Exclusive: PB Tails Defender Limited Edition review, the world's first TMR stick controller

Back in March I was impressed by the PB Tails Crush controller in its Ghost metal flavour, though it did have several issues that needed addressing, I was then doubly impressed by how responsive PB Tails was to feedback and their goal to address issues as they explore solutions and updates over time.

Fast-forward five months and the Crush series has had firmware updates to remedy many of the problems I and others highlighted, along with a new model, the Defender, joining the model family.

The Defender is a limited edition run of only 999 being produced, with each one being hand-finished with a battle-scarred aesthetic, like something out of a Fallout game, and I'm all here it!

I'm told that no two Defenders will look the same, and all 999 customer orders will be individually numbered. Being limited edition isn't the only thing that makes the Defender special, though, as this is also the first Tunnelling Magnetoresistance (TMR) stick controller to hit the market. The sticks used in the Defender are manufactured by K-SILVER, a company established in 2016 and is dedicated to the research and production of high-end professional joysticks and sensors from gaming to industrial robotics applications.

As PB Tails reached out to me and offered an exclusive first look at this controller, this will be the first TMR controller review online.

TMR sticks offer a more precise way of detecting magnetic resistance as well as offering power consumption savings (4 milliamps Vs 400 microamps) and stick response/latency advantages. This means that TMR sticks do not need to have as much processing/filtering applied by a controller manufacturer which can have a negative impact on how the sticks feel in games, a trait that is common in many Hall Effect joysticks today due to bad factory calibration or dodgy deadzones requiring filtering out to appear accurate, a false sense of hope, so to speak.

TMR sticks also have much finer control of small movements, where Hall Effect has an average points per axis rate in the hundreds, TMR reaches into the thousands. Equally, the polling rate can go up to 20-30,000Hz, not that this is ever going to be seen in a controller anytime soon, but the fact that the technology is capable of it is impressive.

New technologies like this don't always see a great start due to launch bugs that need addressing, but my first impressions have been excellent, and the only issues I have found have been fed back to PB Tails who are already working on fixes which will be in-place before customer orders ship later this month. The team's willingness to listen to community feedback deserves praise in my opinion, as it's something that too many companies just don't bother to pay attention to which leaves us consumers in frustration time after time.

Other brands such as EasySMX and GameSir have models coming very soon, as well as GuliKit releasing their in-house TMR modules for console controller retrofitting so that community members can beta test and provide feedback.

Specifications

Unboxing

In usual PB Tails fashion, the hard-shell carry case in the box is quite impressive, I wish it came with a carry handle, though, because it only has a loop to attach something to but that's about it, a minor gripe.

The interior has slots for spare joystick caps and the USB dongle, as well as a pocket for the USB cable and anything else. A nice quality carry case.

Construction & feel

At first glance you might think that the whole controller is metal, but it's only the top face plate that is wholly Zinc alloy, and the electroplated joysticks that are weighted metal. The rest is finished to look metal, and convincingly too.

With previous reviews of the Crush range which included a teardown, the trigger pivot hinge on the inside was shown to be metal not plastic, and whilst I have not done a teardown of this Defender variant, it is safe to assume that everything internally remains the same here since everything feels the same, just now with the newer joystick technology.

The whole controller looks and feels solid, and whilst the D-pad and ABXY buttons are not mechanical switches like on other controllers on the market, they are very nice tactile rubber membrane buttons. The accessory buttons are clicky microswitches, as are the two shoulder buttons.

In my review of the EasySMX X05, I said that the membrane buttons felt very good, the Defender's buttons one-up those and feel even better. Because of the internal structure, the ABXY buttons have definitive tactile feedback with no post-click travel. The actuation feels solid and is very easy to spam for games that require that style of play.

Likewise, the D-pad feels good, too. It's not the best D-pad I have used, that award goes to the 8BitDo Ultimate which has a nearly identical Nintendo style D-pad right down to the internal central rocker. The Defender's D-pad is good, though, no complaints, but nothing that sets it apart from anything else either.

