# 8bitdo input lag



## kalkab (Jun 18, 2019)

Hello, I decided to turn my android tv box into retro gaming station. The tv box is MINIX NEO U1 running Android 5.1.1 I downloaded emulators and purchased two 8bitdo SF30 controllers. I connected the controllers via bluetooth with no problem. The emulation is generally smooth but there is severe input lag. Most games are practically unplayable. Any ideas?


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## Issac (Jun 18, 2019)

Does your TV have "game mode" in its settings?

What emulator are you trying?


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## kalkab (Jun 18, 2019)

My TV has a gaming mode but I don't use it. There is WiiU connected to the TV and it works fine. On the android tv box I use the following emulators: Nostalgia.NES; Snes9x EX+; MD.emu; PC.emu and MAME4droid All of the emulators have severe input lag.


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## bananapi761 (Jun 18, 2019)

kalkab said:


> My TV has a gaming mode but I don't use it. There is WiiU connected to the TV and it works fine. On the android tv box I use the following emulators: Nostalgia.NES; Snes9x EX+; MD.emu; PC.emu and MAME4droid All of the emulators have severe input lag.


Every emulator I've used, especially on android have some pretty bad input lag. Retroarch worked wonders for me on any device I used it on, inputs are instant with the right setup.


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## Riptide (Jun 18, 2019)

3 possible sources of the lag
1. The wireless controller - 8bitdo is better than others, but whenever you use bluetooth you are going to have 20ms at a minimum.
2. The TV - you should definitely turn on game mode, older games are more sensitive to lag than the new stuff on your Wii U. If you want to test and get a general idea of how much is from the TV you could try hooking your box up to a computer monitor which should have considerably less lag than the TV.
3. The emulators themselves - running on underpowered hardware can cause lag even on the best emulator and an emulator can be coded poorly resulting in lag.


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## kalkab (Jun 18, 2019)

I thing the lag is from the bluetooth connection...


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## bananapi761 (Jun 18, 2019)

kalkab said:


> I thing the lag is from the bluetooth connection...


Definitely not, I own an 8bitdo adapter myself and I'm getting great response times from retroarch on my switch and android, using a PS4 controller. Their controllers should be similar.


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## Dartz150 (Jun 18, 2019)

You should turn on game mode, it will make a BIG difference. Some TV's have dedicated HDMI ports to enable this feature, modern ones can be enabled in every port.


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## kalkab (Jun 18, 2019)

I don't have 8bitdo adapter. I use the TV box build-in bluetooth.


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## Sicklyboy (Jun 18, 2019)

It's a stretch, but make sure you're not using any devices that draw power via USB 3.0 near the TV box or the controller. It's a known issue that that can cause some amount of electrical interference with nearby Bluetooth devices.


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## Issac (Jun 18, 2019)

Try game mode first. It does a lot more than you think most of the time, especially when it comes to old games (you notice it more). 

If you can, try a wired controller as well, to see if it is the controllers or the emulators (or the TV).


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## ital (Jun 19, 2019)

kalkab said:


> My TV has a gaming mode but I don't use it. There is WiiU connected to the TV and it works fine. On the android tv box I use the following emulators: Nostalgia.NES; Snes9x EX+; MD.emu; PC.emu and MAME4droid All of the emulators have severe input lag.



You really need to use game mode. For old school stuff that was made for CRT its essential. Its also worth checking the lag settings of your TV online to see how much the delay is with and without it as not all sets are made for old school gaming. Newer platforms account for this in the way they are programmed but pixel perfect platformers make it seem very obvious. 

I don't personally like the 8bitdo pads as I find they feel crappy in terms of the dpad and its twitchiness and have read some comments before about the Bluetooth ones being bad in terms of lag compared to the 2.4G ones.


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## kalkab (Jun 19, 2019)

I enabled "game mode" on my TV and it greatly reduced the input lag. I'm surprised, my WiiU and PS3 did not have input lag while the game mode was disabled. Thanks to all!


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## Sakitoshi (Jun 19, 2019)

Riptide said:


> but whenever you use bluetooth you are going to have 20ms at a minimum.


false, bluetooth can be as fast as 5ms.
when I use my dualshock 4 with my laptop ds4windows reports the input lag and is always around 5ms to 8ms.
I think we can expect similar latency from 8bitdo controllers, so the problem is somewhere else or something is causing interference with the bluetooth radio. try turning off wifi.


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## Tom Bombadildo (Jun 19, 2019)

Sakitoshi said:


> false, bluetooth can be as fast as 5ms.
> when I use my dualshock 4 with my laptop ds4windows reports the input lag and is always around 5ms to 8ms.
> I think we can expect similar latency from 8bitdo controllers, so the problem is somewhere else or something is causing interference with the bluetooth radio. try turning off wifi.


Really it depends on the controller and the BT chipset. The DS4 is actually, interestingly enough, one of the lowest latency bluteooth controllers you can get these days, in some cases it can actually have the same or _less_ input lag than when it's wired  Some BT controllers can have awful input though.

Obviously it's not the 20ms over exaggeration mentioned, but it can be quite high depending on the controller and the environment (the Steam controller over Bluetooth, for example, can have an average of ~13ms worth of input lag in an average setting, which is pretty dang high for a controller).

But yeah, game mode should help tremendously since it's designed to lower input lag. You'll lose some advanced processing, sometimes colors can look worse and scaling can get a bit...off, but it won't be enough to really be noticeable unless you're really looking for it.


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