Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid Controller Review

Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid Controller Review

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Super stylish. Two words that sum up the Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid Gaming Controller, Designed for Xbox, with ease. Super convenient, are two more. 

The Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid Controller is one of those devices or accessories that you probably didn’t know you needed. But once you get hands-on, will fast discover it to become a prominent part of your gaming life. See, this is a controller that covers pretty much all the bases you need, letting you game on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, on PC AND on mobile. 

It sees Turtle Beach take their Recon Controller, a controller that we are very much onboard with, before throwing in some mobile Cloud gaming opportunities for good measure. In simple terms, that means you can use this controller for all your Xbox gaming, no matter whether you play on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC or through Game Pass on your mobile. What’s not to like about that?

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It gets better though as the Recon Cloud Hybrid comes in a couple of variations – an all-black which could well see it mistaken for that standard Recon, or an absolutely glorious Blue Magma edition, a colour scheme which shines bright and has fast become known in these parts as the Iron Man controller. Okay, the colour scheme isn’t exactly on-point, but it’s close enough for us. 

Rewinding and we’ll cover the basics of the Recon Cloud Hybrid before delving deeper into the finer intricacies. If you’re at all familiar with the Recon, you’ll be right at home here as the Cloud Hybrid is the exact same pad as the one which has inspired it. That means you’re getting access to all the brilliance that brings – the usual Xbox button wizardry with face buttons, concaved thumbsticks, a really neat D-Pad and textured bumpers and triggers. 

Further are the Xbox Nexus button, Menu, View and Share, all shifted down into the centre of the controller as Turtle Beach squeeze in a ton of their finest features – on-pad volume controls, Superhuman Hearing button, a Mic Mute and two Mode and Select buttons. Those two latter buttons – the Mode and Select – are pretty useful, allowing the user to scroll and set their way through Mic Monitoring, Equaliser, Pro Aim and Button Mapping. There’s a host of options in all yet if truth be known once you are set-up once, you’ll probably just stick with it. And yes, that Button Mapping means there are a couple of programmable Action Buttons on the rear of the Cloud Hybrid; they sit magnificently under your middle fingers as you grasp the controller. A 3.5mm audio jack rounds things off. 

We have zero complaints about anything Turtle Beach have included here. The triggers, bumpers and Action buttons are well textured, the thumbsticks have just the right amount of depth to them and the face buttons never miss. We’ve also been taken by the concave D-Pad and on the whole the controller just feels really nice in use, even if we don’t need absolutely everything it brings. That love is amplified by the colour scheme; a dark, deep shiny blue is well complemented by the trimmings of copper orange around the grips, as well as on the triggers and bumpers. It looks nothing short of brilliant.

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Letting the Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid down slightly is the need to wire itself into an Xbox console, with the braided 10ft long USB-A to USB-C cable required if you’re gaming on ‘console’. It’s a decently long cable though and many other third party manufacturers could well learn from Turtle Beach here. 

So what’s different about the Cloud Hybrid as opposed to the standard Recon? Well, there’s a mobile clip and Bluetooth capabilities thrown in too. And that means that same controller you use for your everyday console gaming sessions can double up for the likes of Cloud gaming through Game Pass. One controller does all? Pretty much. 

It works easily enough with a simple switch sitting next to the audio port; sliding it from right to left is all that is required as you move from the wired console setting to the wireless Bluetooth opportunities. Obviously you’ll need to pair the controller to your phone, but a single Bluetooth button will see it pop up in your phone’s Bluetooth pairing list near immediately. We’ve found that connection to then be extremely stable – in fact, we’ve not had a single drop in connection once paired. 

Once pairing has been initiated, the Cloud Hybrid then allows for two options – to connect your phone to the controller via a clip, or to use that same clip as a desk stand. It’ll be up to you how you wish to run this, but the clip itself is a sturdy little fella, gripping our phones with ease. For the record, we’ve tried a few different phones in here, all from the Google Pixel line – 7 Pro, 6 Pro, 4a and 2XL. All fit well, cushioned by the nicely textured back of the clip. 

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We’d suspect that most would use the clip attached to the controller and it does this thanks to one single screw – line things up, tighten and all will be good. From there a couple of tightening screws allows for orientation of the phone to your desired angle. Again, no complaints with how this works however the added weight of controller and phone does mean that it is sometimes tricky to use for any really lengthy amount of time. 

That makes the desk stand option more of a consideration. This comes about by sliding the clip into two, flipping open the included stand and dropping it onto the desk of your choice. Again, angling this to ensure the phone is at your optimum degree is easy to action. It is a bit of a tight slide upon first actioning this feature, but after use a few times the clip and stand begin to ease apart a little easier. 

With a passthrough of the clip with the included USB-C cable, keeping charge in the controller as you utilise it for mobile play is doable, yet Turtle Beach promise to deliver some thirty hours or so from a full controller charge. Expect a full charge in a little over two hours. 

Super stylish and super convenient, we’re not sure there’s much missing from the Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid Controller. Perhaps some will want wireless console play included, but the opportunity to run one controller across multiple ways of play – console, PC, mobile – should be a huge draw. 


You can grab the Turtle Beach Recon Cloud Hybrid Controller from Turtle Beach direct for £89.99. Make sure you get the Blue Magma edition as it’s utterly glorious. 

Huge thank you to them for providing us with a review unit. 

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