The metal joystick tops feel very nice, but in cooler weather when fingers aren't naturally oiled, the lack of friction could be a problem for those with dry hands. The standard Crush came with alternative silicone joysticks in the case, but no extras are bundled with the Defender.

As I do like a bit of friction on the sticks, I applied two Pulsar Supergrip tapes to each stick. I use Supergrips on my gaming mice as they aid the feel of the buttons and add additional grip for snap movements. The same now applies to controller joysticks:

With this simple mod, the Defender's sticks offer all the grip I would ever need, and Supergrips are non-permanent so can be peeled off and stored when not needed, then re-applied with no loss in stickiness or grip. I recommend them in general to anyone who likes additional comfort and grip on any mouse/keyboard/controller.

In the hands, the Defender feels the same as the other Crush models. It shares the same shape and dimensions. Comfort is excellent, even though there is no knurled or textured grip on the underside of each grip, I was never left wanting during longer gaming sessions.

I especially like the way the shoulder buttons are shaped as the curve of the side of the controller hugs my palm allows both index fingers to flank the shoulder buttons naturally. Hopefully the GIF above highlights exactly what I mean, notice that the X10 (3rd controller shown) creates a gap between index finger and controller shoulder, this is not an ergonomic design and other controllers like those from FlyDigi employ this sharp angled shape design, too. EasySMX (wih the X05) and PB Tails have nailed the ergonomics for comfortable gaming for the most common grip style which is what official Xbox contorllers also take advantage of.

If I was to nitpick, then I'd have liked the 2.4GHz dongle to match the worn-out aesthetic from factory, too, as it's a bit out of place looking being bright purple. But it's going to be plugged into the back of the PC or monitor's USB hub, so out of sight, out of mind?

Customisation & features

The Defender doesn't come with any special features such as remappable paddle buttons on the underside, trigger lock-out or an accompanying app to configure additional settings.

The extent of features includes RGB lighting in the form of a light bar at the bottom, a home button LED which acts as the mode indicator and low battery indicator, as well as backlit ABXY buttons. The colour of the lightbar can be customised using the left joystick to a specific colour of choice, as well as preset colours for the ABXY buttons.

The lighting can also be dimmed or turned off, although the home button LED always remains active and in a dim state so isn't distracting.

One feature I do like is that after about a minute of inactivity the Defender goes into sleep mode. Moving or lifting it wakes it back up. A further couple of minutes later it fully turns off. If connected via the 2.4GHz dongle, then disconnecting the dongle will shut the controller down.

Personally, I like to connect the dongle only when I'm using the controller, so this is a nice feature. Manually turning the controller off takes a 10-second hold of the home button.

Another nicely implemented feature is the time to connect when powering it on. I have repeated this countless times now and every single time the controller has connected to the 2.4GHz dongle within 1 second. This is amazing to see as typically these can be hit and miss. Both of my EasySMX controllers often miss first connect and require power cycling to then reconnect. Whatever brightness and RGB mode you set is restored within another second of connection being established.

Bluetooth is supported, too. There's nothing much more to add to this other than it works as expected and operates at the same 125Hz. Holding the pairing button at the top of the controller initiates wireless pairing mode whether Bluetooth or the 2.4GHz dongle.

There are three input modes (Switch input, Dinput, Xinput) that can be toggled by holding both "+" and "-" buttons together for three seconds. Windows will make a connection sound which denotes the mode has switched, though the controller will not vibrate or indicate otherwise. The only way to tell what mode you are in is to load up a game and view the name of the controller, or check in Steam, or just view it in Gamepad Tester.

It is worth noting that only in Switch input mode is the gyro motion control available. When using motion controls on PC, the 2.4GHz dongle can also be used easily, although the first time requires an extra process which should honestly be a bit simpler, but here it is nonetheless:

The toggle switch on the top of the controller needs to be flicked to the "S" position, this sets the controller to Switch input mode. The controller then needs to be powered up, holding the wireless pairing button on the USB dongle will activate pairing mode, then the paring button on the top of the controller can be pressed to pair up to the dongle. It needs to tell the OS that it is in Switch input mode, which is done by holding "+" and "-" together for three seconds, Windows will make a connection noise.

