CRKD Atom Keychain Controller Review

thesixthaxis.com:

As we head towards the festive season, it’s time to start thinking about gifts for your gamer friends and family. The tricky thing is, this is increasingly not the cheapest hobby, and a stocking filler or work-based Secret Santa is not the place to wheel out a £70 copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Enter the CRKD Atom Wireless Controller. At £19.99, it’s a lovely piece of gaming novelty, and while it might look like a keyring, this is actually a fully functioning controller… with some caveats.

Connecting via Bluetooth, the CRKD Atom Wireless controller is compatible with the Nintendo Switch, as well as PC, Mobile and smart TV gaming. With CRKD hoping that gamers will be prompted to collect them all, it also comes in a variety of colours, though our review unit was delivered in arguably the best colourway: an original SNES-aping grey body and multi-coloured four-button layout.

But colours aren’t the first thing that you’re going to notice about the Atom. This controller is so small it makes the Game Boy Micro look chunky, the USB-C port for charging looking almost comically large on its shell. Compared to a Joy-Con held horizontally, it’s around the same thickness and height, but loses an inch from the length. That means it easily fits entirely in the palm of an adult hand, with any gaming you intend to do with it requiring you to lightly hold it between your finger tips.

There’s plenty of inputs crammed into its diminutive shell, with the face of the controller including a full-size cross-style D-pad. Alongside that, there’s four diminutive ABXY buttons in Nintendo’s layout, a CRKD logo-emblazoned Home button, and both a ‘+’ and ‘-‘ button as well. Lurking around the top edge, there’s a decently-sized L and R button, and then the tiniest ZL and ZR buttons you’ve ever seen. If you’ve struggled with these on the top edge of the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con, prepare to be amazed.

There’s a clear and obvious omission here, and that’s the complete and utter lack of analogue