Customer Reviews

Saitek P990 Dual Analog Game Pad

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is the new improved version of the p880, which got lots of great reviews on Amazon. I've now played with this for a couple of hours and I'm EXTREMELY happy with it! It is perfect in every way! First, the gamepad is much bigger than the two logitech gamepads they had at circuit city. I like that, cuz my hands are large. The smaller gamepads are like they're made for little kids. Anyway, p990 is also lightweight. It has a cool blue light so you can see the buttons in the dark. It's bright, but it doesn't distract me while I'm playing games. I like the shape of the gamepad and the arrangement of all the buttons and controls. There is nothing to improve, as far as I'm concerned. Everything works great. I like very much that there are 6 buttons on top. This is great for fighting games like Mortal Kombat. There are two buttons on each shoulder. I read that's good for sports games, such as football and basketball. So there's a grand total of 10 buttons. Both of the dual analog joysticks were PERFECTLY calibrated right out of the box. I didn't have to adjust anything. All I did was plug in the joystick in the USB port and turn on my PC. It was automatically detected and installed. Only thing I did was check out the buttons in the joystick control panel to see how they worked and to see everything was perfect. The analog joysticks worked very well in several different 3D driving and flying games I tried. I was satisfied with them. This is great. Now I have both analog & digital control all in one unit. A software CD is included, but I didn't bother trying to use it yet. I also didn't try using the button that's supposed to load configurations for first person shooter games. The right side analog joystick is labeled "mouse look." I guess I'll update this review after I've tried an FPS with this gamepad. I wouldn't hestitate to buy it. It's incredible! It's a million times better than my old gravis gamepad pro.

This gamepad on the surface looks and feels like an X-Box controler, a little wider perhaps, but about the same.

The true magic of this pad is the great software that comes with it. I can now run my entire OS using this gamepad as my mouse. At the same time, I can have profiles for each and every game I play. It can also be used quite well with games that don't support a joystick by assigning one of the sticks to mouse control and making 2 of the shoulders mouse buttons.

I'm rating this a 4 because that's the average:
5 for features, but 3 for reliability.

I'm on my second P990. I bought this specifically to play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I absolutely LOVE that it has 6 buttons on the top, while most gamepads only have 4. I have grown accustomed to this, so when my first one broke, I just HAD to buy another.

My original broke on the "D-pad". Cheap plastic part which connects it to the sensors. I could barely use the RIGHT and DOWN. I cannot recall how long I owned my first one, but I feel I did get my $$ out of it before it broke.

My "new" one, however, right out of the box, feels like the D-pad is close to breaking. This time, it's with the LEFT.

As I am now done with my GTA, when this controller breaks, I don't believe that I will replace it with another Saitek.

Amazon sent it, I ordered new but got used, the boxes where taped up in a sloppy manner with no instructions or drivers with visible oily fingerprints on the controller. They sent it a week late, presumably I got someone else's returned product since it was out of stock. No big deal though since it had no scratches or visible issues, I downloaded the drivers from the manufacturers website. I wanted the gamepad because it said it had programmable buttons which turns out to be pretty disgusting to manage. The software to program the keys comes separate from the drivers. The manufacturer makes you download a 20mb installer (which extracts who knows how many mb's) which lets you set a lot of different controls for each button, but the UI is a total mess and it comes with the drop down list of all their keyboards / gamepads / mouse products. It also installs a bunch of drivers to software you DONT HAVE like the saitek keyboard. There's no way to selectively install just your gamepad software.

It's a friggin controller. It shouldn't be eating tons of disk space. The profile editor also eats 23mb of ram. Not much, but ram you could have used instead towards improving rendering on your game.
The blue strip in the middle of the controller, which I thought was plastic or metallic by the pic, is actually a bright LED with no way to turn it off. I'd like my controller to be simple and efficient, not energy wasting and distracting at the same time. It helps kill my laptop faster on long trips. The $30 list price is just plain wrong too just so it looks like it's always discounted. It's really really hard to find it over $30.

For me, this has been a very durable, and likable controller. It feels well, and works fine. i like it much more than my logitech rumble pad, which is a cheap copy of the playstation's dual analog. which btw broke within 4 months of owning it.

The pad has many buttons, options to reporgram them, and switch the analog pad and d-pad. i do mean literally swap them. great for stuff like mario64.

the bad parts of this controller is, i don't quite like the dpads feel. its not completely bad, but i would have liked a different design.

i guess this pad has enough buttons, i always like more, but it has 4 buttons on top (shoulder buttons), 6 buttons on front (which is great for n64 games, but all 6 buttons are tough to use if multiple have to be pressed at same time), buttons under the analog sticks. practically all can be remapped.

this controller does make a very good option for n64 games. the 2nd dual analog can even be set to like c buttons for games like turok, so it plays like an xbox controller.

sadly the controller does not have a rumble motor in it. though i dislike rumble, others may, and in some cases, the rumble option comes in handy.

also by using emulators, im not suggesting doing anything illegal. if people dont have the rights to use them then dont. or at least dont tell anyone. all of which is their own responsibility.

