Cosmic Byte Starforge Review

CosmicByte is well known in India for it’s “affordable” peripherals. They usually don’t foray into higher price segments with their products. But what if a brand like CosmicByte introduces a “premium” product, with a price to match this label? Today, we’ll be seeing the result of this unprecedented event, and I’ll be reviewing CosmicByte’s latest rebranded controller, the Starforge. You can buy it for a price of… whoa, ₹5500 ($60).

Hello everyone. I’m Fang, and yeah, you heard that right. Rebranded. CosmicByte doesn’t manufacture any of its products, but more on that later in the video. Keep watching, and you’ll learn the truth behind the borderline scam going on here.

As always, let’s begin with the unboxing.

The CosmicByte Starforge comes in a pretty sizeable box, and we see the classic CosmicByte orange and black colours.
Inside the box, we see some preeettyy interesting things.

The first thing I see is this product information card for a… copper water bottle? Huh? I think I got a refurbished unit or something from amazon bruh.`
There should have been a manual for the controller in here but there isn’t one… weird.

Other than that, in the box we see :

• The controller
• An orange USB-A to C cable
• A 2.4GHz wireless adapter
• A screwdriver and a TMR module puller tool
• And 3 pairs of TMR modules for hotswapping

We’ll go over each of these one by one now.

Spec Sheet as per my observation and CosmicByte website :

• Layout: Xbox
• Connectivity: Wired, 2.4G, BT
• Compatibility: PC, Android, iOS 13+, Tesla Vehicles apparently lmao
• Connectors: USB-C
• Analogs: Hotswapable TMR (K-Silver JS20 Modules)
• Triggers: Optical with Trigger stop
• Main switches: Membrane
• Additional switches: 4 at the back, Remapable
• Gyroscope: yes
• Vibration motors: 2 Asymmetric + impulse triggers
• Battery: 1200mAh
• Polling rate: 1000Hz
• Available colors: Black
• Docking station: None
• Price: ₹5500 ($60)

The CosmicByte Starforge looks pretty good. The faceplate is removable, and it has a nice stealthy matte black texture. The CosmicByte logo is silkscreened on the faceplate.

The controller has transparent ABXY buttons, through which the light shines when turned on,

The dpad is a medium sized cross style dpad. It looks nice.

The two RGB strips on the front give the controller a cool look. It’s quite customizable, and personally, I’ve been using it in the trigger indicator mode.

The back half of the controller handles have a stippled plastic texture. At this kind of a price point, I would have preferred to see some rubber grips, but whatever. The controller doesn’t slip when using.

Overall, the build quality is decent and there isn’t any creaking or machining marks anywhere. The little indent where you’re supposed to lift the faceplate from has a bit of a sharp edge. It’s not sharp enough to cut your finger, but it would’ve felt more premium if it was smoothed out.

It’s a pretty comfortable controller to hold and use.

This here is the most unique and interesting feature of the controller.

The Starforge uses TMR sticks, specifically, the Ksilver JS20 TMR modules. They’re really good modules, and they’re used by other reputed budget controllers like the Beitong KP40 and the Machenike G5 Pro V2.

On popping open the faceplate, and taking the stick caps off, we see the TMR module. And with the included tool, we can pull this out and swap the module to any of the 3 other pairs provided in the box. This is really cool, and actually quite handy, it’s almost like adjustable stick tension, but done in a different way.

The 4 modules are of varying tension, so you can use the sticks as per your preference. The 4 included modules are:

• 60gf
• 70gf
• 120gf (installed by default)
• 150gf

Personally, I’ve been using the default 120gf module on the left stick and the lightest 60gf module on the right stick. You can swap it out as you like. Very cool. Some of you might prefer a higher tension in the right stick.

The JS20 modules themselves are quite nice. There is no errors or issues on all the modules that I got. They’re all very linear without much of a centre bump.

But the stick experience is hindered by one factor. The anti-friction rings. They’re nice, but on my unit, the right stick has a little bit of scratchiness at the top of the ring.

Also, pressing down L3 and R3 on the 120 and 140gf modules is a little harder than the lighter modules. Just something to note.

The sticks perform as expected in the circularity test and polling rate test. Not much jitter and the circularity is even.

The ABXY buttons are membrane rubber dome switches. They’re pretty mid in terms of feel. The membrane buttons used here don’t get stuck or anything, but they feel a little sluggish when using. There’s practically no pre and post travel which is nice on paper but it feels weird and abrupt to use.

At this kind of a price point, I would have preferred to see mechanical buttons.

They look quite nice with the transparent look, and shinethrough legends. I’m not a fan of the four colour look here, as it takes away from the otherwise stealthy vibe of the controller.

