Great accessory for your Wii

The Nyko Charge Station was the first thing I bought for my Wii -- I figured it would pay for itself in the long run with all the money it'd save in batteries. And I have to say that it was a good investment.

The Wiimotes take two Double A batteries (one set is included with the purchase), and it doesn't actually burn through as many as you'd think. I think my original set of batteries lasted around 50 hours or so, but a lot of that time was spent playing virtual console games, which probably suck a lot less battery power than Wii games.

After running down my original set of batteries, it was time to test out the charger. The charger comes with two battery packs and two rubberized covers for the batteries. All you have to do is put the battery packs where the batteries go, and then snap on the new back (you have to use the rubberized back, because it has a hole in it for the sensor on the battery pack to go through). Then plug in the charger, set the Wiimote in it, and it starts charging. The first time or two it doesn't really charge completely, so it doesn't take as long. After that, it seems to be an hour and a half to two hours to charge one Wiimote, and around three hours to charge both of them.

The charged battery packs don't last quite as long as a regular set of batteries -- it's probably around 20-30 hours, depending on what you play. But the advantage of the charger is you don't have to let the battery power go all the way down like you would with normal batteries -- you can just set them in the base and charge them again. Since the Wiimotes don't respond quite as well when there battery power gets low, this is a big advantage in my mind. I think the game play is a lot better when you're playing with freshly charged batteries all the time.

For me, an unexpected bonus of the charging station is that the new battery cover backs, which are rubberized, provide a much better grip than the original ones. After putting them on, I can get a good enough grip on the remote that I decided to go without the plastic Wii remote covers that came with the Wii. The battery covers don't fit quite as snugly as the originals, though. At first I worried one of them might come lose while I was playing, but that hasn't

If you do prefer to use skins or covers on your Wiimote, you might not like the charging station, because you will likely have to remove them while charging it. I can see where that would be a pain, but I guess it's not a whole lot different than removing them to put new batteries in.

The charging station itself is nice looking (it matches the Wii pretty well), and it's fairly compact. It's uncomplicated -- you just plug it in and set the Wiimote in it, no buttons or anything. A blue light comes on when it's charging, a green light comes on when it finishes charging, and no light is on when it's not doing anything. You can leave the wrist strap attached while you're charging it, but you sometimes have to jiggle the remote around a little bit to get it in the cradle exactly right. If you have kids, they should be able to set the remotes in the charger without any assistance or anything.

The charge station usually costs $25-30. I bought mine from Sam's Wholesale for $33.88 in a package with HD cables. If you need HD cables, that's a pretty good deal. If you don't, you might try Amazon.com or one of the big electronics stores (Best Buy, Circuit City). I had a hard time finding it when I went looking for mine, but I think most stores have more Wii accessories in stock now than they did a few months ago.