Razer Kishi V3 family gives you three choices for your next mobile controller

In April 2024, Razer launched the Kishi Ultra ($149.99 at Amazon), its top-of-the-line telescopic mobile controller. It had almost all the bells and whistles you could think of — and a premium price tag to match. While it was feature-rich and sleek, a $150 mobile controller was a tough pill to swallow, especially when competitors offer controllers with similar designs and even more features for much less.

Now, Razer is launching not one but three telescopic mobile controllers in the Razer Kishi V3 family. Compared to the Kishi Ultra, they offer a less premium, lower-cost option alongside a direct follow-up and a model that even takes the Ultra one step further. Let’s start with the direct follow-up, the Razer Kishi V3 Pro.

The Kishi V3 Pro looks a lot like the Kishi Ultra. It has a USB-C connector for attaching to your phone or small tablet (up to eight inches), no Bluetooth, offset sticks, an eight-way D-Pad, mecha-tactile face buttons in the Western ABXY style, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-C passthrough port, and full-sized ergonomic grips. The first difference you’ll notice, though, is that the RGB lighting is gone. This is unfortunate considering how much Razer prides itself on its Chroma RGB features, but oh well.

Outside of pretty lights, the Kishi V3 Pro has some new tunnel magnetoresistant (TMR) thumbsticks. In many ways, these are superior to even hall-effect thumbsticks in terms of precision and preventing drift. This is a significant upgrade, too, because the Kishi Ultra did not have even hall-effect sticks — a major omission for a $150 controller.

Speaking of thumbsticks, the Kishi V3 Pro also supports swappable caps. In the box, you’ll find two additional caps: one with a domed top and a short stem and another with a concave top and an extended stem. Depending on your preferences, these can replace either the right or left sticks.

Razer also added two more buttons to the controller. They live on the back and are mouse-click style multi-function buttons. The two claw-grip bumpers next to the analog triggers are still here from the Kishi Ultra, too, so there are plenty of extra buttons for you to work with.

Outside of these alterations, the Kishi V3 Pro is basically the same as the Kishi Ultra. It even has the same $149 price. That price earned the Kishi Ultra a lot of scorn, especially considering that controller’s lack of hall-effect/TMR sticks. The fact that the V3 Pro fixes that while also offering swappable sticks and two more buttons might make people less antagonistic toward this model, but time will tell on that one.

The biggest complaint about the Kishi Ultra was its price, especially when the very similar Gamesir G8 Plus ($79.99 at Amazon) offered similar features for much less money. Razer appears to have heard that criticism and responded with the Razer Kishi V3.

The Kishi V3 abandons a few of the premium features of the Ultra to keep the price down. First, and most noticeably, the full-sized grips have been shaved down. They are still comfortable, but they are not as good as the ones on the Ultra and Kishi V3 Pro. Elsewhere, the Kishi V3 Pro’s swappable thumbstick caps are not here, although they are still TMR. Razer swapped out its mecha-tactile face buttons for standard ones and also brought over a typical four-way D-Pad in place of the nicer eight-way model on the V3 Pro and Ultra.

The most notable omission, though, is haptics. Unlike in the Pro models (and the Ultra), there is no haptic motor in the controller at all, so you won’t get any rumble effects as you play. This might be a deal-breaker for some.

Finally, the Kishi V3 doesn’t have the claw-grip buttons of the V3 Pro and Ultra models. The new mouse-click style buttons on the back are there, but that’s it as far as additional ways to control your game.

Because of these omissions, the Razer Kishi V3 comes down to $99. That’s nice to see and should quell some of the hate towards the so-called “Razer tax.” However, once again, there are controllers from competitors that offer all these features for less money.

Finally, we have the biggest one of them all: the Razer Kishi V3 Pro XL. Before you rush off to buy this one because you think it must be the best, be sure to note that this is not what you’re expecting it to be. Rather than being just like the Kishi V3 Pro but better, it is actually just the Kishi V3 Pro but for bigger connected devices.

Razer said some customers wished their Kishi Ultra could support tablets larger than eight inches. To make this work (and keep it comfortable to use), Razer needed to rethink the basic functionality of the telescopic mobile controller form factor. The result is the Kishi V3 Pro XL. This controller does everything the Kishi V3 Pro does, but it only does it for tablets sized between 10 and 13 inches. In other words, this model will not work for phones.

Because of the extra materials needed to accommodate tablets, the Kishi V3 Pro XL is the most expensive in the family at $199.

Regardless of which model you choose, all the new controllers in the Razer Kishi V3 family are on sale starting today, June 12, 2025. You can buy them directly from Razer or many of its third-party partner stores.

As a sweet perk, anyone who purchases a Kishi V3 controller will get free months of an Apple Arcade subscription. For the Kishi V3 and V3 Pro, you’ll get three months free. For the Kishi V3 Pro XL, you’ll get six months of free access.