For just $200, PlayStation 5 owners can live on the edge.
Well not really. What you’re really doing with that money is buying the DualSense Edge.(Opens in a new tab) controller, a new official PS5 “pro” controller that Sony released in January. Sony’s response to Xbox Elite(Opens in a new tab) The controller from a few years ago can do a lot of cool things, from adding optional back buttons to the ability to use different types of analog sticks.
‘Final Fantasy XVI’ wants you to love action games
But that only scratches the surface. DualSense Edge is very expensive at $200, but if you can scrape together that much money, you might want to get one. Here are three very important reasons why.
remappable buttons
It is not too difficult to understand.
Credit: Screenshot: PlayStation
The first selling point and the easiest to explain about the DualSense Edge is that you can remap every button on the controller, right from the “Accessories” section of the PS5 system menu. There’s a very simple tutorial process that walks you through how it works, but you probably don’t even need it because the menu is pretty intuitive.
But that is not all. You can also configure, save, and hot-swap between custom button mapping profiles. In other words, if you want a game to have controls like another game, just create a profile, hold down one of the buttons below the analog sticks, and switch to that profile instantly. It’s all very quick and easy to understand, and could be a huge time saver in the future.
the trigger stops
I love this little one.
Credit: Molly Flores/Mashable
When Sony released the PS5 in 2020, perhaps the most notable new hardware feature was the haptics in the DualSense controller triggers. If you (virtually) fire a gun or speed up a car in a PS5 game, you’ll sometimes get realistic feedback to simulate the effect of doing those things in real life. It has been a prominent feature in games like return and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
But honestly, most PS5 games don’t use that feature at all, and precisely none of the PS4 games (which are still relevant and coming out to this day) use it. Many games don’t use the analog nature of the triggers, which means it’s just another binary button press. And for those games, the trigger stop feature on the DualSense Edge is your best friend.
Locate the little slider next to each trigger. You will notice that as you adjust it, the triggers travel less and less. Push the slider all the way in the other direction and the triggers basically become big buttons, with no travel at all. For fast, twitchy games where reaction time is key, this can be really helpful.
Or maybe you just don’t like analog triggers in any game. That’s fine, too.
And finally, a fix for stick drift.
Last, but obviously not least, the DualSense Edge finally provides an answer to the age-old analog stick drift drama surrounding modern video game controllers. Anyone who’s gamed in the last decade probably knows this all too well: after using a controller long enough, one (or both) of the analog sticks will eventually start to drift, which means you’re registering inputs that aren’t happening.
The end result is that you can find yourself perpetually aiming to the right in shooters, or constantly walking forward in an RPG when you don’t intend to. It’s a big problem for PS5 controllers, in particular. I had the console since launch and went through three different controllers due to drift. With each replacement costing $70, it’s a real hassle.
Not anymore with DualSense Edge. You can easily slide the controller faceplate off and remove each individual bar module, replace with $20 official replacement module(Opens in a new tab) from Sony, and voila! No more drift.
Does it kinda suck that you have to spend money to get a replacement sent to you? Absolutely. But $20 is a lot less than $70. With this feature, the DualSense Edge can be your permanent PS5 controller.
As long as you don’t break it, anyway. Always protect anything you’ve spent $200 on, people.
