Customer Reviews

Nyko Wireless Sensor Bar for Wii

5 star:		(123)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

So I had put this on my wishlist for my birthday and was happy to get it. It does indeed extend the range of the remotes. But our couch is 12' away from the TV (big TV) and was pushing the limit of even this sensor. But wait, it's not a sensor, is it? It's just a pair of LED emitters like the original. So I *stacked* them. They actually stack quite nicely, with the wired Nintendo emitter on bottom (so that the activation button on the Nyko is still on top). The result was amazing - what was jittery at 12' is now rock stable at 20'.

I like the timer function, and the on indicator. Not fond of the silver logo on front. But the product works great. If you have a Wii and a big screen, you want this product. Try it on it's own or stacked!

Some reviews mentioned that this bar let you get further away from the TV. We have a 18X25 livingroom. With the original sensor bar, we had to sit in the middle of the room or it wouldn't work very well. With this sensor bar, we are now able to sit all the way across the room on the sofa and it works perfectly.

Yes it is a little larger, has a blue light, a timer, and so on. But at least for us, those are all miniscule with being able to get a much greater distance away from the TV. Well worth the money and definately much better than the original one that came with the Wii.

The Wii requires a "sensor bar" above or below your TV screen, so it can tell where on the screen you're pointing your remote controller. The Wii comes with a wired sensor bar that will work great for most homes. Don't buy an extra wireless sensor bar unless you actually need it.

To help you decide, it's really useful to understand how this device works. The name "wireless sensor bar" is actually quite misleading in 2 specific ways.

I at first assumed the "sensor bar" was communicating with the Wii console -- that a wired sensor bar sends communications over the wire, and that a wireless sensor bar sends information wirelessly to the console. After all, it's a sensor bar, so it must be sensing something and communicating that information, right?

Wrong. In fact, the sensor bar is nothing more than a fancy flashlight. All it does is turn on some infrared lights with specific spacing and orientation. In fact, it's your Wii remote controller that senses the infrared lights and transmits this information wirelessly to your console, which can then calculate where you are pointing the remote and display a little icon on the screen.

So, misconception #1: the "sensor bar" doesn't sense anything, it's just a little flashlight. Misconception #2, the word "wireless" often means "wireless communication", but in this case, the "sensor bar" is just a dumb device that can't communicate in any way, so the wire is just for power.

So you have 2 options:

* Use the fancy flashlight that you've already purchased, as it came bundled with your Wii, which is powered by a wire connected to your Wii.

* Buy a second fancy flashlight powered by a battery.

OK, with those misconceptions out of the way, you can make a much better choice about whether or not wireless is right for you. For example, don't fret about wireless network interference -- this device doesn't cause any. Likewise, don't worry about having a hard time setting up the "wireless sensor bar" with your Wii -- it doesn't require pairing or any extra configuration at all, it's just a flashlight.

Personally, I normally groove on everything wireless. I adore my Mac wireless mouse. I use only wireless peripherals for all my computers. I have a wireless home network. But in this case, I definitely prefer the bundled, wired "sensor bar". I have too many devices that need batteries as it is, but I was mostly bothered by the 2nd on/off switch.

Let me explain that last comment. You can turn on and off your Wii system with a single, remote controlled button click, just like a TV remote control. Grab any game controller (which of course is wireless and remote) and click the power button from any seat in the room, and the system powers itself on -- plus, that game controller is now designated controller #1. Hold the power button on the remote for several seconds and the system turns itself off -- and all the game controllers you were using are smart enough to power themselves off as well. Sweet! I vastly prefer this over the GameCube, which had to be powered on/off by pushing a button on the console itself.

Unfortunately, the "wireless sensor bar" breaks this elegance. Every time I wanted to play the Wii, I'd sit down, grab the nearest remote, click the power button -- and it would fail to work properly because the wireless sensor bar wasn't turned on. Nor was it able to turn itself on wirelessly, it's just a flashlight, it can't receive wireless commands in any way. So I'd get up, walk to this device, turn it on, and then be able to play. Turning off, same thing -- now I have to turn off 2 items instead of 1. Worse still, the 2nd on/off switch on the "wireless sensor bar" is near the TV, so you have to physically get up and walk around the coffee table, etc. etc., or just leave the flashlight on and have your batteries run down.

Yes, it's a minor complaint. But given that you've already paid for a "sensor bar" that works great, why pay extra for one that doesn't work as well?

