Wii battery recharge packs - 3600mAh - 2/10

There's quite a few battery packs and chargers around for the wii. The basic idea being that you replace the Wii battery cover with one that has rechargeable batteries built in. You then either slot the wii remote into a supplied cradle charger , or in other models , plug a USB powered power cord into the back of the battery pack. The benefit being that you can charge the batteries while they are still in the Wiimote.

The main problem is that you don't know the quality of the batteries. Several factors such as charge capacity, charge time, amperage, memory and discharge time, affect the usefulness of rechargeable batteries. Cheap batteries don't keep power very long, and their overall charge capacity deteriorates quickly.

Wii battery packs give very little information about the batteries encased inside. So it's usually best to assume they are cheap ones.

The particular battery pack I tried is listed as 3600mAh (milli-ampere hour), a seemingly very high capacity rating for AA rechargeables. But in usage these batteries fall way short.
Charge times are long, it takes a day for a full charge. And then its hardly worth it, the Wiimote power indicator never gets full using these batteries and the power doesn't last long at all (Only a couple of hours)

Worse still, this particular model uses a usb power plug. But where the power plug goes into the battery pack, there is a raised section of plastic. This interferes with holding the Wiimote comfortably. (example here : www.made-in-china.com/ ) In short , these are a waste of money.

So I then went out and bought a 1 hour quick charger and some quality name 2500mAh recharge batteries that are rated for 1000 charges. The difference between these and the Wii battery packs is immediately obvious. The brand name batteries charge much faster, and last much, much longer.

The only benefit to the Wii battery pack is that you don't have to remove the batteries when you want to recharge. But from my own experience and reading other reviews, they seem to mostly use poor quality rechargeable batteries and so you'll forever have them in the charger, plus you'll soon be buying new ones when the fail early.

So be careful with buying Wii battery packs that give no details of the battery quality itself. Like charge time, power rating, memory effect etc, because you might be wasting your money like i did.

Submitted by AbeFroman 22/12/2007 0

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