With the release of the PS4 firmware update 1.7 the possibility of dimming the light of the DualShock 4 gave many the hope to increase the battery life of their controller, but just by how much does it increase?

Turns out, not by much. We measured it ourselves with three cycles from full charge to zero at "bright," "medium" and "dim" settings. Vibration was kept off (or better, the system update turned it off for us) and the controller was left idle on the menu screen. In order to keep the variables even.

• On "Bright" setting, the controller ran from 8:48 PM to 7:47 AM the morning after, clocking 10 hours and 59 minutes of battery life.
• On "Medium" setting, the controller started its work at 5:25 PM and ran out of juice at 5:25 AM, for a total battery life of 11 hours and 42 minutes. 50 Minutes longer than the "Bright" setting.
• On "Dim" Settin it ran from 9:41 AM to 10:02 PM, clocking 12 hours and 21 minutes of battery life. 81 minutes longer than the "Bright" setting.

In conclusion, while dimming the light does help a little bit, the benefit is really not that relevant. So if you're doing it counting on much longer gaming hours, you might want to keep your expectations low.

Luckily it does reduce the glare on the screen considerably, so the feature is still quite useful for those sitting close to the screen.