Wii Remote Battery life

[k4kman]

Well I was surprised today when my wife and son told me that the Wii was not working.

After playing around with it I found that both Wii remotes batteries had run down.

Wow it's only a week and I don't even think of my family as playing all that much.

Let me know if this has happened to you yet?

[infamous12]

I have about close to 20 hours on mine. The remote has sound at max volume with vibration settings on and still using the same batteries out of the box.

[QuantumFluxx]

I was using the packed in batteries to play my Wii on maximum speaker volume with rumble enabled, and it didn't get into the red until I was 27 hours into twilight princess. And thats not included the time used to play wii sports. All in all I'm impressed with the battery life.

My reccomendation for anyone using this new generation of consoles is to go pick up a pack of 4 rechargable AA batteries from your local Futureshop. Mine cost me 30 bucks, their 4x AA NiMH batteries and it came with a charger. Highly useful for my Xbox 360 and my Wii, not sure if the PS3 uses some internal battery or AA's as well.

[k4kman]

Yep I was thinking about getting rechargable ones.

[Caliban]

I went through 4 batteries (2 that came in the box and the other 2 from extra Wii remote) after 8 days of playing Zelda, Wii Sports, Virtual Console, and playing with the UI. Luckily I had bought a set of 10 AA NiMH 1.2V 2500 batteries that also came with a charger,

[digital island]

ive booked maybe 15 hours and batteries still showing all 4 bars
ruble on; volume low

i have an energizer recharger, so I just picked up a couple sets of double AA's for when the free batteries die.

A couple years ago i spent about $350 to buy an energizer charger, and a fleet of batteries (every size and shape). It hurt at the time... but since then its great. I never spend $$ on batteries

most saving by far has been with my kids geotrax... the savings there paid for the charger in no time!

[Roland of Gilead]

Is this possible?

I set up using the batteries in the box, played and hour or two shut down. Next day system won't power up. Put in 2 new batteries (hopefully, you never know around here) play an hour , shut down. Today same thing batteries down no system power, replace, fine again. Batteries show 1.1 volts left , ones shows maybe .85.

Coincidence. Maybe pack in suck and my new ones were previously used by the kids.

Does the Wii remote use power even when the sytem is turned off?

[Chumley]

I bought the Nyko charging stand for just under $30.00 at EB games. You get 4 rechargeables and new rubberized grips for the underside of your Wii controller(s).
So far so good.
When the LED's on the charging stand are blue, the remotes are charging. When they turn to green, you're good to go. I was advised by a few guys to buy the Nyko unit over Asid.

This charging stand was $10.00 more at the big box stores when I checked.
I have an energizer charging station for all of our other batteries too, but the Nyko unit is so convenient because your controllers just stand up in it. No opening up the controllers and swapping of batteries ever.



Cheers

[Icemann]

No, the wiimotes do not use power when the system is turned off. But, you have to remember to turn off the Wii or else they stay on.

I have bought a whole bunch of rechargeable batteries from the Dell Deal's of the day and that's worked well.

[Roland of Gilead]

Actually I think there was something fundamentally wrong with the remote. The Wii was turned off and every so often I would put the batteries on a voltmeter and you could actually tell that the battery charge was dropping. The Wii menu battery life pic went from 4 to 1 in about 2 hours without playing. The unit was somewhat warm but the batteries were actually hot.

I returned it and got and new one and what a difference, still 4 bars after 3 days. This may explain why some people get major battery life and others get none.

Bottom line: Return the remote if it is sucking juice big time.

[bgclarke]

That's interesting. One of our remotes eats batteries like they are candy when the Wii is off.
The thing is I can't tell if it's the one that came with the console or the extra controller we bought.

The other remote is fine and the batteries still have some life left in them.

I picked up some more NiMH rechargeables to use with the Wii controllers...much more cost effective.

[polaris]

Apparently NiMH are not recommended for use with Wii controllers...my friend used them and the remote soon stopped working. he was told by tech support the batteries were the likely cause, and upon reviewing the Wii's documentation he told me its not recommended.

[tryder]

I believe the documentation included with the Wii mentions they don't recommend rechargeable batteries. However, Nintendo has since announced that they do approve using NiMH batteries:
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/sys...emoteUsing.jsp

[Icemann]

I have used NiMH batteries since day one on all 4 of our Wiimotes so that's about 10 months now and have never found a problem.

[Drainc]

Agreed, NiMH batteries definitely work fine, however they have no where near the life expectancy of normal alkalines. I get only a few play sessions out of the NiMH batteries where I could go a month or two with regular batteries.