Accessory manufacturer HORI has lifted the lid on its latest licensed Switch 2 controller, the Wireless HORIPAD Turbo. It’s a colourful affair, with an overall design that looks uncannily close to Nintendo’s official offering, but there are a couple of caveats that stop it from quite toppling the mighty Pro Controller.
But let’s start with the positives. The Wireless HORIPAD Turbo boasts TMR sticks to reduce chances of the dreaded drift, full gyro control, mappable face and back buttons, a C Button, and a neat ‘Button Lock’ function to prevent you from accidentally hitting any of the middle buttons (+, -, Home and Screenshot) during particularly sweaty online matches. It also comes with its own HORI Button in the middle, which can be used for rapid inputs and setting up profile preferences.
A pretty appealing line-up, no? The black model cuts a very similar silhouette to Nintendo’s Pro Controller (and is a drastic improvement over HORI’s wired counterpart, if you ask us), but the Wireless Turbo offers a little bit of colour variation in its full lineup, with ‘Aqua Cyan’, ‘Frost White’, ‘Shine Yellow’ and ‘Ruby Magenta’ designs all available.
Naturally, this isn’t a Pro Controller, so there are a few missing features in the Wireless Turbo if you’re after a pad with the full range of Nintendo abilities. Like many third-party pads, this offering cannot be used to wake the Switch 2 from sleep, and there’s no support for reading your amiibo. What’s more, the Wireless Turbo doesn’t contain an audio jack, and there’s no HD Rumble either.
All that said, the Wireless HORIPAD Turbo does come at a cheaper price than the Pro Controller. The pad is currently listed on the Japanese HORI website for 7,980 yen (around £40 / $54), with a ‘Winter 2025’ release date. Of course, there’s no guarantee that this price conversion will match the actual regional retail prices, but that’s a good chunk cheaper than the £74.99 / $89.99 asking price for Nintendo’s official offering.
The pad is now available to pre-order in Japan, so we can’t imagine that a Western release will be far behind. If you want an even closer look at the colour range, you’ll find HORI’s 13-minute video rundown of the collection below.
