With the new generation of gaming consoles, wireless controllers have quickly become the norm. While having no messy wires or plugs to deal with is an advantage, the disadvantage comes with having to buy batteries to power your wireless wonders. In the case of Microsoft’s Xbox 360, you can take several routes when buying batteries for the controller. You can buy AA’s over and over again, replacing them each time they die, or you can go with the two rechargeable solutions. Available to Xbox 360 owners are the Microsoft Xbox 360 Play and Charge Kit and the Quick Microsoft Xbox 360 Quick Charge Kit. Both of these Kits come with a rechargeable battery and both are moderately priced. Both, however, offer different ways to charge your batteries. The methods of charging the batteries and how well each one works can make your decision fairly tough if you don’t know exactly how they work. For this review, I will take a look at the Microsoft Xbox 360 Quick Charge Kit. You can see my review of the Play and Charge Kit by clicking my name above to go to my CP page.
The Quick Charge Kit was released by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 users who like to charge their batteries without any of the wires or the charge time that the Play and Charge Kit comes with. Packaged with the Quick Charge Kit is a Charge Station in which you can connect up to two battery packs to charge at once, a wire to plug the station into any outlet in your house, and a rechargeable battery pack for your Xboxa 360 Controller. The Charge Station is very small and colored white to match with a regular Xbox 360. the battery pack is also white, so you may not want to get this if you have one of the Elite Black controllers. Its small size allows you to place it pretty much anywhere in your room without it getting in the way, but the aspect that makes it shine is the Quick Charge Kit’s simple functionality.
All you need to do to start charging your batteries in anticipation for Halo 3 is literally plug the station in. That is it. You plug the Quick Charge Station into your standard outlet, put the battery into one of the slots, and the charging begins. For your convenience, Microsoft’s Quick Charge Kit comes with two light indicators to measure the amount of charge in your rechargeable battery packs. When a pack is plugged in, a red light will indicate it needs to be charged while a green light indicates that the charging is complete. The Quick Charge Kit generally charges a completely empty battery in 1 to 1.5 hours. When charging two batteries at once, expect them to both be fully charged in about 3 hours. Either way, this is very fast when you consider a full battery offers 25-30 hours of playtime.
The only downside to Microsoft’s Quick Charge Kit is that you cannot charge your batteries while you play games, which can be done with the Play and Charge Kit. While a minor inconvenience, most people will just be able to charge their batteries quickly at a time in which they are not playing.
Simple, intuitive, and reliable. Those are three words I would use in describing Microsoft’s Quick Charge Kit for the Xbox 360. With the ability to charge batteries very fast, its cheap price of $20, and included battery in the packaging, I recommend the Quick Charge Kit over the Play and Charge Kit just for its pure speed and ability to charge two batteries at once in the same amount of time it would take the Play and Charge Kit to fully charge one battery.
