This has been my experience too.
My PS3 controllers still work fine, aside from a shorter battery life due to age. I used them just a month ago to play through all of the metal gear solid games on PS3.
PS4 controllers, I got one that is showing slight drift, and one that is showing bad drift. But I did use these controllers quite a bit more than the PS3 controllers due to using them on PC, so these were by far my most used controllers.
I've had my PS5 controllers a lil over a year now and already have one showing bad drift, barely used compared to the others.
I have the same experience. PS3 controllers work perfectly and heavy use and all 3 of my dualsense controllers have bad stick drift . Going to take them apart and see if I can clean them soon . I've also had to take apart one of my dualsense controllers already because one of the buttons stopped working.
All my PS3 controllers work badly. At least one gets a stick stuck in a corner sometimes. At least one misses some button presses or has a dead button. At least one randomly sends extra button presses. And an off brand one is just hard mode because it somehow doesn't respond the way some games expect.
Otoh I've never found fault in my PS4 controllers. Are there and good tests I should know about?
But neither of these is too surprising, since the PS3 controllers are very old and very used and the PS4 controllers have had a shorter and easier life.
I did have issues with my PS3 controllers make random button presses but there is an easy fix .
I would just put a small piece of cardboard where the plastic circuit thing would make contact with the main board and it would make a better connection and fix the issue.
I think the mini charging connector broke before the stick drifted.
Now I've had 2x refurbished DS5 from GameStop.
One stick tore off from broken down rubber/material. The other stick drifted real bad, after both extended plans ended too.
Current purple DS5 was new from Best Buy last July.
It started drifting three weeks ago.
I bought the extended plan and they said I can exchange it or use as a store credit towards a different controller (I see the edge joystick module is out of stock everywhere lol).
Can definitely confirm the short lifespan of PS5 sticks.
Mine not only started drifting within a year, it also has "stuttering" inputs where tilting the stick forward sometimes produces short inputs in bursts for a second before it works normally.