Nintendo made a great console with the Wii, but one major mistake made was that the Wiimotes run on two standard AA batteries. This means that they require replacing on a regular basis. It’s a pain if they die in the middle of a game,‚ creating much frustration if there are no batteries to replace them with. For a while I used rechargeable AA batteries but that still requires swapping them each time they die.

There have been multiple companies that have come out with different battery pack solutions to deal with this problem. The thing that they all fail at is working with Nintendo, or third party, “Wii condoms” (the unofficial name for the silicon shells people put on their Wiimotes). In all, newer games Nintendo recommends you use a Wii condom. They have swapped the graphics of the Wiimotes in game to show using their condom. With most charging stations on the market, you have to take the Wii condom off to charge the Wiimotes. This means you either don’t use the Wii condom at all, or you end up forgetting to charge them, and get dead batteries.

Teknocreations has come out with a solution that solves both of these issues. The InCharge uses the same technology that is in some electric toothbrushes. It’s the same technology that MIT was advertising recently to run a light bulb wirelessly across the room. This is same technology that makes electric magnets possible. Surprisingly, it’s actually just basic high school physics behind it. It’s not used regularly because the amount of electricity lost using this method is many times greater than the amount used.

Physics says that a changing electric current will create a magnetic current. An electric magnet just is a wire wrapped around a metal rod so it moves around in the same direction creating a fixed magnetic field. The interesting and important part of this is that the reverse holds true too: a changing magnet field will cause an electric current.

The InCharge uses this idea to have an electric magnet create currents in the base station that cause an electric charge in the batteries. This is not the most efficient way to charge your Wii batteries since electricity is being wasted converting from electrical to magnetic, then back to electrical. Luckily, the batteries in the Wiimotes are small enough that the amount of energy that is required to charge them this way as opposed to the metal contact methods won’t be noticed by most people. To put in perspective, the power adapters for most of your electronics waste almost as much converting from 110 volts to the voltage the device uses.

The batteries held up well under my tests, though they did have the same problems of all other Lithium batteries. If left unused for any length of time they will slowly lose their charge, but only over long periods of time. This would mostly account for the discrepancy that they claimed 24 hours of charge time. I only managed to get a little more than 12 hours over a two-week period. This should be still more than enough when you consider that you should place the Wiimotes back on their charge station when not in use. So the biggest question on battery life is how long you will sit playing the Wii in one sitting, since the charger is able to easily charge them back up for you over night.

I did find that the meter on the Wii wasn’t accurate on these batteries though. The meter seemed to work fine on other batteries I’ve tested in the past. On the InCharge, the Wii still said half charge when they started to run out of power, and shutoff while playing games. So if you don’t place the remotes on their base station, you shouldn’t trust this meter.

The big benefit though is the fact that now you can leave your Wiimotes in their Wii condoms while charging. I tried a couple different Wii condoms to see that they each kept the Wiimote close enough to charge. The Wiimotes will still charge as long as they are within about one centimeter away from the base station. So now you can have different colored Wii condoms to tell your Wiimotes apart and still use a battery pack to charge them.

The other nice thing for families with small kids is the contacts are no longer exposed so you can’t get any gunk on them stopping the batteries from charging. Though personally the worst I’ve ever had from the contacts is a little rust that can be sandpapered off, it’s still nice to have one less thing to worry about.

One concern I’d raise about this is that the InCharge, because it uses a magnetic field, is like a microwave oven. I wouldn’t sit it next to your computer, or any electronics. Teknocreations says that the magnetic radiation isn’t harmful, but a computer too close may still have negative side effects.

Overall, I think the InCharge is a great device. It still has the trouble that if you have‚ three or‚ four people in your family it requires two InCharges since they only charge two Wiimotes each. On the other hand, if you only have two people playing the Wii, which seems more common, there will be no issue‚ and you won’t have extra wasted parts.

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.