DualSense battery life

[Ezekiel]

YongYea says 13 hours, which I find hard to believe. One lol-worthy article said two hours, others are saying about 7 to 10, some YouTuber named Dave 2D (never watched him) said 4 to 7 hours. I wonder if turning off the feedback will have a significant impact.

I think it sucks every device now is expected to have lithium ion batteries. My wireless keyboard has used the same AAA batteries with the same charge for about three years, but a controller can't even last half a day. Yes, I'd rather pay for new batteries.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I don't think I've bought batteries for anything in... forever. That said, I do recognize the advantages of external batteries. But I don't like playing videogames for hours on end, so the short battery life of the DS4 never bothered me.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

That's going to be really annoying.

I'm already annoyed with the battery life of the DS4 and this is worse.

Does it at least come with a decent length charging cable, or did sony cheap out again and just give you a 3 foot cable like they've done with the dualshock 3 and 4?

 

[Ezekiel]

I don't think I've bought batteries for anything in... forever. That said, I do recognize the advantages of external batteries. But I don't like playing videogames for hours on end, so the short battery life of the DS4 never bothered me.

I normally don't either. But I don't wanna have to walk over and plug it in so much. I just wanna put it down when I'm done with it and pick it up again later. If I forget, my playtime is potentially cut short. Replaceable batteries are safer anyway, speaking in terms of controller longevity. I doubt my DS4 holds as long a charge as it did in the beginning. Pretty sure my DS3 died. That's the nature of these lithium ion batteries.

 

[CriticalGaming]

YongYea says 13 hours, which I find hard to believe. One lol-worthy article said two hours, others are saying about 7 to 10, some YouTuber named Dave 2D (never watched him) said 4 to 7 hours. I wonder if turning off the feedback will have a significant impact.

I think it sucks every device now is expected to have lithium ion batteries. My wireless keyboard has used the same AAA batteries with the same charge for about three years, but a controller can't even last half a day. Yes, I'd rather pay for new batteries.

It probably has a lot to do with what the game demands from the controller. If you are playing something that uses the haptic feedback a lot and the motion sensor then it probably eats the battery life more than something that doesnt.

 

[CriticalGaming]

That's going to be really annoying.

I'm already annoyed with the battery life of the DS4 and this is worse.

Does it at least come with a decent length charging cable, or did sony cheap out again and just give you a 3 foot cable like they've done with the dualshock 3 and 4?

I use my 10ft cell phone charger for my ds4 and it has been perfect.

 

[laggyteabag]

Wow, that is basically nothing.

I suppose that it the cost of all of those fancy haptics and whatever.

Its a shame, especially as the batteries aren't even replaceable.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

The DualSense has a 1560mAh (milliamp/milliampere hours) by default compared to 1000mAh in DS4 IIRC, but that gain is probably eaten up by the extra juice the haptics need. Could always try upgrading it with a 3,000mAh one, but I’ve read mixed results in the past because it’s hard to find high quality third party batteries.

 

[Dreiko]

I play with my pad hooked up when I do fighting games to eliminate any latency but in other games, especially Jrpgs, it may be a bit annoying.

Maybe if you turn down the intensity of the light it will last longer? I do so with my ps4 pads.

 

[Gergar12]

As someone with a small TV, I didn't care about the Dualshock 4's battery life, but the fact that Microsoft has the hardware edge over sony who has the software edge over Microsoft(right now), makes me suspect this console war isn't as clear-cut as people make it to be. People assume Sony will win, but one console will literally have Elders Scroll 6 on it, and a whole host of better features.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

DualSense Haptics Is Tuned Individually for Every Weapon in Black Ops Cold War

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will feature an extensive implementation of the DualSense controller haptics tuned for each weapon.

wccftech.com

There seems to be no end to the different ways developers will leverage this controller’s functions. If I was a big shooter fan for example it would be no contest between the two consoles. I’m sure other genres will do interesting things though. God of War should be interesting with the blades and ax.

 

[Gordon_4]

As someone with a small TV, I didn't care about the Dualshock 4's battery life, but the fact that Microsoft has the hardware edge over sony who has the software edge over Microsoft(right now), makes me suspect this console war isn't as clear-cut as people make it to be. People assume Sony will win, but one console will literally have Elders Scroll 6 on it, and a whole host of better features.

Yeah, the PC with community mod support

 

[Ezekiel]

As someone with a small TV, I didn't care about the Dualshock 4's battery life, but the fact that Microsoft has the hardware edge over sony who has the software edge over Microsoft(right now), makes me suspect this console war isn't as clear-cut as people make it to be. People assume Sony will win, but one console will literally have Elders Scroll 6 on it, and a whole host of better features.

