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Originally posted by: BlackNMild2k1
" if you're willing to spend a bit more, you can get longer life and some nice features that almost certainly wouldn't have been in a wii rechargable battery"
what kind of features does a battery have? & what extra features could I get for a little more $$$?
There are really three things to look at: Capacity, charging time, and reusability.
Capacity is pretty easily rated just in mA. The higher the rated capacity of the battery the longer it should be able to last. If you spend a bit more, you can get quite high capacity rated batteries right now. I've seen anywhere from 1100 mA to 2900 mA. You pay more for the higher capacities, of course.
Charging Time: There's a gamut of charging devices that can go from 10-12 hour battery chargers to stuff like what Nintendo offers in their batteries, to the relatively new 15 minute charger. This charger requires special batteries that have some components in them to support such a fast charge without damaging it, but they are a very appealing choice for someone who doesn't like to sit around waiting for their battery to recharge. Costs a bit more, but it may be worth it to some
Reusability: Some types of rechargables suffer from a memory effect and will eventually not hold very much of a charge. My old NiCd's that I used to use with my Cassiopeia PDA in college were originally good for 3-4 hours of use. After a couple years they were lucky if they got 15 minutes. Some newer types of batteries are so much better at avoiding this problem that you can probably count of a well-taken-care of set of batteries lasting you the lifetime of the console.
Which brings me to another benefit: easy replacability. Those aforementioned NiCds were absolute garbage compared to what we have today. A high end NiMH battery should be able to run that same PDA for a couple days of non-stop use between charges. But that wasn't THAT long ago that I bought them... 7 years maybe. So who's to say what sort of rechargable battery tech will be available when the Wii is getting near its end of life? If this was a proprietary battery we'd likely be dependent on Nintendo adopting it (which they probably wouldn't until next generation) or third party solutions which might not be that reliable. In this case we can simply pop out our old, outdated NiMHs (or Li-Ion, or NiCd as the case may be), toss them in the garbage (err... officially sanctioned recycling facilities), and use the new ones as soon as they hit the market.
Ultimately, though I'm surprised Nintendo's going this route, it does give the end user a lot more choice. I can buy a slow charger and some spare standard AA's to use while I'm waiting for it to charge, or I can get a 15-minute charger and just pause the game and go check my email while it recharges, or any number of other things.
Topic: Wii's hardware (Read 29540 times)
