Your controller is almost certainly fine, people are not exaggerating, and the explanation is that you have not actually felt the feature yet.
The DualSense has voice-coil actuators rather than conventional rotating-weight rumble motors. A rotating weight can only spin faster or slower, so it produces a buzz of varying intensity. A voice coil is driven by a waveform, like a speaker, so it can produce sharp taps, textures and distinct impacts. That is what people are describing when they talk about feeling rain or gravel, and it is a genuine qualitative difference rather than marketing.
The catch is that it only happens when software sends a waveform. When software instead sends a simple strong-and-weak rumble command, which is what the standard dual-rumble interface provides, the actuators do their best to reproduce it and the result is a buzz. It feels like ordinary rumble because, functionally, it is ordinary rumble being played through better hardware. Our test uses that standard interface, as any browser must, so both motors responding and the patterns playing is the correct result and tells you the hardware works, but it cannot demonstrate the detailed effects.
On PC, very few titles implement proper haptics, and those that do require the USB cable, since standard Bluetooth on a PC does not expose the haptics at all. So a PC-focused player can easily own the controller for a year and never feel the feature. On a PS5 it is implemented widely and the difference is immediately obvious.
The fastest way to settle it for yourself: try the controller on a PS5 in a game known for its haptics, or on PC run one of the small number of titles that declare DualSense haptic support, over the cable, with Steam Input disabled so it does not convert your controller into a generic gamepad. If it still feels like a plain buzz in that situation, then it is worth suspecting the hardware. Until then, nothing points that way.
