Sony’s $200 DualSense Edge for PS5 will have ‘moderately shorter’ battery life

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw my hands-on impressions of Sony's new gamepad, the $200 answer to Microsoft's Xbox Elite controllers. There is a change from the original dual sense controller. According to Sony it has less battery life.

The company made a full statement about that.

The DualSense Edge wireless controller’s operating time is moderately shorter than the original DualSense wireless controller because we’ve included many more features within the same form factor and ergonomic design as the original DualSense controller. We wanted to strike a good balance between wireless operating time and delivering robust, high-performance features. Additionally, the longer USB braided cable is also great for competitive players who prefer playing with a wired connection to avoid wireless interference – this option preserves battery life.

Sony held over 100 research sessions with pros to figure out the biggest pain points of the controller. He says the company wanted to build a gamepad that was the same size as the PS5's.

The original dualsense has a weak battery life, but it isn't one of the pain points that Sony's addressing this time.

In my experience, the dualsense lasts longer than my dualShock 3 and dualShock 4, but I still buy a charging stand because it still runs out of battery at times. Plug it in if it will reach your couch, or use the stand with the dualsense edge.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Sony isn't directly addressing the issue of joystick drift, the phenomenon where the normal wear and tear on potentiometer-based joysticks can make them wear out over time and give false readings, most famously in the Nintendo Switch Joy-Con We were told that the dualsense edge uses potentiometer-based joysticks as well.

It will be easy to fix if your controller starts drifting. You will be able to buy the modules for $20 at Playstation.com on January 26th or later, and you can swap them in under a minute. There is a place for an extra module in the controller's carrying case.

During the development of the dualsense edge, Sony did not answer questions about whether it considered longer battery life or magnetic hall effect sensor joysticks.