Sony DualSense Charging Station For PS5 Reviewed.

It’s weird but I had a hell of a time tracking down one of these babies. I don’t know why, but the official Sony DualSense Charging Station for PS5 is damn rare! It’s either out of the stock or out of stock. I’ve honestly NEVER seen it in stock anywhere online OR in stores!

So how did I get mine?

I had to resort to leaving my name at the Sony Store at 313@Somerset and then waited for more than a month for the stock to get in. This isn’t a slight at the fine folks working the at the store (hell, I’m thankful I finally got mine!) but is a knock at how ridiculously hard to find the DualSense Charging Station is!

After all that trouble though…is it worth it?

What is the Sony DualSense Charging Station?

The Sony DualSense Charging Station is a Playstation 5 accessory that can charge two of the Playstation 5’s DualSense controllers at once. Going from empty to a full charge takes about 3 hours.

It retails for SG$44.90.

The first thing that came to my mind when saw it out of the box was, ‘That’s it?’.

Yes, the charging station looks right at home alongside my Playstation 5, but I expected more for what I paid. While solidly built (and decently weighty), the DualSense Charging Station does seem to be a bit overpriced for what it offers; charging two DualSense controllers.

I honestly thought that there was something I was overlooking, some switch I didn’t press to bling it out with cool LEDs or something. Nope, the charging station is really that barebones.

One thing to note; the DualSense Charging Station doesn’t need a PS5 to work, all it needs is its own power outlet. It comes with an adapter and power plug so all you need to do is connect them to the dock and then plug it in. The cables are decently lengthy, so you have some leeway on where you can place the station. Since you don’t need a USB port, you can even put it far away from the Playstation 5 if you choose to.

In fact, that’s off that table altogether; there’s simply no way to charge this via the Playstation 5’s USB ports or otherwise.

That’s a big strike for me.

I’m a big fan of having multiple options and being forced into using a power outlet does not sit well with me.

At the price point, there should at least be an option to use USB for charging. What if the plug goes kaput one of these days? I don’t want to spend another SG$44.90 on a replacement!

In fact, that’s the main sticking point with me.

3rd party controller charging stations can be under SG$30 AND offer more features than the official one. I’ve even seen a couple on Amazon SG that have LED indicators to show you the charging statuses of the controllers that are mounted.

Does the Sony DualSense Charging Station have something similar?

Nope.

In fact, there aren’t ANY indicators (LED or otherwise) on the charging station itself. There’s literally no way to tell if your controllers are fully charged unless you look at the controllers themselves.

Pro tip: If they’re pulsing orange, that means they’re charging.

It’s a really weird design omission that really, really irks me. How hard is it to have indicator lights that show if the device is working and charging? If your controllers are fully charged, there’s zero indicator at all that the charging station is working as it should.

Speaking of charging, you do that by slotting the DualSense controllers into the grooves and lining up the connectors at the bottom of the controllers to those at the base of the charging station. It seems simple, but in reality is anything but.

I had to readjust the controllers a couple of times to get them in place.

Even then, their placement is hardly secure. A slight bump and they’d move out of their charging groove. There’s nothing that locks them in place, which means you have to be careful when you’re taking a controller off the station that the other one isn’t dislodged from its groove.

It’s really a big turnoff for me at how easy it is to disrupt the controllers being charged and I really wished more thought had been given to this. It’s definitely not something I’d expect out of an official accessory.

The Bottom Line.

To say that I don’t like DualSense Charging Station is an understatement.

Yes, it looks good and charges your controllers but there a ton of legitimate issues with it. There’s no way to make sure your controller is ‘locked’ in, there aren’t any charging indicators and of course, you can only charge via power outlets.

On their own, these issues aren’t a big deal.

However, combined they’ll certainly make you pause at shelling out the MSRP for the DualSense Charging Station. At SG$44.90, it really isn’t worth it when a 3rd party charger can do all the things it does at a much lower price.

Only get it if you really need it to match the look of your Playstation 5.

TLDR:

No frills charger than could be much, much better value for money.