What you need to know
- Gaming peripheral maker Turtle Beach has revealed its brand new Xbox controller that’s coming in November: the Stealth Pivot. It’s wireless and supports connectivity with a 2.4GHz dongle or Bluetooth across Windows PC, mobile, and smart TVs, though use with an Xbox console requires a wired connection.
- The Stealth Pivot is an advanced Xbox controller with revolving button modules, allowing you to swap between a traditional button layout and one ideal for fighting games.Â
- It also has four remappable buttons in total (two are on one of the fighting game layout modules), adjustable trigger locks and thumbstick tension, and a snazzy display that lets you read chat messages, adjust controller settings, and even tweak the audio of headsets you have connected to the gamepad.
- The Turtle Beach Stealth Pivot is expected to ship on November 26, 2024, with preorders available now. The controller has an MSRP of $129.99.
Xbox and its partners have come up with some pretty nifty controller designs over the years, ranging from Microsoft’s own Elite Controller with features like extra back paddle buttons and a thumbstick tension key for precise long-range sniping to more “out there” options like the ASUS ROG Raikiri Pro that features an onboard OLED display and RGB lighting. Now, accessory maker Turtle Beach is looking to shake up the market with its new Stealth Pivot gamepad, and thanks to its standout feature, it has a very real chance of becoming one of the best Xbox controllers for Xbox and Windows PC gaming ever made.
The Stealth Pivot has the bread-and-butter bells and whistles you’d expect from a premium controller like adjustable trigger locks and thumbstick sensitivity, but what sets it apart is its revolving buttons — yes, you read that right. The controller’s face has a traditional layout with twin thumbsticks, a D-pad, and ABXY inputs, but by flipping lock switches on the back and pushing the thumbsticks down, you can rotate the button modules into the controller 180 degrees, revealing the second button layout on their backside. The process (seen in this video) looks incredibly cool, and together with its black, gray, and light blue color scheme, it makes me think of a gadget I’d see in a sci-fi movie.
In this configuration, the controller loses its thumbsticks, but gains LSB and RSB buttons, with the D-pad moving up to where the left thumbstick was. On the controller’s right side, meanwhile, two new remappable P1 and P2 buttons replace the right thumbstick. It’s essentially designed to be used exclusively for fighting games, and as long as the quality of the buttons themselves are good, I expect this functionality to be a boon to fans of that genre. Note that when you’re ready to go back to the standard layout, you can do so by pressing down on the buttons while the module lock is switched off.
Beyond trigger locks, thumbstick tension control, and the revolving button modules, the Stealth Pivot also comes with two additional remappable buttons on the controller’s lower back, giving it four in total. Additionally, there’s a fancy little high-contrast screen above the Xbox button that shows battery life, displays messages from friends, and allows you to remap your customizable buttons independent of Turtle Beach’s Control Center 2 app (though the controller can still be tweaked in this software on Xbox, Windows PC, or mobile).
Another sweet feature of the gamepad is that it can enhance headsets you connect to its 3.5mm audio jack with four different equalization (EQ) presets and something Turtle Beach calls “Superhuman Hearing,” which is basically an amplification of important in-game sounds like footsteps and distant engagements between other players. These tweaks, along with the volume levels of game audio and voice chat and mic monitoring (if your headset supports it) can all be adjusted with the controller’s display.
That screen is pretty handy — far more useful than the panel on something like the aesthetics-focused Raikiri Pro — but its downside is that it undoubtedly limits the battery life when you use the controller wirelessly on PC, mobile, or something like a smart TV with its 2.4GHz dongle or Bluetooth (a wired connection is required for use with an Xbox console thanks to Microsoft’s proprietary wireless tech). Turtle Beach says you can expect a maximum of 20 hours of battery life with the Stealth Pivot, which is half of the 40 hours you’ll get with something like Microsoft’s Xbox Elite Controller Series 2. The controller does at least support playing while charging, though.
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All in all, it looks to be an excellent controller, though we can’t say anything concrete about its quality until we actually get one in our hands. Still, I’ve always been happy with everything I’ve gotten from Turtle Beach in the past, so I expect the Stealth Pivot will stand tall as one of the best Xbox controllers for people who play fighting games like Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6.
The Stealth Pivot is expected to ship late next month on November 26, 2024 — just in time for the holidays. It can be preordered now for $129.99 on Turtle Beach’s website, which I’ve linked to here as well as in the box below. There probably won’t be a Black Friday deal on it, but hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be a small launch discount. You never know, right?
