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This fail picture or video was posted on Monday, November 14th, 2011 at 9:00 am

Ask any PC gamer about Razer accessories and the response will almost always be praise for the company’s high-quality performance products. While Razer has previously remained strictly a manufacturer of PC components, 2011 is looking like a different story. With the introduction of items like the Xbox 360/PC headset Chimaera and now the Onza controller, it’s clear Razer has ambitions outside of the PC gaming world.

The Razer Onza is a wired Xbox 360 controller that goes above and beyond Microsoft’s standard offering. Why not make it wireless? Unfortunately this is something that Microsoft has a firm grip on, preventing third-party manufacturers from licensing such technology. This gripe aside–and it is certainly not the fault of Razer–the Onza performs solidly.

Of course, there wasn’t a whole lot wrong with Microsoft’s original Xbox 360 controller save for the awful directional-pad disc that was eventually addressed in last year’s Xbox 360 controller with transforming D-pad.

The Razer Onza comes in two varieties, the standard ($40) and Tournament Edition ($50), the latter of which is reviewed here. The Tournament Edition gives you adjustable tension analog sticks, light-up face buttons, a braided cord, and a rubberized finish as opposed to a textured one. We’ll discuss those features more in just a bit–but, needless to say, we think it’s worth the extra $10 to upgrade.

The Onza Tournament Edition has a slick black rubberized coating that feels great in the hand. It’s marginally bigger than the standard wireless Xbox 360 controller, but it’s nothing jarring. The button layout resembles what Xbox 360 owners are used to, save for the back and start buttons getting moved to the bottom of the controller.

The Onza’s D-pad is certainly a departure from what we’re used to; but while we like it better than Microsoft’s, it still has its faults. The Onza’s D-pad consists of four separate directional buttons that require more effort to press than a conventional D-pad demands.

For example, when we used the Onza during our trials of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, we found the D-pad didn’t allow for the quick, swift multidirectional gestures that fighting games require. Instead, we were left with clunky performance that really soured the experience. That said, we found the D-pad to work well in games where the pad is used as a weapon-selection tool.

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Behind the battery cover are the microSD card slot and a SIM card so you can use the phone overseas.

Features
The strength of the ES400S lies in its enterprise-friendly features. You can access all of your company’s back-end systems like inventory tracking and placing orders for new equipment, depending on what sort of apps your company uses. You can scan bar codes, as we mentioned above, and you can also get signatures for orders by having your customer sign directly on the phone.

Of course, the ES400S also has all of the usual Windows Mobile features. That includes Internet Explorer Mobile, Microsoft’s My Phone backup service, MSN Messenger, Windows Live, MSN Weather, MSN Money, Bing, and the full Microsoft Office Mobile suite. It supports Microsoft’s Direct Push technology for e-mail, tasks, calendar, and contacts via your company’s Exchange server. You can also use your own POP3 and IMAP e-mail addresses if you wish. Other preinstalled apps include Remote Desktop Mobile, SMS Staging, MSP Agent, Rapid Deployment Client, Airbeam Client, and Sprint Navigation, Sprint’s turn-by-turn directions app and service. You can get more apps via the Windows Marketplace.

Aside from that, the ES400S has all the normal PIM functions like a calendar, an address book, a calculator, a speakerphone, conference calling, voice command support, a notebook, and text and multimedia messaging. The ES400S is also a dual-mode phone that can connect to both GSM and CDMA networks as long as you have a SIM card inserted in the back. This dual 3.5G broadband connection lets you toggle between Sprint’s 3G EV-DO network here and a GSM UMTS/HSDPA network abroad. The ES400S also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP streaming.

Even though it’s a business-centric phone, the ES400S still has Windows Media Player. You can load MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MIDI, MPEG4, WMV, H.263, and H.264 file formats to the phone via either USB mass storage or a microSD card. The phone takes cards of up to 32GB.

The Motorola ES400S has a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera that can take pictures in three resolutions and three quality settings. You can capture panoramic images by stitching photos together, and there’s a shutter timer option too. For notation purposes, you can geotag your photos, and add comments to them. There’s a video camera as well.

Photo quality was average on the whole. Images seemed slightly fuzzy, and colors looked dull and dark.

Performance
We tested the Motorola ES400S in San Francisco using Sprint Nextel. Call quality was fantastic. There was very little hiss or static from either end. We heard our callers very clearly, and their voices sounded as if they were in the next room.

Similarly, callers praised our audio quality highly. They did say our voice quality was a bit harsh at times, but it wasn’t a huge distraction. They said we had great volume, so that they had no trouble hearing us even when we were walking on a busy city sidewalk in the rain. Speakerphone quality was impressive as well, though callers did detect a tiny bit of an echo at times.

The phone has a 600MHz ARM 11 processor, and while that may sound underpowered, we experienced no hiccups or delays when launching multiple apps. Some apps did take longer to load, however–the GPS app took a few more seconds than we expected, as did the browser.

Surfing the Web was a pleasant experience for the most part. The EV-DO speeds served us well, and we loaded the CNET home page in around 18 seconds. We weren’t able to test the GSM 3G speeds.

The Motorola ES400S has a rated battery life of 6 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby time. You can also purchase a battery that will extend the talk time to 12 hours and the standby time to 12 days.

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