Can't imagine why I'd ever want to play Elder Scrolls with a controller, though. Or Doom. Or any first person view games. Doom Eternal sold much better on PC in its first days than on the consoles, so who knows how much buying Bethesda will really help MS?

"Doom Eternal has sold over 700K units on Steam alone in its first week of launch, beating out all other Steam releases of 2020 so far.... with sales on PlayStation and Xbox said to be between 250k-400k each."

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I play with my pad hooked up when I do fighting games to eliminate any latency but in other games, especially Jrpgs, it may be a bit annoying.

Maybe if you turn down the intensity of the light it will last longer? I do so with my ps4 pads.

What kind of pad do you use?

I don't think hooking the DS4 or Dualsense would help reduce latency. Both controllers use bluetooth, and the cables are just for power, they don't transfer data via the cable.

 

[Dreiko]

What kind of pad do you use?

I don't think hooking the DS4 or Dualsense would help reduce latency. Both controllers use bluetooth, and the cables are just for power, they don't transfer data via the cable.

When you play with a ds4 on PC through Steam outside of big picture mode you don't use bluetooth, you have to have it wired, and if the wire gets unplugged the controller stops working instantly, so no, it does definitely have the capability to communicate through the wire too. It shifts into wired mode when plugged in. I dunno about the ps5 pad but ps3-4 pads are thus.

As someone with a small TV, I didn't care about the Dualshock 4's battery life, but the fact that Microsoft has the hardware edge over sony who has the software edge over Microsoft(right now), makes me suspect this console war isn't as clear-cut as people make it to be. People assume Sony will win, but one console will literally have Elders Scroll 6 on it, and a whole host of better features.

I don't get what the tv size has to do with battery life.

And I dunno if you can call it the "hardware edge" when Xs are literally catching fire and putting out smoke as of now apparently.

 

[Gergar12]

When you play with a ds4 on PC through Steam outside of big picture mode you don't use bluetooth, you have to have it wired, and if the wire gets unplugged the controller stops working instantly, so no, it does definitely have the capability to communicate through the wire too. It shifts into wired mode when plugged in. I dunno about the ps5 pad but ps3-4 pads are thus.


I don't get what the tv size has to do with battery life.

And I dunno if you can call it the "hardware edge" when Xs are literally catching fire and putting out smoke as of now apparently.

Since I have a small TV, I can get up closer to the TV, and thus the wire length of the controller doesn't matter. So I can recharge it while I play

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

When you play with a ds4 on PC through Steam outside of big picture mode you don't use bluetooth, you have to have it wired, and if the wire gets unplugged the controller stops working instantly, so no, it does definitely have the capability to communicate through the wire too. It shifts into wired mode when plugged in. I dunno about the ps5 pad but ps3-4 pads are thus.


I don't get what the tv size has to do with battery life.

And I dunno if you can call it the "hardware edge" when Xs are literally catching fire and putting out smoke as of now apparently.

I think those were bogus claims done with a vape or something. Here’s DF’s thermal tests for each -

XSX

PS5

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

When you play with a ds4 on PC through Steam outside of big picture mode you don't use bluetooth, you have to have it wired, and if the wire gets unplugged the controller stops working instantly, so no, it does definitely have the capability to communicate through the wire too. It shifts into wired mode when plugged in. I dunno about the ps5 pad but ps3-4 pads are thus.

Did some additional research and we're both right...sort of.

Apparently the first version of the DS4 controller that came with the launch PS4 did not transfer data over the charging cable if you connected it to the PS4, but it does if you connect it to a PC. For some reason on the PS4 it will only connect via bluetooth and will only use the cable for charging and nothing else.

The Dualshock 4 version 2 does actually transfer data with the cable.

Since I only own DS4 v1 controllers I assumed they were all like that.

 

[Dreiko]

Did some additional research and we're both right...sort of.

Apparently the first version of the DS4 controller that came with the launch PS4 did not transfer data over the charging cable if you connected it to the PS4, but it does if you connect it to a PC. For some reason on the PS4 it will only connect via bluetooth and will only use the cable for charging and nothing else.

The Dualshock 4 version 2 does actually transfer data with the cable.

Since I only own DS4 v1 controllers I assumed they were all like that.

Oh yeah, I got a ps4 slim a couple years down the line so by then they definitely were the v2 ones.

But yeah I've been doing this since forever so I thought it was common knowledge lol.