Last time I ordered a phone battery from AliExpress I got it in two weeks flat. If you notice that your battery doesn’t hold as long, just order a new one, it will arrive long before the device dies. There are also local battery shops, but they will charge a premium for quicker delivery.

Doing this once every few years is nothing compared to the hassle of taking out the batteries every time you want to charge them.

You might be replying to a wrong comment? But I think the OC meant that a bigger lithium battery can provide more power for rumble and such, compared to AAs.

I think that’s mostly because you can’t really keep them plugged in while playing, so if you forget to charge them before a play session it would get very annoying. I would still prefer if they used an explicitly rechargeable standard with a way to charge the batteries while in the controller.

If it’s a popular enough device, Chinese manufacturers will copy its batteries for more than the lifetime of the device itself. I’ve bought new replacement batteries for a smartphone over 10 years old off AliExpress.

If it’s not, chances are it’s using one of the standard pouch battery sizes (yes, that’s very much a thing, AA is not the only battery standard out there), which Chinese manufacturers will keep producing for longer than the lifetime of the universe.

The only tangible benefit is the hot-swap feature.

To me it doesn’t outweigh all the drawbacks of having to charge batteries separately. For a controller like this it literally doesn’t matter, you can just plug it in to charge while playing.

For VR controllers it does matter more, but I would still much prefer some explicitly rechargeable standard size, e.g. 14650, with a way for the controller to also be a charger still.

Yeah, if memory serves, the last ThinkPad to do it was the T480, which was in 2018. Maybe there’s some P-series that did it afterwards too. Hello from an X2100!

And you have to (gasp) order a bat from AliExpress for $10, take out 9 screws, and plop it in there, just once every 5 years or so? Yeah, how inconvenient and expensive, compared to buying your own batteries before you can even use a thing, a separate charger, and taking the batteries out every time you want to charge them, which is like weekly.

Some laptops used to have that. They would have two batteries, one internal one and one hot-swappable external one.

Because they are more expensive and much less convenient than an integrated pouch-style battery in the device.

There are like 3 or 4 different types. NiCd and NiMH have slightly different voltages and vastly different voltage curves, and it’s a gamble whether your device will work with either of them and how long they will last. Li-Ion (with a voltage regulator and charge controller) are quite expensive (compared to a pouch battery of the same capacity) and you won’t be able to buy them in the nearest grocery shop. Also, it’s not safe for the controller to even attempt to charge any of them, so you will need a separate charger, and you’ll have to take the batteries out of the controller, put them in a charger, and then put them back every time they go flat. At that point it’s just so much easier and more convenient to have a pouch-style battery that the controller charges by itself, and you can very easily replace every 5 years or so by just removing a couple screws and slapping a new AliExpress special in there. The key here is to make batteries easily replaceable, of course, ideally without any tool, but a standard philips screwdriver is acceptable too.

AA batteries are horrible for the environment if something goes wrong during the disposal process (e.g. you accidentally throw them in the trash). Also it’s yet another thing you have to buy like weekly if you’re going to use the thing. A rechargeable cell that is easy to replace is the perfect sweetspot, and from the videos I’ve seen of the controller it will be very easy to replace the bat. Just unscrew some screws, unplug the battery, plug a new one back in, screw some screws back in (optional). You’ll only have to do this once every 5 years or so if the BMS is good. You’ll be able to get a new bat from AliExpress for very cheap, probably like $10-20 or something, way way cheaper than getting new AAs for those entire 5 years.

Also, AAs become literal toxic waste after like 20-40 hours of gameplay, and need to be properly disposed of (that is assuming that you live in a developed country and there are recycling options available at all). Single-use battery suck and should fuck right off.