Measurements and tests
Vibration and lights
A pad says nothing of its motors: no report tells whether one turned. So Vibrate plays each motor on its own while you hold the pad, and you feel which one does.
The vibration test
On most pads, one press of Vibrate, in the pad's tools, plays the left motor alone, then the right alone, then both, each at 80% for half a second, with a short pause between. The words beside Vibrate say which is playing, and the drawing shakes that grip.
With both running at once, a dead motor would hide behind the other, so each plays alone first. PadBench never says a motor is dead: a pad with one motor buzzes at every step, and nothing tells that from a dead one.
On a DualSense, a DualShock 4, a Switch Pro Controller or an Xbox One or Series pad, Vibrate opens the motor test instead, which plays each motor alone, an Xbox pad's trigger motors too, for as long as you like, at the strength you set, and on some at the frequency you set too.
Read more in Trigger effects and motor test
What you should feel
- A DualShock 4 or an Xbox pad: a heavy, low rumble in the left grip, and a light, high one in the right.
- A DualSense: a buzz in each grip from its voice coils, which stand in for the two motors.
- An Xbox One or Series pad's triggers, in the motor test: a light buzz under each finger, from the trigger's own motor.
- A Switch Pro Controller: a buzz from the actuator in each grip. Through the browser's Gamepad API the right one alone is faint; through WebHID and the Windows app both play at the same strength.
- An arcade stick or a board: often nothing, since many have no motor at all.
Where PadBench can rumble a pad
Vibrate shows only where the source reading the pad can rumble it, and the Controller tab lists it, or lists it through WebHID, with Use WebHID, where only WebHID can. Through the browser's Gamepad API, it plays wherever the browser gives the pad a rumble. In Chrome and Edge, WebHID rumbles the pads PadBench knows, a DualSense, a DualShock 4 and a Switch Pro Controller, the DualSense even where Chrome on Windows can't. The Windows app rumbles those and every Xbox pad.
Over Bluetooth, a Sony pad starts in a reduced report, and the first rumble, light or trigger effect switches it to its full one until it is turned off, which a running game sees too. PadBench asks before it does.
Read more in Sony pads on Bluetooth
Lights
A pad hardly ever says what its lights show, so PadBench sets them only when you ask, and claims to know them only on a Switch Pro Controller, whose player lights report themselves. On the PlayStation stage, Light opens a panel that sets a DualSense's or a DualShock 4's light bar to any colour, and a DualSense's player lights; on Nintendo's stage, a Switch Pro Controller's player lights and its Home ring.
Each panel has a light test: the light bar steps through red, green, blue and white, and the player lights count up from one, as a console numbers its players; then it asks whether you saw it. When you leave, PadBench puts back what the pad reported, and leaves the rest as it set it.
From its fourth hardware generation, a DualSense lights its player lights in mirrored pairs, so PadBench sets only the patterns that look the same on every DualSense. Windows runs an Xbox pad's light, so there is none to test.