The PlayStation 5 DualSense’s best feature isn’t the haptics or triggers

One of the biggest elements of the PlayStation 5 that owners continue to hype up as it gets into more people’s hands is the DualSense controller. This new gamepad is wowing players with its haptic rumble and adaptive triggers. But while those features are exciting, they weren’t what impressed me the most. The technology that is most consistently blowing me away is something that was in the DualShock 4: the speaker. Sony improved on the tinny, miserable sound that came out of the PS4’s gamepad, and now it’s the glue that holds everything together in the DualSense.

The buzz around the DualSense was so intense before I got my PS5 that my expectations were astronomical. And after using the controller to play through the excellent Astro’s Playroom tech demo/game, my initial impressions are that … it’s good. The haptics are better than the brute-force rumble we’ve had in gamepads up to this point. And the adaptive triggers really do push against your finger to imitate the resistance of a throttle or metal spring. But the truth is that the haptics still mostly feel like the whirring of a mechanical motor to me. And I only notice the adaptive triggers at their most aggressive. Instead of immersing me in the action, I’m so engrossed in the game that I’m yanking on the trigger and missing out on whatever subtle tension the developers intended me to experience.