Recharge your Wii: Penguin United Wii Rechargeable Battery Combo : Texxors.com

Recharge your Wii: Penguin United Wii Rechargeable Battery Combo

June 12, 2007 Posted by Beth in : Reviews , trackback, Email this post

I just spent countless hours of my life playing Super Paper Mario on my Wii. What better way to test out the Penguin United Wii Remote Charging Dock and 2x Rechargeable Battery Combo? With normal gameplay on the Wii, you can wear out your Wii remote batteries pretty quickly. Rechargeable batteries are obviously a better option than regular batteries, but then you still have to take out the batteries, put them in the charger, and wait for hours for them to recharge. But the Penguin United rechargeable batteries are different. These packs replace the normal battery compartment on your remote, and the remote can sit directly in a docking station while recharging.

There are several options for these remote battery packs from Penguin United. I have one docking station and two rechargeable battery packs, one for each remote. To use them, first you remove the regular batteries and back of your Wii remote, and replace them with the special rechargeable pack and Wii remote back from the kit. Then you plug the dock into the Wii system using its USB port. Slide your remote into the docking station, and presto, it starts charging. While charging, the docking station has a steady blue light. When it’s done, it starts blinking. Pretty easy.

Overall, I am really happy and impressed with this battery pack. I can have one remote charging while playing with the other, or I can charge one overnight and be ready for some doubles tennis the next day. The instructions are a bit misleading, but in the best possible way. For one thing, they say the Wii system needs to be on to charge the remotes, when really, the Wii station just needs to be plugged in to the power outlet. It also says that the batteries will initially need some crazy long time to charge (12 hours, maybe?), but I found they were charged in just a couple of hours. Recharging is pretty fast, usually in an hour or less.

The battery packs don’t add any additional weight to the remote, as far as I could tell, and other than the little silver charging strip, you can’t see any difference between this remote back and a normal one. We do usually use sleeves on our remotes, and you have to remove these or flip them up to charge the remote, which is kind of a pain, since the sleeves are not super easy to remove. I like the rechargeable packs enough though that I’m totally willing to deal with it. At $22, I think the Penguin United rechargeable Wii remote packs & docking stand to be a worthwhile purchase.

Editors note: Read a review of Penguin United’s Wii component cables here. Win Wii accessories in our forums.