Charge It!

Believe it or not, I've been looking forward to writing about batteries. I've planned it for a long time, and now my time has come. "Elle," you say, "you're a very strange girl." Yes. I know.

You get two AA alkaline batteries and a battery pack with your Xbox 360™ wireless controller, but if you play a lot, you soon get tired of replacing the batteries all the time. Enter the Xbox 360 Rechargeable Battery Pack! To charge this battery pack, you have two choices: the Xbox 360 Play & Charge Kit and the Xbox 360 Quick Charge Kit.

Your recharging trio.

Play & Charge Kit

The Xbox 360 Play & Charge Kit was the first charging option for Xbox 360. The kit's charge cable supplies what's known as a "trickle charge," which slowly charges your battery to full capacity. A fully depleted battery takes about six hours to charge using the charge cable. As the name suggests, you can play while it's charging. Vibration and other controller features draw power while you're playing, so that can affect how long it takes to charge.

To charge your battery using the Play & Charge Kit, make sure your console is on and plug the charge cable into your console and your controller. The red light on the cable will light up. When your controller is fully charged, the red light switches to green. If you don't see any light, it's not doing anything, so check your connections.

As you might expect, your battery will charge as long as your console is on, but you can also continue to charge your battery after the console is turned off. Any time after your console is fully powered on (that is, after the Xbox Dashboard, game, or movie starts), you can turn it off and continue to charge the battery in your controller.

Keep your controller happy.

Take note: The charge cable only supplies power to your controller. Your controller still communicates with the console using wireless. So, if you plug your wireless controller into a PC using the charge cable, it won't magically become a wired controller. Your PC can charge your controller, but the controller won't communicate with your PC.

If you've really run your battery dry, it'll take about twenty minutes of charging before you have enough power to play while charging. Only use the charge cable to charge the Xbox 360 rechargeable battery pack. Don't even try charging other batteries, rechargeable or not.

Quick Charge Kit
New to the Xbox 360 lineup is the Xbox 360 Quick Charge Kit. The kit is a sleek, compact charging unit that plugs into an AC power source. If you guessed that the Quick Charge Kit quickly charges your battery, you're way ahead of the game. It charges a single battery in around two hours. It also charges two batteries at a time, in which case they'll both be full in about four hours.

To charge your battery using the Quick Charge Kit, pop it out of your controller and into the charge unit. Like the Play & Charge Kit, look for the red light under the battery pack that changes to green when the battery is done charging. Each side of the charge unit has a dedicated monitor light, so keep an eye on both batteries if you're so inclined.

Whether you choose the Play & Charge Kit or the Quick Charge Kit depends on your style. Do you want to keep only one battery and continue playing when you run out of juice? Go Play & Charge. Do you want to keep a couple of batteries and just swap them out when you need them? Go Quick Charge. Either way is cool.

Rechargeable Battery Pack
The Xbox 360 Rechargeable Battery Pack comes with the Play & Charge Kit and the Quick Charge Kit. You can also buy the battery pack separately. The rechargeable battery pack contains a nickel metal hydride (NiMH) battery (but I'm sure you already knew that). There are a few things about NiMH batteries to keep in mind.

NiMH batteries are not subject to the "memory effect" of the old nickel cadmium (NiCd) batteries. This means you can charge them at any time; you don't have to wait for them to fully discharge. NiMH batteries do, however, discharge slowly when not being used. That means you could charge them up, leave them in your controller for a few weeks, and come back to a partially depleted battery. If you leave them in a plugged-in Quick Charge Kit, though, it keeps them fully charged.

It takes a few charge cycles for the batteries to come up to full capacity. The batteries are good for 250–300 charges before they reach the end of their life. All batteries have an expected lifespan; the rechargeable battery pack is no exception. Ah, the circle of life.

For both the rechargeable battery pack and AA alkaline batteries, it's simple to check your battery status. Open the Xbox Guide and look in the upper left corner. There's an icon there that represents how full your battery is. When your battery is just about to die, the ring of light on the controller flashes alternate quadrants, like it's spinning.

More Info
There's actually a ton more that I could say about batteries, but I realize not all of you are as excited about them as I am. If you're interested about how batteries and charging really work, check out How Batteries Work. Fascinating stuff.

Article by Elle