Amkette EvoFox Deck gamepad review: A fun accessory for casual smartphone gamers
Ever feel like touchscreen controls ruin your mobile gaming experience? Greasy fingers from snacks don’t help either! This is where smartphone gamepads come in. They let you play for longer without thumb fatigue and offer a more console-like feel.
Enter the EvoFox Deck, a budget-friendly Bluetooth gamepad from Amkette designed specifically for smartphone gamers. This review will answer all your burning questions about the EvoFox Deck and see if it lives up to the hype!
EvoFox Deck unboxing and specifications
EvoFoxDeck comes in a nice box with all the necessary accessories included. You get the gamepad, a carry pouch and a long charging cable. A detailed setup guide and a few EvoFox stickers are also included inside the box.
Impressive design and build
After using dozens of Bluetooth controllers with my smartphone, I built a perception of these affordable gamepads being flimsy. EvoFox Deck broke that perception with its amazing build quality. The plastic material used is sturdy and has a certain weight to it, making the gamepad feel premium. Amkette kept the size perfect for anyone who would like to carry it around in a backpack, and the included carry pouch is perfect to protect the sticks.
The slide-out mechanism and the slot for the smartphone are large enough to hold all sizes of smartphones and firmly stay in place. The spring tension is also perfect without being too tight or loose. It is also padded with silicon material to keep the smartphone in place and not to scratch the phone.
Amkette borrowed the Xbox controller configuration with two analogue sticks, action buttons, a D-pad, shoulder buttons and triggers. These analogue sticks are hall joysticks for precision, but the triggers are just buttons. And there’s RGB on sticks and the action buttons are backlit, which looks great. If RGB is not your style, it can be turned off easily, so you can play games inside the metro without looking too flashy.
What games are compatible with EvoFox Deck?
Game compatibility is always one thing that comes to mind with these smartphone gamepads. To answer this shortly; every smartphone game is compatible, but there’s always a long answer. This gamepad works in two modes; Xbox controller mode and key mapping mode. The Xbox controller mode is straightforward, just connect your phone via Bluetooth and launch the game. The supported games automatically switch to controller mode, and you can straight away dive into the action.
I played a bunch of games that support the Xbox controller mode including Zenless Zone Zero, Asphalt 9, and COD Mobile. All of them worked perfectly with no issues, but the key mapping mode is a whole different story. The games that do not support controllers natively, you need to manually map the controls to that game using an app called Shooting Plus V3 app. This app supports the majority of Bluetooth gamepads like this for mapping the controls to Android games.
You also get key map presets for all the popular games like PUBG Mobile and you can download it easily from inside the app. Now, the issue with this app is to get your gamepad to be recognised. I experienced this issue with all the Bluetooth gamepads I used before, and EvoFox Deck is no exception. Amkette provided an app for this gamepad so you can navigate and download supported games easily.
For the major part of my testing, I played all the compatible games and experienced absolutely no hiccups whatsoever. I also tried emulator games and since all the emulators support controllers, I enjoyed all of my favourite emulator games. Even though the brand didn’t mention anything about cloud gaming, I tried a bunch on GeForce Now and played for hours.
What features do you get with EvoFox Deck?
EvoFox Deck brings a bunch of features like RGB lighting, a companion app, and Windows compatibility. It is also compatible with iOS, so if you own a compatible iPad, you can play Resident Evil Village natively with a controller. The RGB lighting is perfect for playing inside, and it comes with a bunch of modes and colour options to choose from.
The companion app is good, but it does not make any sense to install this app. It is just a list of compatible games that you can play with a game metric thing, which is of absolutely no use if you want to see how many hours you are playing every day. There is no controller-specific setting to toggle in this app.
The controller does come with vibration motors that give you rumble feedback in supported games. It works well, and the rumble is also powerful enough despite the controller size. Although, I wanted an option to stop vibration when I don’t need it and sadly, there’s no option to stop it.
EvoFox Deck’s connectivity and battery performance
The EvoFox Deck uses Bluetooth to connect with the device to play the games. The pairing and connection process is pretty easy. Once connected, the connection is pretty strong, and I felt no hiccups when playing the games. Also, because the phone is directly connected to the controller, there’s less chance of any disturbance in the connection. But I did experience certain latency, which is understandable since it uses an older version of Bluetooth technology.
EvoFox Deck can easily last for about 5 to 6 hours once fully charged, which is pretty good since smartphones can also last about 4 to 5 hours when playing games. And I am saying this because you cannot charge your phone when playing games. The phone needs to be removed from the controller to charge the phone while playing games. But since it’s Bluetooth, you can still play the game, but it defeats the whole purpose.