The controller is now paired to the wireless dongle in Switch Input. From now on whenever Switch Input is desired, simply flick the switch to the S position.

To get back into Xinput, simply flick the switch to the "X" position and be sure to hold "+" and "-" again for three seconds, but this time twice so it cycles from Dinput and then Xinput. Windows will make the connection sound twice as well.

Performance - Measurements

Straight out of the box I found the Defender impressively responsive. The first thing I do with a new controller is test that the sticks are calibrated to some degree at the factory, and with these being TMR sticks, nobody really knows what to expect with brand new technology in this implementation.

These measurements are very good, especially given that this is first generation of the technology and the first controller that has made it into production and being sold. Joystick sensors aren't actually round anyway, they are square, so some filtering has to be applied by the controller manufacturer to apply circularity to them as joysticks are used within a 360 degree circle.

To test this, I removed the face plate where we can view the raw square sensor regions, the edge run also reveals that even this area isn't being filtered to appear smooth:

These TMR sticks come with a small amount of inner deadzone that doesn't seem to be a concern, but I raised the question with PB Tails and was told that it will be able to be disabled in a firmware update within the next week.

I would say the way PB Tails has implemented any filtering/processing has been done with the best intentions. There is no fake circle out of the box, no obvious signs of laggy processing, and even with the face plate removed we can see some honest data being measured with nothing really being hidden.

There is also no fake circularity filter being applied as shown by the Joystick Analyzer above. An average error rate of ~9% is perfectly normal and for all intents and purposes, these TMR sticks at this stage are showing strong potential.

I also tested snap-back of the sticks and how quickly the processing responds to it by recording high framerate capture of the action (240fps video on a 240Hz OLED, then slowed down to 1/4 @ 60fps):

Compare this with the EasySMX X05's Hall Effect sticks shown below you can see that the snap-back has obvious filtering stopping the on-screen cursor from bouncing beyond the centre point, even though the joystick itself is bouncing physically beyond the centre:

This lends further credibility that TMR sticks resolve greater detail and are more precise for smaller rapid movement, which the above demonstrates in a rudimentary sort of way.

Also bear in mind that in the above slow-mo captures, the X05 is at 250Hz whilst the Defender is registering ~130Hz. It shows that the implementation and technology at play matters more than just high polling rate numbers, and this would also align with findings with other Hall Effect controllers which have 500Hz and 100Hz polling rates which show heavy processing/filtering resulting in erratic measurements.

Update: Just as PB Tails promised, the new firmware just landed (version 2.0.7) which enables toggling of the inner deadzones by holding the buttons "T", "-", "+" for two seconds until the home button LED flashes twice and the controller vibrates. The LED flashing purple indicates deadzones are on, red indicates off, very simple stuff.

It's better for me to show the difference in practice via a video:

Performance - Gaming

Now that I had a good idea of where the TMR sticks are at a technical level of performance, it was time to fire up some games and put it to the real test, because measurements only tell half the story.

I first played the three games I am currently putting time into, Cyberpunk 2077, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Doom 3 BFG mod edition running in DX12 with some extended controller support:

In all instances the TMR sticks performed very well. I was able to reduce the software deadzones in either Steam or the game/emulator which meant I was only going to experience the minor deadzone built into the controller, and here I had no problem at all even with tiny movements to either stick, these inputs were registered on-screen.

Once the new firmware is applied, this will be even tighter which will be interesting to see, as doing this on Hall Effect sticks often results in some minor drift as the snap-back to centre isn't as articulate as it appears to be on this TMR solution. I will add an update to this section once the firmware update lands.

I also tried motion control via Steam Input's Gyro to Mouse option for Cyberpunk. Once Steam had calibrated the gyros, the results in-game were much better than the motion controls I originally tried back in March on the Crush Ghost controller. Refinement in firmware updates have improved this area since the Defender still has the same 6-axis gyroscope configuration.

What I see now is much more responsive motion controls, the cursor on the screen reacts nearly instantly to how much I move the controller in the air, as well as in-game for camera look. The motion controls in Steam gyro support can be tweaked even further to iron out any irrational jitter, but this requires time to sit down and do.

