Understanding Your Grade
Your grade evaluates the geometric perfection of the thumbstick module's outer boundary.
A+ (Esports Ready) means the stick achieves a flawless circle, critical for consistent diagonal movement in games like Apex Legends and Rocket League.
F (Defective) indicates severe asymmetry, meaning diagonal inputs will hit their max value prematurely or not at all.
Since you're using a PS5 DualSense with a Potentiometer module, you can expect the underlying tech to be prone to slight asymmetry and physical wear.
The DualSense ships with conventionally-sourced stick modules, but its firmware applies a fairly aggressive circular deadzone correction that hides minor rim error in normal gameplay. That means an A- or B+ grade from the raw data is often invisible in game — only significant asymmetry surfaces as diagonal slowdown. If your DualSense grades poorly, re-test the other stick before deciding: a one-sided result points to a single defective module rather than a systemic design problem.
Potentiometer (pot) sticks read position from a wiper sliding over a carbon track, and that friction is exactly where circularity degrades over time. A fresh pot module can trace a near-perfect circle, but as the track wears, the wiper loses contact at certain angles and the ring starts to pinch into a squircle — usually first visible near the 45-degree diagonals. Wear is rarely symmetric between the X and Y axes, so a lopsided grade on a pot module is the classic signal that the stick has been played past its best range and is a stronger candidate for replacement than for recalibration.
Pot modules degrade along a predictable path: the carbon track wears where the stick spends the most time, so the ring pinches first at your dominant input angles, and the wiper's lost contact produces small flats on the circle before full drift appears. Because the wear is physical, no software setting can restore the geometry — recalibration only recenters the zero point, it cannot grow the worn track back. A lopsided grade between the X and Y axes on a pot module is therefore the most reliable hardware-wear signal this tester can show, and the replacement decision is generally clear once the ring shows a visible flat.
For the DualSense, also note that the touchpad and haptics draw no stick power and cannot influence the grade; if the grade changes dramatically between runs, check that the stick is returning fully to the gate and that the pad is not in a low-power state where adaptive-trigger motors are drawing the USB negotiation priority. The DualSense's aggressive internal circularity correction makes it the most likely of the five to show a flattering grade, so compare the raw data behind the letter — a B+ with a clean, symmetric ring is a genuinely healthy pad.
Beyond the module itself, the DualSense's haptic actuators and adaptive-trigger motors draw power from the same bus as the sticks, and a pad running its rumble during a measurement can shift the sampled position slightly — so measure with vibration disabled and both triggers untouched. The controller also re-centers its sticks at power-on, which means the first reading after a fresh wake is the most accurate baseline; if you grade immediately after heavy use, wait for the pad to settle. The DualSense is the newest pad in the set, so a genuinely asymmetric ring here is more likely to be a manufacturing defect in one module than years of accumulated wear, and testing both sticks before any decision will usually isolate the faulty side.