An excellent gamepad all around--my weapon of choice for nearly every game (despite the fact I own several Logitech Dual-Actions).

I find that the controller size is perfect: a bit bigger than the Logitechs, they tend to sit better when I pick up the controller. Both analog sticks are right where your thumbs end up, making it very easy to accurately move them, even when you need to nudge them slight distances with great accuracy. The shoulder triggers are large and well placed-whether you use your pointer and middle fingers or whether you just use the pointer fingers, you'll find that you won't hesitate for a millisecond to find any trigger button. The fact that there are six face buttons is a dream for those arcade-style games that need them (Marvel vs. Capcom, etc).

There are two downsides that every single person will face with this controller, though they shouldn't be nearly enough to discourage you.

The first is the FPS feature activation button--it sits on the top of the controller near the face buttons and did tend to get in the way in the beginning--I never use the feature and hitting it by accident has unwelcome effects on gameplay (sometimes, your buttons won't work until you press the button again). I for one virtually never hit it anymore, but if it were still a problem for me, I wouldn't hesitate to pop out the button with a screwdriver--it's not like you would actually use the button, not ever.

The second is the Directional D-Pad (if you won't really be playing classic/emulated games, this shouldn't be an issue to you). Although it's comfortably shaped, it makes for somewhat buttery gameplay. It's tough to pull off complicated combo moves in fighting games, because your timing will be inevitably thrown off a tiny bit because the D-Pad moves too softly and gel-like. It shouldn't be a problem in more forgiving games like Mortal Kombat (and of course games like Mario will work just fine), but it took me weeks and weeks to get my super moves working every time in Marvel vs. Capcom. I persevered solely because of the six face buttons and I must say it's entirely worth it. As for the "durability" of the D-Pad: I have used this controller for years (with a fair amount of abuse) and the D-Pad is as steady as the day it arrived in the mail.

It's a shame that discussing cons takes so much longer than listing the pros, even though the pros outweigh the cons by many orders of magnitude. If you're looking for a great gamepad, BUY THIS CONTROLLER! You won't be sorry. As a note, the Saitek P2600 Rumble Pad PC Game Controller will do everything this gamepad does and will also rumble with games that support it--I wholeheartedly recommend that controller as well, especially since the two controllers are the EXACT same size and are very, very close in weight.

P.S. Don't forget to install the Saitek driver. Even though Windows will automatically detect the gamepad, you still need to download and install the official Saitek driver or else some games won't recognize the controller properly.

This is easily the best PC game controller that I have ever owned! The layout is good and the controller is comfortable. Despite what some other reviews have said, the square cut for the analog sticks does not hinder movement. I've used it in titles ranging from Psychonauts to Battlefield 2 and have had absolutely no problems. If you need a PC controller, get this! You'll be glad that you did.

i bought this, because i wanted a 6 buttons on the front for fighters, specifically 2D fighters, since the x-box 360 controller, well sucks for 2D fighters. this was also cheap too, about $15.00.

anyways this controller works great!
the D-pad looks weird at first, but it is very good for 2D fighters, i can easily pull of hadokens (QCF) and other movements with ease for street fighter games, and other fighting games too. however you need to press on all of the points a bit slow, like for QCFs you kind of have to roll you thumb on all of the points to pull it off (down,forward down, forward). this takes some time to get use to it, but then it just becomes second nature. also some fighting games are hit and miss with the D-pad. like the d-pad works great for street fighter 3, however there are some issues i had while playing project justice:rival schools 2, like doing 2 QCF and a punch to activate a super. i would either do i forward punch or a dash punch instead of my super. however a normal special, with just one input of a QCF works fine. the analog sticks work great too. all of the face buttons seem to work excellent too. it may take some time to get use to 6 of them if you have only used 4. there is a FPS button, however i don't have any FPSs. there are four shoulder buttons, set up much like the PSX 1 or 2, and theres also an analog button, which turns off the D-pad feature.(you press on the d-pad and nothing happens) however there are no start or select buttons, which is odd. maybe in the next one they can add them. if they did it would be THE perfect controller. although not that its a problem since most games only use 8 buttons and theres 10, so you can set it to one of the others. if you have Xpadder or some other program that does joypad to keyboard (i'd suggest looking into that stuff if you emulate stuff) you can easily set the analog button for the start button on games, however it will still toggle the D-pad on/off.

the controller is bulky, but very light.the USB cord seems a little on the short side, however i'm not too far from the usb port so it really doesn't effect me at all. you also don't need software for this either, which is good.

in the end if you looking for something with 6 face buttons, this IS the gamepad for you. its very good with 2D fighters, and 3D, and other genres too so get this!

Very happy with ease of use and construction. After searching for a gamepad that would be used for sports games this one is perfect. I would recommend to anyone.

if you are using this for a fighting game that requires using arrows pad (the grey on far left) to do some super moves or final moves like Mugen, or street fighter style games then this is absolotely not good for you unless you use the analogue instead. till now 2 of these are broken and about 1 hour back the third one is broken too (i mean the grey arrow tab).
i bought this cause it contains 6 bottons and it's rarly found anywhere.