These two products are essentially the same, even though they don’t look it and the PlayStation 3 version uses the original internal battery, and 360 version uses a Nyko replacement battery. They’re both meant to give you an externalized recharge of your controllers.
I currently have Nyko’s Wii Charge Station, and the PS3 and 360 charge stations all sitting next to each other on a shelf.
The 360 and PS3 controllers can each be charged using USB, or with the 360 by removing the battery and sticking it in a separate charge station. The Nyko charge stations are nice because you can basically just store your controllers on them when they aren’t being used.
This is a good place to use Lithium Ion batteries. Even if there’s still some juice left, you can recharge them on the fly, as opposed to older technologies that do better if you let them completely die before charging them.‚ This makes the life of the battery less important since you will have it charging when your not playing, and as long as you don’t do a marathon gaming session the battery will never run out on you.
The problem that Nyko had to deal with when designing the Charge base was figuring out how to charge conveniently the PS3 and the 360 controllers, which weren’t designed with a simple plug in interface. With the 360 they just were able to add their own batteries with convenient contacts for charging, much like the Wii base.
The PS3 since it has a non-removable battery required them to be more creative. They came up with an interesting solution of placing an adapter on the USB port of the PS3, but this method adds a small part to their product that can be easily lost.
My main disappointment with the Charge Base, specifically with the PS3 version, was that it’s not compatible with Nyko’s owns Zero controller. If it was a different company’s part then I wouldn’t be
surprised, but I would have expected Nyko to make sure it works with their own controller, which they were heavily encouraging people to buy when it hit the market as the first rumble controller for the PS3. Unfortunately though the adapters don’t fit on the Zero, so it must still be charged by plugging the controller into a USB port.
Overall, if you use official controllers for your game systems either Nyko Charge Base is a great accessory, especially the PS3 one since the PS3 turns off its USB ports when it’s off, (the time when I
would expect most people to charge their controllers.)
My only real big complaint was that it doesn’t support their own controller.
These are amazing! Will save a few batteries!