Fantech EOS Pro Review: Worth Exploring

If you had asked me about Fantech towards the beginning of the year, I would have known them for their mice, but not much else. The Helios Go XD5 and the Aria are two mice that seemed to get a lot of positive reception from smaller brand mice makers. But fast forward to now, and I know Fantech produces all sorts of peripherals and gear when it comes to gaming. But today I’m taking a look at the EOS Pro WGP15.

At $40 it would have fallen into my controllers under $40 article, but the general look and feel of this one makes me want to talk about it just a little bit more. Fantech was kind enough to send this over to me for review, but my thoughts are all my own, and I just want to share my experience with the Explorer of Stars Pro controller.

Fantech EOS Pro: Specs

On the Fantech website right now, the EOS Pro comes in 5 different colors at its $40 price point. Epsilon, Electa, Polaris, Solaris, and Orion. The rest of the specs can be found listed below:

Sticks and Triggers: Hall Effect, 2x Stick Height, 2x Trigger Distance Settings
Face Buttons: Membrane
D-pad: Membrane (3 Versions: Cross, Shield, Cross/Shield Combo)
Extra Features: M1/M2 on back, 3.5mm Jack, 3 Level Turbo Buttons, Gyro
Battery: 600mAh
Polling Rate: Up to 1000hz (Wired), 250hz (2.4ghz), 125hz (BT)
Connectivity: Wired/Bluetooth/2.4ghz
Compatibility: Switch/PC/iOS/Android/
Weight: 273 grams

Fantech EOS Pro at AliExpress

Looks and Ergonomics

First things first, I want to cover the looks, cause they’re a bit polarizing if you ask me. The controller itself has a lot more curves when placed next to an Xbox controller, but the thing that gets me is the semi-transparent front plate. When on, the RGB sticks light up a little more space than just by the Hall sticks giving it a really bright look that I like. As for the design itself, the Epsilon colorway I have is quite middle-of-the-road. Of the batch, I think the Solaris colorway is the best. But if you like interesting patterns, you’d like any of these.

As for ergonomics, the EOS Pro is another controller that just gets it right on the basics. The front panel is smooth, but the grips are nice textured plastic. The sticks, D-pad, and face buttons all fall right into place. My only gripe is with the M1 and M2 buttons. They’re placed a bit far in, and I found that I needed to stretch my fingers to reach them, but if you’ve got larger hands than I, it may be less of an issue.

Overall the looks and ergonomics get a solid pass from me.

Control Testing

Triggers

When it comes to the triggers I have my positives, but I also have my negatives with them. On the positive side, they are incredibly nice for choosing how much gas to put in my car. For games like Forza that would really be a nice trigger for that. However, my concern comes from the tension needed to press it down.

The triggers on the EOS Pro are super lightweight, and it’s easy to go from 0-100 if you aren’t careful. It is 100% personal preference, but if they were weighted closer to some of the other sub-$40 options, I think they’d be my favorite controller triggers this year.

D-pad and Face Buttons

So when it comes to the D-pad and face buttons, the Celeste test went well across all three of my runs. Three runs, one for each of the replaceable D-pad modules. Of the three, my best run came with the traditional cross-styled D-pad, the second was the combo cross-dish, with the standard shield D-pad coming in third.

While I did end with a solid time of 3:12 with 4 deaths, I found the tension of the face buttons to be a bit high. Which meant the force to press it was higher than expected. However, over a bit of time and practice it’s something that you could easily get used to. Both the D-pad and face buttons are solid membrane options, and I think they’re perfectly passable. And I like them more than the mechanical options.

Sticks

When it comes to the sticks, I have no complaints at all. All four of mine glided with little to no issue when I was doing my runs of AK-olotl. Similar to other controllers, I found using the slightly taller stick on the left made things a little more comfortable for gameplay. Overall though, the Hall Effect sticks work perfectly for what they are, and lead me to believe that I really am bad at twin-stick shooters. I can’t blame the hardware now.

And a quick side note, I shortened the triggers for this game. I found, that while it is better, the amount of travel present is still a bit too awkward for this game. In the end, I’d have preferred if it truly became a button and now a really short trigger.

Extra Features

When it comes to extra features you have a few. On the back is a physical mode selector so you can easily pick from the different platforms for connectivity. This is a feature that I really like. On the bottom is a 3.5mm Headphone jack that you can use while wired. Unfortunately, I don’t usually play only games through the headphone jack of my controller, but in audio testing, it worked fine.

As for gyro and rumble, they actually did quite well. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the Abxylute C6 which gave my right wrist pains in its vibration. The added features including the turbo button make this a potent controller at $40, especially when compared to some of the $100-$150 options out there.

Final Thoughts

Do I like the EOS Pro WGP15? Oh absolutely. I’m not the biggest fan of the triggers, they’re ridiculously light, and even when shortening the throw distance it still felt like too much travel. But if you’re not heavily reliant on them in your games, the membrane face buttons and nice sticks lend themselves to making a solid controller.

At $40 you undershoot a lot of options with similar features. But you also land in a crowded market that has a lot of great options. Just make sure to ask yourself if you need a clicky set of face buttons. Because if not, this might be the one for you. Just pick one of the good colorways. I still find Polaris to look a bit odd.