this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2026
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Guide to Spotting Authentic PS3 Controllers (slrpnk.net)
submitted 3 days ago by SolarPunker@slrpnk.net to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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[–] Carl@anarchist.nexus 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah, the 5v charging (especially if it says 5v on the label) is an immediate giveaway. Authentic controllers don’t use proper USB 5v. But USB circuitry is cheap and extremely easy to implement, and it uses 5v as the standard… So lots of Chinese fakes default to using that.

And this is true for a lot of things, not just PS3 controllers. If something doesn’t normally use 5v USB, the cheap Chinese one almost always will. Because (again) 5v USB is dead simple to implement. Those circuits are already figured out. No reverse engineering or custom chips required. They’re basically just drag and drop. So that’s what a lot of cheap Chinese knockoffs default to using.