The vibration motors are also good, they're not the strongest out of all the controllers I have owned and used, that award goes to the GameSir Kaleid 2024 edition, but the ones in the Defender are still stronger than the EasySMX X10, just not quite as strong as the ones in the X05.

The D-pad performance is often overlooked in controller reviews, I'm guilty of that myself from previous reviews so I'll be refining that going forwards. Membrane buttons feature on the Crush series controllers, the D-pad is size like a traditional Nintendo controller pad which I've always been a fan of, and in this implementation the surface of the D-pad is slightly more concave than those on Nintendo controllers.

For fighting games, the shape and type of D-pad can make or break your performance, it's been some years (decades!) since I last played this genre properly, so I fired up the 30th Anniversary Collection of Street Fighter collection and realised that I wasn't as good as I once was, but even still, learning the special moves again was easy:

Being able to pull off certain special moves, or even simple ones like jumping forwards or backwards requires being able to easily activate diagonal. This is done at a switch level by combining two of the 4-way membrane buttons on the D-pad.

Being able to do this without needing excessive thumb pressure is important, and mechanical switch D-pads such as those on the GameSir Cyclone Pro and the EasySMX X10 require a lot more abnormal pressure to activate two directional switches to get diagonal. This is normally not a problem for all other game genres, but fighting games are timing based, so quick switch activation is paramount.

On the PB Tails Crush, because it is membrane and a simple implementation, diagonal is easily activated. To show how easy, here's a visual demonstration compared to the EasySMX X10 (mechanical) and X05 (membrane with increased pressure), all I'm doing here is holding the down button on the D-pad then applying pressure to the left and right edges of it to see if the left and right buttons also activate which would translate to diagonal in a game:

Conclusion

I said in my last review that the EasySMX X05 was my new favourite budget friendly controller without any of the issues that come with buying on a budget thanks to how well it performs and feels in the hands. Well, PB Tails have done something really cool here, because the Defender not only looks and feels great in the hands but has the performance to match.

The TMR sticks feel very natural to actuate, and the responsiveness I see on screen feels rapid but natural, like there's no latency involved or heavy processing like on many Hall Effect sticks.

I have not talked about battery life yet either, but for good reason as I saved that for here. The battery specs remain the same as the other Crush models, and likewise so do the battery life and playtime. I found no difference here, even though TMR is promoted as 90% or more power efficient than Hall Effect sticks, the implementation here doesn't seem to have impacted battery life either way.

If this is the level of polish and performance in the first TMR implementation, then I can't wait to see another generation or two after some technology maturity.

There are still some things missing in this overall package, nothing is ever easy, though this is a controller priced alongside other higher-end controllers, so the inclusion of different joystick caps would be nice given that the case has slots for them to go into anyway.

A carry case with a proper handle too wouldn't go unnoticed, as well as a variant of the controller with mechanical switches as like myself, plenty of people out there love how they feel and sound, even though the rubber membranes implemented on the Defender perform and feel great, it's just not the same as mechanical switches.

Enabling Switch input to get motion controls working on PC is also a slightly convoluted process of steps, especially since you need an on-screen indicator to know which of the three input modes are being toggled since the controller does not indicate in any way. Having a single vibration for Xinput, two vibrations for Dinput and three for Switch input could easily be implemented, an idea for the next firmware update perhaps.

In terms of physical issues or quirks, if I pick up the controller from cold, then there is some minor creaking coming from the interior structure. If I squeeze the controller once then it settles and goes away until next time.

This is almost certainly due to it being a pre-release review sample produced to be sent to me to check out, but it's worth mentioning all the same in case something in manufacturing needs tweaking before customer orders start shipping later this month. Doing a bend test, there is no flex at all thanks to the Zinc alloy face plate which adds rigidity.

Update - 2024.08.06

PB Tails has supplied me with a firmware update to allow disabling of the inner deadzone for the TMR sticks. I've had a play with this and added my thoughts to the end of the Performance - Measurements section of this review.