Another cool feature of this controller is that you can swap the ABXY layout to nintendo switch’s BAYX layout. To do this, you take off the faceplate, and using the included screwdriver, turn this screw. This switches the ABXY buttons. Very cool.

The dpad is good. It’s tactile, responsive, and it handles diagonals well. There isn’t any wobble. The central pivot does its job well. Although, it shares the same sluggishness as the ABXY buttons. Rolling the dpad feels a little weird as well. But I perform fine in fighting games and platformers with this dpad.

Pressing the diagonals should be easier.

The shoulder bumpers are good. Tactile and almost no pre travel. Lightweight too, so they’re easy to use. Not much else to say about em.

The starforge features optical triggers, which are supposed to be more accurate and last longer than hall effect triggers. I honestly have no clue in this regard. But what I do know is that it feels… okay. The travel distance and sensitivity is good. There’s barely any pre and post travel. But it feels a little rough to use.

The trigger stops here are not hair triggers. They just become a digital input and it stops around halfway through the travel.

The controller has impulse triggers, like in Xbox controllers. The trigger vibration is a nice feature. But the implementation is such that you can feel the motor when you’re pressing the trigger normally. This leads to a “scissor like” sound and a rough feeling on your fingertips. I’ll show you what I mean in the sound test section. Also, there’s barely ANY games that support trigger vibrations that this is a pointless feature

Also, the triggers should have been wider. They’re so slim that my finger actually hurts a bit after using them for a while. The stippled texture on the triggers is good. Offers good grip.

Performance wise, the triggers are great. I am being a little harsh in my critique because I’ve used lots of really good controllers in this price range from brands like Gulikit, 8bitdo, GameSir, Flydigi, and those controllers don’t have any of these issues. And I’ll tell you in a minute WHY the CosmicByte controller suffers through all these shortcomings and little quality issues.

There’s 4 buttons on the back.
They can be programmed to act as macros. They feel nice, and I like them.
The positioning is good and comfortable to press.

The gyroscope here is quite meh. It only works in the Nintendo Switch mode. It’s not accurate enough to aim in shooters, but it’s good enough for Switch titles.

The rumble is quite good. The Starforge uses a similar style of haptic system as the PS5 Dualsense controller, called HD voice coils, and you can feel it. It’s super accurate and detailed, and it make for a very immersive experience in games. The intensity and frequency of vibrations is adjustable via button combinations, which is really nice. I use it at the second highest vibration strength of four options.

The trigger vibrations are a pointless gimmick as I mentioned before, due to the lack of games supporting the feature.

There is no software. You can customise the controller to a good degree with the button shortcuts listed in the manual.

The Starforge can be used in 2.4ghz mode, wired mode, and bluetooth mode. The platforms supported are windows, ios, android, nintendo switch, and Tesla cars lmao.

In wired and 2.4ghz mode, the controller works at 1000Hz polling rate, which I confirmed with polling rate tester application. There was very little jitter and the performance is pretty good.

I don’t have the exact latency numbers, but there is no perceivable latency in any of the modes. The performance of the controller was flawless in my testing.

When I first opened this controller, I noticed something suspicious. Most brands that make their own controllers have a solid indicator that it’s theirs. Like an RGB logo, or a solid badge.

But on the CosmicByte Starforge, the only CosmicByte logo is this little logo silkscreened onto the faceplate.

This got me thinking, “Wait a minute… is this just a rebranded controller? Well, that’s to be expected from CosmicByte. I wonder what the original controller costs”

And then I went investigating. I used reverse image search to look for a similar looking controller, to no avail. All I got was the Starforge controller. After a day, it suddenly struck me. I went onto Alibaba, and used their “search similar by image” feature.

And lo and behold! This is the original manufacturer. And… WHAT?! It’s listed for just ₹1700?! Even if we add shipping costs and GST and whatnot, this controller should not cost more than ₹4000 in my opinion. We don’t even get the cool custom faceplates!

The CosmicByte Starforge is an interesting controller. It has some REALLY cool features, like the hotswapable sticks and the interchangable ABXY button layout. And all in all, it’s honestly not even a bad controller.

But at the earth shattering price of ₹5500, I cannot recommend this controller. At this price, you have so many better options from brands like Gamesir and 8bitdo. IF this controller ever goes down to ₹4300 or below, then I would recommend this controller. This high price, combined with CosmicByte’s reputation for poor QC (show copper bottle paper) and customer service, make this a no bueno from me.

The controller lacks the polish that should come with a pricetag like this. Here are the things that I expect from a controller at this price:

• Better buttons, ideally mechanical buttons but that’s personal preference.
• A good software for customisation.
• Polished feel. The basic features of the controller canNOT have any issues. The triggers, analog stick experience, grip and other basics have to be FLAWLESS.
• Extra accessories like a charging dock, or a carrying case, or something like that.