Customer Reviews

Nyko Charge Base IC for Wii

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

I love my Wii and I play it often, and I like to use the protective sleeves to provide cushioning, enhance grip, and minimize accumulation of dirt on my controllers. If you're like me, your biggest Wii-related nuisance is changing the batteries in your controllers.

Batteries are expensive, and even if you have rechargeables it's a pain to remove the sleeve in order to replace them. Even if you have a regular charger, you still most likely have to remove the Nunchuk and the Motionplus, if not the sleeve as well.

That's where induction charging comes in. The same technology that powers your electric toothbrush allows you to charge your remotes without any contact with the metal components. Just pop your remotes in place: Motionplus, Nunchuk and all if you like. A magnet holds them in position on the stand (stylishly, in my opinion) and a blue light lets you know that they're charging. A green light indicates a full charge, which is easily enough for your average play session. An on/off switch allows you to avoid wasting power while your remotes are already charged or off the base.

I HIGHLY recommend this charger; it's the type of charging system that Nintendo should have included with the Wii, in my opinion.

One word of caution: the charger uses battery packs which are attached to their own battery compartment cover. This means that if you carry these to a friend's house and try to sync them with another Wii, you might have a hard time, as you have to remove the battery pack to access the sync button. I recommend carrying a spare set of batteries if you travel with your remotes.

This is the best Wii Remote charger that I've seen. It looks great, and works even better. The lights make the stand pop, and not having to modify the Wii Remotes to place them into the charge station is very convenient. The only slight negatives I can see are that the power cord is a bit short, and it's a tad expensive. I highly recommend this charger.

My nieces and nephews were getting a Wii for Christmas so I ordered them extra remotes (the black ones, Black Wii Remote with Black Wii MotionPlus Bundle) and these chargers.

The whole point of these inductive chargers is they don't need electrical contact so you don't have to take the jackets off the remotes to charge them.

Long story short, these chargers work fine when the remotes aren't in the jackets, and work fine with remotes in the clear jackets that come with the white remotes, but I can't get them to work at all with remotes in the black jackets that come with the black remotes.

I don't think the color actually matters, but the black jackets are slightly thicker, and that must add just barely too much distance for the induction system to work.

The induction system is a nice idea but it's not quite living up to its promise here, since these were advertised to work with jacketed remotes.

Other than the issue with the black jackets, these are convenient and look good and it's easy to get the remote to line up in the cradle. I'd give them 5 stars when used with white jackets and 1 star when used with black jackets (and if you're going to use them without jackets, there's not much point in induction, get the cheaper electrical contact ones).

I use rechargeables in everything so when I got the Wii I was a little disheartened to find that Nintendo doesn't offer a first party solution. Nyko however has made the perfect solution that works on both first party, Nyko Wands, and with motion plus and even with nunchucks attached.

What this is in simple terms is magnetic induction. A magnetic field holds the controllers in place (meaning you don't have to remove attachments or the plastic sleeves). Nyko recommends removing the sleever for faster charging but I find that to be unnecessary.

I just want to clarify something that I saw in a previous review. Yes, it is true that the batteries are attached to the cover and this would make it impossible to sync with a Wii. The charger, however, comes with a small white wand that fits into the small hole on the back of the battery cover. This hole leads to the sync button, so you don't have to have a pocket full of batteries going to your friend's house.

As for the product, the charger works great. Not having to remove any of the attachments is a plus, and it was the reason for my interest in it. I don't even see a problem with only having two cradles, since it is usually my wife and I that play together. If we have plans with friends, we charge the other remotes ahead of time. My favorite part about, however, is that you can play until your arm is sore, place the remotes on the charger, and wake up to a green light.

I've spent a lot of time doing research and trial and error sessions with chargers and battery packs. As far as Wii accessories, Nyko seems to have the answer to whatever the Nintendo company comes up with.

Bought mine at Costco along with $60 black wiimote/motionplus/nunchuk bundle. Charging white remote in its transparent rubber jacket turns cradle color green to blue but would not do so with black wiimote in its black jacket. I was perplexed and swapped the batteries, but still no luck. Not knowing how the induction charging worked, I was surprised that as I brought the black one near the cradle, cradle will turn blue only to turn off the moment wiimote actually sits in the cradle. I called Nyko and the guy declared that the base is faulty and just as he offered me to send it back for a replacement, I mentioned it is happening only to the black remote. He said the black jacket is thicker than the white (...even though Nintendo makes both) and induction charging is not working through its skin. I removed the jacket on black, and it worked perfectly. So I am disappointed in this a bit as it is real pain to remove the jacket every time you want to charge the wiimote. BTW, I ordered the white jacket from Nintendo. Anybody experiencing this issue? Thanks.

This is a great design. Holds two wii remotes and doesn't matter if the nunchuck is attached or not. glows green when on & recharged , blue when needing recharge and one can easily turn it off by a lite tap of the button when the recharging is done so you don't have to have that green glow in the room. Serves as a convenient place to keep the remotes too, saves on the "Where's the remote" hassle! No more eating batteries. VERY Convenient. A great product. Well worth the money and very reasonably priced!

DOWNGRADED FROM 5 STARS TO TWO!!!!!
It is a very quirky item, after a month or so one side died out. A phone call to the company elicited no response other than to send a replacement unit (I guess it was no surprise the thing failed?) Then the replacement arrived in the UK electrical format so that had to be shipped back for the right one... then after a month one of the batteries failed, 5-6 weeks later the other battery failed to accept a recharge. I called the company and they sent out the replacement batteries at no charge but I think they haven't worked out the bugs in this thing yet! I am treating it very gingerly making sure to push the off button when it glows green (recharged) so as not to burn the batteries out but it feels like this is still in experimental format!

Having purchased the quad usb type charger, saw this magnetic one that is 110V and thought that would be a great addition and would not have to keep removing the Wii Motion PLus bases in order to recharge. Opened the box, one battery would not take a charge, the other did. During initial Wii installation on Christmas Day, found that the battery did not have a prong at all to make contact with the Wii remote contacts. Several days later the second battery died and changed out the battery to another rechargeable type. Noticed the prong had broken off that contacts the battery to the remote. Sent Nyko customer service an email with pictures and proof of purchase and have left several voice mail messages since Dec 26 with not a single return call or acknowledgement of my communincations with them. Very poor customer service. Will NOT ever be buying their products again.....

My folks got this charger and loved it, so we got one for Christmas...But the right side of the charger overheated and melted the back of my Wiimote and fused the charging battery compartment to mi Wiimote. The rechargable battery is dead. The Wiimote is dead. Has anyone else had this problem? How did you resolve this.

There are not a lot of choices in chargers, if you have the expansion pack and the rubber sleeve on the controller. In my opinion, this is the best choice of all of them. You can easily turn it off from the front if you don't want it charging all the time. Each controller will have a blue glow while charging, and then turns green when finished. They are held to the cradle magnetically, so attaching is very simple. This is a great product, and since I use my Wii a lot, it will pay for itself in less than a year.