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Nyko Charge Station 360 – Review (Xbox 360)


Submitted by thankeeka on January 25, 2007 - 3:04pm. Exclusive Reviews

ChargeStation360I love my Xbox 360 and the wireless controller is one of the best things of all time. You'd think a simple cord connecting a controller to the console would be no biggie, but when you finally get rid of it, you realize just how much a blessing it is for it to be missing. However, I could do without all the constant battery replacing, which the controller is sadly a victim of. Along comes the Nyko Charge Station 360, which doesn't only give you one battery, but rather two!

By now, you've seen our review of the Nyko Powerkit 360, which we were sadly disappointed in, because though it worked, it failed to properly work like it was supposed to. Thankfully, rather it is because of the fact it charges through a normal power outlet rather than a USB enabled device, we are happy to report that so far the Nyko Charge Station 360 works really well. The package you'll get includes not only two rechargeable NiMH battery packs that go where the normal Xbox 360 controller pack goes, but you'll also get the charge station that acts as a docking station for the battery packs.

Before you get going, you'll have to prime the system and batteries first, so don't rip those batteries out of the box and shove them into your controller right away, because instead you'll need to plug it into a regular wall jack and wait until the red lights disappear. To fully charge both batteries at one time, it will take about four hours, which when you break it down is about two hours for each battery.

After first trying out the Nyko Powerkit 360 before this, we were a bit worried what might come next, but at least we knew what to look for as signs of defect. So with talk of the Shivering Isles expansion pack for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion flooding the gaming world, we found ourselves in a RPG mood this past weekend, and spent a bulk of time running through some of the other downloadable content they've released, focusing this time on that magic one hit kill dagger. Mmmmmm. Needless to say, we spent a nice chunk of time running through ancient mines, ruins, killing people, selling goods, and the whatnot. Occasionally we would check over to see how the battery read, and after all our hours of play, it read only three, which is probably what it should've been given how long we had been adventuring. We tried replacing the working battery pack with the other one that charged at the same time, and it worked just as well as the other one.

The great thing about the Nyko Charge Station 360 – beyond the fact it actually works – is that you get two batteries, which is one battery more than the more expensive sanctioned Microsoft version. You see, much like the current problem with the battery powered packs, where if you have no batteries you have no way to play your games, once the charge in your rechargeable packs wears down, you just have to pop it out, put it in the charge dock, and then take the already charged battery and put it in its place. That means that as long as you always charge your batteries up right after they lose their charge, you'll never have to worry about not getting to play your games. Hooray!

The battery packs themselves are also practically the same white as the controller itself, so it looks flawless, and with the green paint thrown scheme on the dock itself, it looks perfectly at home with the white and green centric Microsoft system. We can't tell you how happy we were to see that the actual product worked like intended, which we love will cease our reliance on the inferior disposable batteries we've spent quite a few bucks on since we've had our system. For us, the product worked perfectly, so check it out if you find yourself in the same predicament and need a solution.

Rating: 4star
Our Scoring System


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