Amazon.com: Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller + Wireless Adapter for. 2) use the wire to plug into PC for the first time (it'll auto install drivers that way) 3) click.

Last week we promised to bring you more Xbox One accessory reviews, and we weren't kidding! I have no less than six controllers and other accessories in the hopper, just waiting to be put through their paces so that our readers can know what's up. First up will be the new Xbox One Mini Series Wired Controller from Power A (makers of the MOGA controllers.

The Mini Series Wired Controller is exciting for a number of reasons. Along with PowerA's Spectra Controller, it's one of the very first two wired controllers for Xbox One. Many gamers prefer wireless for comfort, but wired controllers can still be very handy. The Mini Series controller is also smaller than a standard Xbox One controller, making it more suitable for players with small hands. And last but not least, it sells for $39.99 – $20 less than the standard controller.

Read on to find out whether the Mini Series Controller is right for you.

Two colors, all gloss

This controller comes in two color variations: black or green. Only the plastic shells and USB cables differ in color. The buttons, etc. are identical in both controllers. You won't find an exposed black area on the green color or vice versa, unlike colored first-party controllers. For the purpose of this review, we picked up a black controller.

Whichever color you pick, the Mini Series controller comes in a glossy finish. That's not too uncommon for controllers, but it's a worse choice than a matte finish. Glossy controls show smudges basically any time you handle them. Even just shooting the photographs and video for this review, the controller got fairly smudged up. A matte finish would look cleaner after handling, and (in my opinion) a bit less cheap as well.

Plug it in

The first difference between the Mini Series and a regular Xbox One controller is the Mini Series' built in USB cable. As far as we know, Microsoft still requires third-party controllers to be wired, so it's not like PowerA had a choice in the matter. But the wire can be handy in many situations. You'll never need to worry about the controller powering off when left idle, or having to fish around for a cord when you need to plug it in.

The Mini Series cord itself is 3 meters (9.8 feet) in length. That's a generous length. You needn't fear anyone damaging the controller or console by tripping over the cord, either. The male end of the cable has a breakaway connector, just like wired Xbox 360 controllers. Glad to see that innovation carry over to wired Xbox One controllers!

Size matters

The Mini Series Controller's standout feature is (of course) its diminutive size. I don't know the exact ratio, but this controller seems about twenty percent smaller than the standard Xbox One controller (and about a centimeter shorter than a Playstation controller). That doesn't make it exceptionally small per se, just a bit more appropriate for children and people with smaller hands.

'They look like big, strong hands, don't they?' No, the controller isn't too small for adult male hands to use. I find it perfectly comfortable to use. Someone with extra-large hands like Mobile Nations' very tall Simon Sage might find it too small, though.

Parts and performance

Let's run down the controller's various sticks and buttons and see how they measure up to a first-party controller's.

Analog sticks

The single easiest thing for third party controllers to get wrong is the analog sticks. Even my favorite third-party Xbox 360 controller, the Hori EX pad 2, has shabby sticks. That's why I'm so happy to say the Mini Series has great analog sticks!

They have the perfect length and resistance. Their length is about 2mm shorter than the official sticks, which are slightly too long in my opinion. The tops are about a millimeter smaller in radius compared to the first-party sticks, and aren't nearly as prone to collecting debris, either.

D-pad:

On the Xbox 360, third-party controllers usually boasted superior D-Pads to the official controllers (whose d-pads were awful, even the slightly better transforming variety). The official Xbox One D-Pad is much better though.

The Mini Series D-Pad basically rates about the same. It's a millimeter or so smaller in diameter and has grooved arrows on each direction, but otherwise closely resembles the official D-Pad in shape and performance.

Face buttons

The X, Y, A, and B buttons are smaller and spaced farther apart from each other on the Mini Series controller. They're still larger than you'd find on a Nintendo portable though.

Home button and LED

Instead of resting almost at the top of the controller, the Mini Series' Home button sits closer to the center. It does not light up or have a chrome finish. It sticks farther out from the controller body and feels different to press. Other than not looking quite as nice as a light-up button, I don't see that as a problem.

The Mini Series does have a white LED, but not inside of the Home button. Instead, you'll find it a centimeter below Home. Again, not as aesthetically pleasing as the alternative, but at least we do get a light to indicate that the controller is drawing power.

View and Menu

The Back and Start button equivalents have a more elongated shape than on the official controller, and they sit on either side of the Home button. Menu (Start) is slightly too close to the X button, but it should only cause issues if you rest your thumb too far to the left or start mashing the buttons.

Bumper buttons

Another pleasant surprise: the Mini Series Left and Right Bumpers are better than the official controller's! Basically, they stick out from the controller more. They have a stronger click and feel more responsive in general. Many games don't require precision bumper presses, but a game like Killer Instinct will benefit from the Mini Series' responsive bumper design.

Triggers and vibration

You win some, you lose some. The Mini Series' triggers and vibration simply don't measure up to the official pad's. Not a big surprise as those are two of the official Xbox One controller's strongest points.

The triggers are much smaller and less concave in design. They have less room to travel, making it harder to press them with less than full strength.

As for the vibration motors, they present less low range vibrations than the official controller's. You'll still feel the rumble when you take a hit or whatever, but the milder vibrations are harder to notice.

Windows support

The Mini Series Controller is fully PC compatible. Oddly, my Windows 8.1 system registers it as both an Xbox 360 and Xbox One controller. But the controller only functions with the Xbox One driver, which is good enough.

Only one thing missing

The Mini Series' most obvious flaw is its lack of headset port. You simply can't use a headset while playing with this controller. That greatly restricts the Mini Series Controller's usefulness when playing online games (with the exception of Warframe, which supports keyboard chat).

