Nacon puts a screen on its new PlayStation 5 controller

Nacon has put a screen on a PlayStation 5 controller. The Revolution 5 Unlimited was announced on Friday 2 October, and it is the first officially licensed PS5 pad to carry a built-in control screen, so players can change the audio mix, stick sensitivity and shortcut mapping without ever leaving a match.

What the screen actually does

The display sits between the sticks and shows live controller state as you play. Audio mixing, joystick sensitivity, shortcut mapping and the pad's own system settings can all be adjusted on the fly through it, which Nacon describes as a world first for a licensed PlayStation 5 controller. The idea is that competitive players stop digging through menus on the console and tweak the pad itself mid-session instead.

TMR sticks and tournament hardware

Under the shell the Revolution 5 Unlimited debuts TMR, or tunnelling magnetoresistance, magnetic sticks in Nacon's line-up. The company claims the switch improves reliability, sharpens precision and cuts power draw compared with conventional analogue sticks. Around that sit micro-switch action buttons, Trigger Blockers with an instant-trigger mode that flips the triggers from an analogue pull to a short click, and a set of remappable shortcut buttons. A Shooter Pro Mode removes the sticks' dead zones entirely for shooters that reward the smallest inputs.

Price, dock and where it works

The pad is available to pre-order now from nacongaming.com at £179.99, €199.99 or $229.99, and it ships with a hard storage case and a dedicated charging dock — another first for a licensed PS5 controller in the Nacon range. Triple connectivity covers PS5, PC and Android smart televisions, with a companion iOS and Android app for the finer settings. A dedicated PC mode is quoted at 1ms latency for players who would rather not use it on a console at all.

“By combining a built-in control screen and TMR technology on an officially licensed PlayStation asymmetric controller, we are giving competitive and demanding players a state-of-the-art instrument, backed by years of expertise within the Group,” said Yannick Allaert, director of Nacon's accessories division. Nacon has not yet given a shipping date beyond the open pre-order.

Our opinion

A screen on a controller sounds like a gimmick until you remember how often competitive players complain about console menus interrupting a session. Putting the tweaks on the pad is a genuinely sensible answer, and TMR sticks arriving on a licensed PS5 controller is the more important engineering story underneath it. The £179.99 price is the catch. That is well past the cost of a spare DualSense, and Nacon is asking players to trust a screen, a dock and magnetic sticks to hold up through years of ranked play. The Revolution range has earned that trust with esports players since 2016, but this is the most ambitious bet the line has made.