Zwift Play

If you spend a lot of time on Zwift then the Zwift Play controllers can replace nearly everything you'd need a keyboard to do, and they also cover some other functions, some of which are useful, some currently less so. For heavy users, and for people who want to dive into steering and virtual shifting, they make a lot of sense. They're not perfect, though, and I had are a few niggles with the current implementation. If you've yet to experience the delights of Zwift, check out our review.

Zwift Play is a pair of controllers that fit under your brake levers/shifters and they give you access to nearly all of the game controls. On each controller there's a four-button keypad (colours/letters on the right, cursors on the left) that sits inboard of the bend between the hoods and the tops. Underneath the lever there are two further controls: a rocker switch that you can push in towards the stem or out the other way, and another long button that does different things depending on your setup, and what you're doing in the game.

> Buy now: Zwift Play for £99 from Zwift

Fitting the Zwift Play controls to drop bars is simple: make sure they're charged up via the USB-C port, and drag the silicone strap around to secure them under your shifter. They're designed for drop bars and work with most shifters, although Campagnolo shifters with a thumb paddle won't work because it's in the way of the keypad.

Spacers are included for thin bars, but more likely you'll be wanting to find space, not fill it. With the Zwift Play controllers mounted below my 11-speed SRAM Force levers and the lever reach dialled all the way out, there was enough room to access the rocker, but not loads. If you're struggling for room you could strip the tape from that part of the bar to give yourself a bit more room. Excuse the state of the shifters on my turbo bike, by the way!

When you start Zwift and fire up the controllers using the light-up Z buttons, the game will find them and allow you to connect. Having said that, given that this is a specific piece of Zwift hardware designed to be used solely with the game, it's a pretty slow process. The Play controllers are always the last thing to connect when I sign on. But connect they do, and then you can go and get riding. So, how do you use them?

Using the Zwift Play controllers

There's a ready-reckoner of all the controls on the Zwift website, but basically the Play controllers are designed to replace the use of a keyboard in-game, and for the most part they do. You can use the cursor keypad and the green (select) and pink (back) buttons to move around the Game UI and choose the type of riding you want to do.

Once you're riding you can call up the in-game action menu at the bottom of the screen with a click of the up arrow, which allows you to do things like change the camera position, take a photo, or skip an interval in workouts. A long press on the down arrow will do a U-turn, and a long press on the orange Z key will give a 'ride-on bomb' to nearby riders like you can from the Zwift companion app. A short press on the Z will return a ride on if someone's given you one; making that easy to do is a definite step forward. The blue button will deploy a powerup if you have one. Left and right cursors navigate menus and also allow you to choose your direction at junctions.

If you have a Zwift Hub trainer then the long side buttons give you access to the virtual gearing on the trainer. This is predominantly for users of the newer Zwift Hub One trainer that only has a single mechanical gear, but it does work on the geared trainer too, which can be a bit confusing. Anyway, the buttons are nice and big and accessible from the hoods and drops. They're certainly better than the small controller you get bundled with the Hub One. In a workout the side buttons control the intensity of the workout, so it's easy to tweak it if it's too hard or too easy. Again, making this easy to do is a real help.

The rocker button on each controller, or 'Analog Paddle' as it's officially known, controls steering and braking. If you rock the button away from the bike centre then your in-game bike will go that way, so rocking the left-hand button out will move the rider to the left. I say 'move' here rather than 'steer' because it's not exactly steering: if you don't steer you're not going to end up in a hedge or anything. Instead, steering sort of jumps you between virtual 'lanes' in the game, like that posh Scalextric set you always wanted for Christmas but your parents never bought you.

Because the controller is analog, in theory you can steer more or less, but that's at odds with the actual process of steering in Zwift, which is essentially digital: you're in one of the lanes (the number of lanes is dependent on the road) and you can switch to the other lanes, one at a time. I'd say that the implementation of the steering rocker is probably the weakest point of the Play controllers for me; the steering button could have been just that, a nice big tactile button that offers you some obvious feedback. The rocker is just a bit – and I hope this isn't too technical a term – wafty for my liking.

Steering isn't all the rocker does. Braking is accessed by pressing the rockers inwards, and currently doesn't really have any actual use. You don't need to brake in Zwift – you can take any corner on any map at any speed. Presumably Zwift has plans to introduce braking at some point, but for the time being it's kind of a placeholder function; currently there are no racing events scheduled that would utilise it. The only possible time you might want to access it is to stop for a quick bike change in a race that's moving from road to gravel, but that's very much an edge case.

At the moment the thing you're most likely to be doing with the braking is accidentally triggering it when you're trying to do something else, like grabbing the bars hard for an end-of-race sprint, or just trying to steer and pressing the rocker the wrong way. Both of these are annoying, and both potentially race-contention-ending if you're on the limit. Oddly, braking is turned off automatically for workouts, where it doesn't really matter, but kept on for races, where it does. The game needs a setting to disable braking until it's useful; that doesn't seem like the most onerous bit of development.

Another thing that would make the Zwift Play controllers better would be the ability to configure what the buttons do. That way you could assign steering to the long buttons if you don't need them for shifting, and turn the rockers off. Or you could have braking take effect only if you pressed both long buttons and keep steering on the rocker.

In the meantime, you'll have to learn not to accidentally brake, which for the most part I have, although in the heat of a race when you're chewing your stem or smashing out a sprint you're not always making good decisions or being very precise with your movements.

Zwift's aim is to make the Play controllers useful enough to replace your keyboard for all in-game controls, and for the most part it's been successful. For a normal ride or workout I can put the keyboard on the shelf once I've fired up the game, and everything else to the point that I exit the app can be done via the controllers. So that's very much a tick.

> Check out our video: a Zwift setup for every budget

The one part of the game that's not really compatible with the controllers is the in-game messaging. You really need a keyboard for that, or the companion app. I use the app on my bars, and speech-to-text so I don't have to type; it would be great to see a microphone included in a later version of the Play controllers, and similar functionality built into the game, but that's for down the road and it's not a deal-breaker here.

Zwift says the batteries in the Play controllers last for 20 hours, and I've had at least that out of a charge; probably it depends a bit on how much actual button pressing you're doing along the way. Charging is via a USB-C port with a cover to keep sweat out; the controllers don't have an IP rating because that doesn't cover sweat, which is what they're most likely to experience unless you like to do your static training outdoors in the rain. Anyway, testing has included a lot of people sweating all over them in a lot of situations; I haven't had any issues in testing.

Value & conclusion

In terms of value, and competition, well... we're in a similar kind of territory to the Wahoo Kickr Climb that I reviewed back in 2018. It's very much a case of: here's the thing, and you can make your decision about whether the thing is worth the money for you.

It's not like you can get a cheap knock-off Zwift in-game controller from Temu or the middle aisle of Lidl, and the controllers are proprietary to Zwift and its specific game environment so there's not much likelihood of any other options coming on to the market.

The rrp in the UK is £149, but up until now (and still currently) the Zwift Play has been reduced to £99. At full price it costs more than a year of Zwift, so it's a significant investment in the scheme of things. If you're spending lots of hours on the app over winter – and especially if you're racing, where steering will come into play more and more, or you have Zwift's Hub One trainer and want better virtual shifters – then you may think that's a price you're happy to pay.

It's a hard one to score for that reason, but overall I'd say the Zwift Play controllers are good, and if you're a heavy user of the app – which, after all, is who they're aimed at – then you'll definitely find them useful.

Verdict

Useful controllers for most of the functions in Zwift that do away with the need to keep a keyboard within reach