There are a lot of budget options when it comes to leverless fighting game controllers, like the $50 Haute42 pad I’d been using for most of 2025. At a premium $250/£230, Corsair’s debut fightstick doesn’t aim to enter the arena of affordability by any means. However, when I think of the most premium, feature-rich, and well-built option to graduate to from my current leverless stick, the Corsair Novablade Pro is an easy recommendation.
Leverless sticks have come into vogue in just the last few years, providing a more tactile option for competitive fighting-game play that swaps the traditional movement-stick for button-only directional inputs. It’s an interesting approach that looks alien in nature at first, but provides such a comfortable hand experience for long sessions. On the Corsair Novablade Pro, there are fifteen face buttons – your standard array of inputs plus an extra three programmable hotkey buttons.
You’ve got five additional hotkey buttons alongside the side of the controller, but the ones located on the face are great for mapping a reliable parry or burst button to. Plus, those face buttons are all MGX Hyperdrive magnetic switches, providing smooth hall effect input. The buttons are loud, and while they do sound gorgeous, I’ve found myself struggling to ignore their volume in particularly sweaty sets. Still, despite how loud they are, their reliability has been nothing but flawless.
Each of those buttons has a wealth of additional customization, too. You can adjust their actuation points to anywhere from 0.1 mm to 4.00 mm, letting you decide if the inputs register with the lightest graze or if they need a sturdier purposeful push to be activated. There’s also a rapid fire switch, which makes it so that a button’s input resets to neutral as soon as it starts traveling upwards. In theory, this lets you mash out buttons as quickly as possible – or, in a competitive setting, provides just a little bit tighter response time on fast inputs. As a bit more of a casual player, I honestly didn’t get much out of this feature.
What’s easy for any level of fighting game enthusiast to notice, though, is the gorgeous design of the Corsair Novablade Pro. It’s a gorgeous matte black device, really matching the style of sleek and slightly minimalist gamer gear that Corsair has honed in so hard on with a lot of their recent PC-focused peripheral releases. Like many of those devices, it also has gorgeous RGB lighting options. Alongside customizable and click-reactive lighting for each button, theres an amazing RGB ring around the sides of the controller that lights up when in use as well.
One quirk I don’t quite understand right now is the removable faceplate. It comes off incredibly easily thanks to the magnetic attachment, but at this time Corsair doesn’t offer any kind of alternative faceplate options. The faceplate is also matte black and not a see-through material that you could, say, slide custom artwork under.
Also, the Corsair Novablade Pro is heavy. At four pounds, it’s an absolute beast that feels sturdy and premium. It won’t break your back when transporting it to a local or your friends place, though. Alongside the grippy rubber mat at the button of the controller, it also helps guarantee that this thing won’t slide around or easily fall off your lap during gameplay sessions.
Finally, connectivity options with the Corsair Novablade Pro are plentiful. Some fightsticks, particularly older ones, require you to jump through a lot of hoops to swap between PC, PS4, and PS5 compatibility. Not this one, though. That removable faceplate I mentioned earlier actually houses covers up the switches that let you swap between wired, wireless, or Bluetooth connectivity. It also offers a switch to swap between PC/PS4/PS5 modes, and a convenient slot for the wireless connectivity dongle to be nestled into when you don’t need it. Being able to so elegantly swap my Novablade Pro around between my PC and my PS5 has quickly made it my go-to controller for fighting games.