There are undoubtedly good reasons to get this device in specific circumstances. If your screen is huge or unusually far away, or if you have a cabling nightmare behind your entertainment center and loathe the thought of adding one more unnecessary wire, you may need or prefer this device over the one that comes with your Wii. I'll defer to other reviewers who can explain what circumstances make this device useful. But for a typical living room setup, with a normal sized TV 5-15 feet away, the wired sensor bar that comes with the Wii works great.

And P.S.: ditch the coffee table, you'll enjoy your Wii more without it.

Since purchasing this item and using it in conjunction with the Wii console, I must admit that despite the wireless sensor bar being 3rd party, it delivers first party performance. The range is greater, as well as sensitivity. Don't worry about those who are upset with the alarm...you don't have to set it to the auto off feature, so there's no annoying alarm unless you want it.

This is a good product. Not having the unsightly spaghetti like wire is much kinder to asthetics, and mischevious pets. Order now!

I needed an extra sensor bar to put on my bedroom plasma. I didn't want any wires exposed, and this fit the bill perfectly. It's bigger than the included one, and has an annoying blue light. However, a piece of black electrical tape over it works great. Just remember to turn it off, or set the automatic shut-off to 1 or 2 hours. The range on the unit is better than the wired one.

Well, I picked this up for my projector after going through a few of my own home-made wireless bars. First of all, there is a switch on the back where you can set the sensor to shut off after 1 or 2 hours, and this is very helpful since it does not shut off with the cosole like the original bar does. But if you don't want to use this feature, you just slide the switch to "off", and the timer is off..easy, right?
Now, the only reason the controller may seem sensitive on such a huge screen is not because of the size of the bar, but because that it how nintendo made the wii to work with all tv sizes. If you had a 9" tv and a 200" tv, the amount of movement you would make with the wiimote would be the same with both screens to get from one end to the other. In other words, the wii does not detect or care what size screen your using, you will always have to move the wiimote the same distance.
This sensor bar seemed to work much better than the original one in that it reads a farther distance and is less jittery on screen and gives a much more persistant signal. For a projector or anywhere you can't use nintendos sensor bar, this is a great alternative.

The wireless Wii bar from Nyko takes 4x AA batteries and seems to be able to run off them for a fair amount of time. When you want to turn the wireless bar on, simply press the top button and a blue LED lights showing that it is then functioning. At that point, it works exactly like the sensor bar that comes with the Wii, although with a bit more range.

The main complaint with the product, as mentioned by others, is the timer to automatically turn the device off. It's loud, intrusive, and continues for a full minute. It's irritating enough that through use I've found I prefer to take my chances running the batteries down after forgetting to manually turn it off, than to leave it in timer mode and deal with it.

In general, it works as a wireless replacement in a perfectly adequate way. It's disappointing that a simple shut-off feature is made irritating enough that it leaves you with negative feelings towards a device that does what it genuinely needs to do fairly well. But the devil is in the details, and a product isn't complete until you've made every feature work well.

It has yet to run out of batteries after a month of play, and in a home theater environment, it gets rid of the blasted wire running across the middle of my living room. The only slightly annoying thing is the loud beeping (sounds like a weak smoke alarm) that occurs if you have it set to shut off after 1 or 2 hours. It would make sense if it beeped a few times as a warning that it's going to shut off, but the thing doesn't shut off by itself before 10 minutes have gone by.

My wii is about 6 feet behind me, and the wall about 15 feet in front of me is my TV (from a projector) so the included sensor bar is useless. I looked for extension cables, or a separate adapter to power the sensor bar since it doesnt need to be connected to the wii, but nothing was easily attainable.

This sensor bar worked perfectly. It has an annoying beep after it hits your time limit, which is far less annoying than replacing batteries all the time. I used a couple velcro dots to attach it under a peice of molding whenever I want to play, and it's really light and thin so that works great too.

I was a little worried about the distance, but the 15 feet between my controller and the sensor bar is irrelevant.

This product was inexpensive and very useful - cant ask for much more.

Nyko, if you read this:
In a future version, it would be great if you could just auto-off the thing after 30 sec of beeping or something. Also, I'd pay double if you could give me one that had a solar cell. Nice product.

This is one of the best add ons you can get for the wii. getting rid of that thin grey wire is the best thing you can do. mine was always getting tangled and knotted. sensitivity and everything works perfectly, just like the original.