PlayStation DualSense Edge Controller Review: Paying Triple For More Control Doesn’t Make Sense

A skeptic might say that gamers form one of the most passionate consumer groups on the planet — always ready to buy the latest marketing hype, once a techie that promises a advantage.

That’s why high-end PC graphics cards can hit their peaks — all for the sake of a few extra frames per second or a hyper-realistic rendering technique like ray tracing.

Console players are not immune to the race in which each generation of machines proudly proclaims outstanding performance measured in teraflops or, more colloquially, millions of polygons on the screen. Overall, though, the hardware stays the same from batch to batch, at least on the inside.

Last time, Sony and Microsoft stepped out of that cycle with upgraded versions of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One throughout their lifespans. In this generation, Sony wants us to believe that the new controller will give players an edge.

This is odd on some levels since Sony has taken the lead in terms of controller shares. In a head-to-head battle between the PS5’s device and the equivalent Xbox Series, Sony’s standard DualSense gamepad holds all the cards. Sure, the Xbox controller is a good piece of kit, for sure, but it lacks next to the tech inside of the competition, which features variable tension triggers, motion sensors, speakers and touchpad.

Despite this disparity, Sony wanted to have the upper hand when it launched the PS5 DualSense Edge controller last week, whose retail price – check note, shake your head – €240, about three times the price of the controller standard gaming. It’s not gilded, nor does it look completely different, it’s just slightly customizable and adds a few buttons. However, for a select group of committed players, it will probably be worth three times the premium.

When held in the hand, the Edge feels almost identical to its cheaper brother. Around the back, two new (but removable) levers give you additional controls — maybe for a special move or a combination of buttons that were previously hard to reach.

Below the joystick, two new function buttons linked to the player profile allow for quick swapping of options like headphone volume, vibration levels, and custom button assignments. Digging deeper into these menus reveals more subtle modifications like thumbsticks and trigger dead zones—helpful for the different requirements of a shooter versus a racer, for example. . The club caps themselves are also hot-swappable for those who prefer a domed knob under the thumb. Edge comes in three varieties to suit most tastes.

Perhaps the most welcome upgrade for me is the most trivial one — super-long charging cable and smart carrying case to keep everything tidy. The most unwelcome “improvement” is shorter battery life, a feature for which the original DualSense wasn’t famous in the first place.

Sony’s marketing doesn’t make it clear whether Edge components are of higher quality, longer life than standard controller components, but you can expect so at the price point. this high. Very helpful? Correct. Necessary? Are not. The new controller is the sort of luxury item that might be suitable for devout esports players but most gamers can easily get by with their excellent bogus standard gamepad.

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Note that Microsoft also sells premium controllers that cost many times more than the basic version. It at least has the advantage of allowing a huge range of colors through a custom order.