The Pitiful Battery Life of the PS5's DualSense Controller

 

Sony's DualSense controller, which premiered with the original PS5, is a wonder of technology. It includes haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, a built-in microphone array, a mute button, an integrated speaker, a share button, a lightbar, motion sensors, as well as a touchpad. In other words, it has just about every feature you could possibly want in a modern game controller.

The downside to this feature-itis is battery life. If a game takes advantage of all these features, and you leave them enabled—you can disable quite a few of them—the battery can drain in about 5 hours. Some games don't use most of the features, or if they are disabled, the battery can last as long as 10 hours. 10 hours isn't terrible, but it's a far cry from the Xbox Series S and X controller, which typically lasts 20 to 40 hours.

I'll admit I wasn't originally a big fan of the Sony DualSense, partly because I prefer asymmetrical sticks, and because I like the feel of the Xbox controller in my hands. Now I'm used to the DualSense, and while holding it for long periods does cause some fatigue and discomfort, overall, I'd say it's a nice controller.

That said, I would love to see Sony dial back on features the next time around or move to a removable battery system like Xbox. Charging your controller is fine, but it's much better when you can just pop out the used AA batteries and insert new ones.

In the meantime, we're stuck with a controller that has every possible feature built into it, has terrible battery life, and is tethered to a USB port for charging. Not what I'd call a perfect situation, but there's not much that we can do about it, and there are very few alternative, third party controllers that have feature parity with the DualSense.

This is a quite different situation on Xbox, which might have a bare-bones controller comparatively, but there are lots of third-party options if you aren't happy with it.