The DS4 is almost the perfect controller so I went Playstation even though I haven't used the DualSense (I also liked the DS1 and DS2. They were fine. I never used a DS3 or Sixaxis). The DS4 is light, comfortable, and quiet. It loses points by not having a replaceable battery along with weak battery life but if you mostly use it with PC like I do, the trick is to go into the custom lighting menu in Steam or on DS4Windows and disable the controller's glowy light altogether. I swear it triples the battery life to have that big bright LED turned off. I only have to charge my main DS4 like once a week because of this.
Prior to this generation of controllers I would have said Xbox. The 360 and Xbox One controllers are both extremely comfortable and I still use both regularly. The Xbox One controller is in my view one of the best controllers ever made.
The problem is that the new revision of the Xbox controller that came with the Series consoles is a massive step backwards. It's not only much cheaper feeling, but worse in many other ways than the Xbox One version. Firstly, it's way too noisy. The face buttons are extremely clicky and loud to the point of being distracting. Then there's the D-pad. I could deal with the face buttons being how they are but the D-pad makes this thing unusable. It's somehow even louder than the face buttons (Gerstmann complained about this too. He said it's so loud that he can't use Xbox controllers anymore because the clicks wake up his kids if they're napping in his office). Not only is the new D-pad extremely noisy, but it's also far too stiff. There's no play to the D-pad so you have to use a bit of extra force to do inputs, which over time adds up. I tried playing Tony Hawk 1 + 2 with it and ended up with a sore thumb within about 20 minutes. It's like they looked at the 360 D-pad and went "How can we make this worse in every way possible" and did it. It was clearly designed by people who think of games as shooters where the D-pad is only occasionally used, not people who play fighting games, indies, retro games, or RPGs that rely upon using the D-pad extensively.
My actual hot take answer is that if the Switch Pro controller had analog triggers it would be my favourite. It's extremely light, quiet, and has a battery that lasts weeks. The D-pad isn't as good as the DS4 but it's still good enough for most games. I use my spare Pro Controller with my Steam Deck a lot and it's great.
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