the Ultimate 2 Bluetooth, and they aren't even charging much for it

So, overall I'm very happy with the U2B, I don't regret getting four of them at all. The great design is one reason why I don't have buyer's remorse, but another reason is that these controllers are actually pretty cheap. The U2B is nominally available for $70, but sometimes certain colors will go for $60, and I even saw it go for $52 almost right after I bought mine at $58 (okay, I do regret not saving an extra $24 there).

Even if we just take the U2B as a good controller, it's a better deal than the PS5 DualSense at $75, and the Switch 2 Pro Controller at an insane $90. But it's not just a good controller, the U2B has an assortment of great features and great buttons. I feel like I saved a ton of money going with the U2B for my HTPC and my Switch 2 beyond the sticker price, considering I didn't have to buy a set for each device.

If 8bitdo could somehow address the issues I've encountered with the U2B, I'd probably keep them all until they broke. I seriously don't see myself getting any new controllers in the next few years unless I have to.