Still, the controller's small size and low price make it perfect for use as a child's controller or an additional controller for local multiplayer games. Many players won't want to spend $60 for a set of four controllers, but you can easily save twenty bucks by making this one of your extra pads.

PowerA's Mini Series Controller is way better than you'd expect from an affordable third-party pad. The one big flaw, the lack of headset support, is something you're told about up front. Nearly everything else, from the sticks to the d-pad to the buttons, performs just as well as any Microsoft controller.

This controller is not available at Amazon in the US just yet, but you can find it at several other retailers. You can also preorder it at Amazon UK. We'll update with a US Amazon Link when that becomes available.

• Xbox One Mini Series Wired Controller – $39.99 – BestBuy – GameStop – Amazon UK

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Updated

• December 4, 2001

This article clarifies some confusion that vendors have experienced about how hardware that complies with PCI Power Management (PCI-PM) interacts with device drivers in the operating system and about how PCI-PM integrates with ACPI. For more information, see https://www.uefi.org/specifications

Device drivers and PCI power management

This discussion assumes that you are familiar with how Windows Driver Model (WDM) drivers handle power management events, as described in the current Windows DDK. In general, the responsibilities for device drivers are as follows:

• Bus drivers: Bus drivers are responsible for enumerating, configuring, and controlling devices. For PCI-PM, the PCI driver is responsible for reading the PCI-PM registers to determine the capabilities of the hardware. When POWER IRPs request power state changes, the PCI driver writes to the PCI power management registers to set the hardware to different Dx states.

  When a device is enabled for wake-up, the PCI driver writes to PCI-PM registers to enable the device to fire PME (ACPI will also take an action, see the next section). Finally, when ACPI determines that the PCI bus is waking the system, the PCI driver scans PCI configuration space looking for which device is asserting PME, disables PME in that device, and notifies the driver for that device.

• Device driver: The specific driver for the device is responsible for saving and restoring device context, and requesting power state changes as the policy owner for the device. When the device driver receives a POWER IRP requesting a lower device power state change, the device driver is responsible for saving any proprietary device context needed to later turn on the device. In some cases, there may be nothing to save.

PCI-PM registers are strictly the domain of the PCI driver--the IHV's device driver does not need to access any of these registers. Doing so would cause the system to not work reliably. The device driver's responsibility is to perform only proprietary actions.

Integrating ACPI and PCI PM

Some devices, particularly motherboard video devices in portables, may require both PCI Power Management as well as ACPI Source Language Assembler (ASL) to completely power manage the device. The PCI Power Management registers would control the internal state of a device, such as internal clocks and power planes. ASL would control the external state, such as external clocks and power planes, or in the case of video controllers, ASL would control the video backlights. Note that ASL and PCI-PM can only be combined on motherboard devices.

The OnNow architecture is a layered architecture, handling the integration of the device driver, PCI driver, and ACPI driver (and ASL) naturally. The following scenarios show the order in which drivers are called to handle these devices.

Note For the above scenarios to work as described, a WDM driver must forward POWER IRPs correctly as described in the current version of the Microsoft Windows DDK.

Scenario 1: Turning off a device

1. Device driver: Saves proprietary device state.
2. PCI driver: Saves Plug and Play configuration, disables the device (interrupts and BARs), and puts the device in D3 using PCI-PM registers.
3. ACPI driver: Runs ASL code (_PS3 and _OFF for power resources no longer in use) to control the state external to the chip.

Scenario 2: PCI power management and device drivers

1. ACPI driver: Runs ASL code (_PS0 and _ON for any OnNow required power resources) to control the state external to the chip.
2. PCI driver: Puts the device in D0 using PCI-PM registers and restores Plug and Play configuration (interrupts and BARs--these might be different from what the device was previously on).
3. Device driver: Restores proprietary context in the device.

Power A Switch Wireless Controller Review

Scenario 3: Enabling wake-up

1. Device driver: Sets proprietary registers in the chip to enable wake-up. For example, in pattern matching network wake-up, this is when the patterns would be programmed into the adapter.
2. PCI driver: Sets the wake-up enable bits in the PCI PM registers to allow the device to assert PME.
3. ACPI driver: Enables the GPE in the chip set associated with PME (as described by the _PRW object listed under the root PCI bus).

Scenario 4: Wake-up

Power A Wireless Controller Ps3

1. ACPI driver: Wakes and scans the GPE status bits for wake-up events, disabling GPEs for set GPE status bits, and running any _Lxx or _Exx methods associated with set GPE bits. In response to a wake-up notification on the PCI bus, the ACPI driver will complete the PCI driver's WAIT_WAKE IRP to notify the PCI driver that it is waking the system.
2. PCI driver: Scans configuration space looking for any devices with a set PME status bit. For each device, it disables PME and completes the WAIT_WAKE IRP for that device to inform the driver that it is asserting wake-up. The PCI driver stops scanning for wake devices when it has made a complete pass through all PCI devices having not found any asserting PME and when PME stops being asserted.
3. Device driver: Requests the device be put in D0 (see scenario 2) and sets any proprietary registers in the chip required to handle the wake-up event.

Call to action on PCI power management and device drivers:

Power A Wireless Controller Driver Windows 10

• Integrate ACPI and PCI-PM capabilities into your devices as described in this article.
• The PCI Power Management specification is available at http://www.pcisig.com. This link leaves the Microsoft.com site.
• ACPI Specification available at https://www.uefi.org/specifications. This link leaves the Microsoft.com site.
• The ACPI Component Architecture (ACPICA) compiler can be found at https://acpica.org/downloads/binary-tools. This link leaves the Microsoft.com site.