Opening the Asus ROG Raikiri Pro treats us to one of the cooler looking stock controllers on the market. It rocks the ROG brand stylings, layering emblazoned plastic on the front panel with an angular RGB LED strip that bounces around the thumb stick. Towards the top of the faceplate sits a black and white OLED full of promise, but like most of the controller, it’s best to lower those expectations as the Raikiri Pro doesn’t live up to its own unboxing hype.
Turning on this Xbox form factor controller will let you see these LEDs in action, with a pulsing rainbow that darts across the front. The light pattern is meant to track around the right thumb stick but is obscured by the heavier plastic and the effect isn’t quite as cool as I expected. During startup, the Asus ROG logo also bounces proudly on the OLED screen for an annoyingly long time before calming down. It can then be used to navigate a limited menu using dedicated buttons on the top of the controller, which is awful and I avoid doing so wherever possible. Unfortunately it’s the only way to swap between connectivity modes, so if you want to swap between dongle and Bluetooth you’ll be forced into using it at some point.
