I picked up the MicroCON a while after I bought the Xbox 360, as a nice cheap extra controller (for the record, I have one Official Wireless Controller, the Joytech Neo SE controller, and this) for when my friends came round to play. This one interested me as it was quite different to the official controller, in that it was much smaller, and while I do like the design of the official controller, I liked the idea of having a smaller controller to mess around with and some of my friends would prefer a smaller controller to the official one, MrsB included. That was one reason, another was that it was pretty cheap.

The MicroCON has a number of key differences to the official controller, in order to appeal to different gamers who may have different tastes, no doubt, and to maybe provide a few unique selling points to tempt games away from the supremely great official controller. The controller obviously feels much smaller in your hands (because it is, duh MisterB) but the reduction in size hasn't had a negative impact on the ergonomic feel of the controller, or on the positioning of buttons and joysticks. Depending on your preferences you may really feel that this controller feels better than the official controller for you, which I can totally understand. For me, it turns out that it is a little bit too small for comfort whilst playing long, but it is a hit when friends come around for short gaming blasts and it is also an option if you have some young gamers in the family as the smaller size is better suited to their smaller hands!

Something that you should be aware of if you are thinking about picking this controller up as your main Xbox 360's controller, is the fact that it doesn't handle the voice communication over the Xbox Live Communicator microphone (it plugs into your controller at the bottom), as well as the official controller. Friends have told me when I was using this to play with over Xbox Live that my voice was not coming through as clear.

So,If you are looking for a good alternative to the Xbox 360 official controller then this is one very good option. It takes risks by being quite different to the official controller, but where so many other controllers fail in this respect, this one succeeds. The poor voice quality over Xbox Live may also be a sore point for those looking for a new main controller, but it all depends on whether or not this will be an issue to you. The cable may not find many fans, and the small size may bother some of the bigger-handed gamers out there, but I have found it to be a neat little companion and one that I will recommend regardless of its small (pun intended!) defects. Its plusses really do outweigh the drawbacks.

Thanks again for reading!