Xbox360 controller batteries

Get the quick charge kit. So much more worth it. I have that LaCrosse kit, and while it’s nice in general, it’s very much second-best for the Xbox.

With AAs and charger:

  1. Take off battery cover. Pry out batteries, which are very tight, due to the general slightly-oversized nature of NiMH AAs.
  2. Get the charger out of storage (it’s big and bulky and not at all the kind of thing you leave lying around, unless you’ve got a much geekier home than I do) and hook it up somewhere.
  3. Take fresh AAs out of the bag (assuming you’re burning through them fast enough – or using the Eneloop-style ones – that they’re still fresh), jam them tight up in the Xbox controller.
  4. Put the old batteries on the charger.
  5. Some hours later (maybe the next day, depending on how late it is), pick up the charger and put it away with the charged batteries.

With Quick Charge Kit:

  1. Unsnap battery from 360.
  2. Walk over to the Quick Charge battery tree (probably right next to your 360, since it’s small and looks fine there), unsnap a freshly charged battery, and snap in the old one.
  3. Snap the fresh battery onto the controller.

It’s an order of magnitude more convenient, even if it does fly in the face of generalizing and standardizing gadgetry.

this is totally derailing this thread in a tangential way: but has anyone had any issues with PS3 controllers losing their charge over time?

I’m at the point where my 360 controllers seem to rapidly run out of juice when using the play n charge or quick charge kits. And i only consider myself a casual user (mostly netflix, where i turn it on, play movie, then either turn it off or it times out). I’m not sure how hardcore users would put up with it constantly running out.

I’ve got 2 different play and charge kits and I’ve never had an issue with them. Calling the batteries a scam is a stretch… of course Microsoft is just packaging batteries inside the case, what did you think was in there, fairy dust? On the same topic, if you split open many 9 volt batteries from so-called reputable battery makers you’ll often find it contains 6 AAAA batteries! OMG TOTAL SCAM!!! I paid for a 9 volt battery and got 6 AAAA ones instead!!!

On the original topic, I’ve only had one of my play and charge charged battery packs get to the point where it depletes too fast to be of any use and that was after nearly 2 years of use. That’s actually very good for a rechargable battery set that gets used very often.

But since the batteries do eventually die (as all rechargables do), I bought a bunch of pink colored battery pack replacements off of some slickdeals link a while back when they were selling them for dirt cheap. They look a little twinky on my white 360 controllers and especially twinky on my black Elite controller, but who cares? They were dirt cheap.