My honest take is that the Edge is a good controller that is usually bought for the wrong reason, and in your situation I would not buy it.
Start with the drift question, because it is the one that decides this. The Edge uses conventional potentiometer sticks, the same technology as the standard DualSense. It is not a hall effect controller. So yes, the Edge can and does drift, and the reports you have read are accurate. What the Edge gives you instead is replaceable stick modules: when a stick wears, you buy a module and swap it in minutes with no soldering and no opening the shell. That is genuinely valuable and no other first-party controller offers it. But it is a repairability feature, not a prevention feature, and the marketing blurs that line.
So the real comparison is this. Three standard DualSense controllers, or one Edge plus replacement modules at roughly a third of a controller's price each. If you are the kind of player who wears out a stick every year, the Edge wins over a four or five year horizon. If your controllers last two or three years, the maths is close enough that it comes down to whether you want the other features.
Those other features are real but niche: adjustable trigger stops, swappable stick caps, back paddles, and on-controller profile switching. Trigger stops matter in shooters, back paddles matter if you want to move your thumb less, and neither matters much if you are not optimising at the margins. For a non-competitive shooter player, the honest answer is that a standard DualSense plus a good headset, or a standard DualSense plus money left over, serves you better.
The one case where I would reverse this: if you want the Edge, buy it because you want replaceable modules and back paddles, not because you expect it not to drift. Expecting that will leave you disappointed and out of pocket.
