Based on the description on their site, the controller includes a built-in battery: "8.39 Wh Li-ion battery, 35+ hours of gameplay… "
That was disappointing for me. Specially condidering the Steam Frame’s controllers make use of AA batteries: “One replaceable AA battery per controller, 40hr battery life”
AA Batteries might not be as convenient to use, but being able to replace them is a great advantage. All my Xbox360 controllers still work fine, but none of my PS3’ Dualshock 3s.
The official docking station could be used to recharge (rechargables) AA batteries so the functionality could remain the same.
There are like 3 or 4 different types. NiCd and NiMH have slightly different voltages and vastly different voltage curves, and it’s a gamble whether your device will work with either of them and how long they will last. Li-Ion (with a voltage regulator and charge controller) are quite expensive (compared to a pouch battery of the same capacity) and you won’t be able to buy them in the nearest grocery shop. Also, it’s not safe for the controller to even attempt to charge any of them, so you will need a separate charger, and you’ll have to take the batteries out of the controller, put them in a charger, and then put them back every time they go flat. At that point it’s just so much easier and more convenient to have a pouch-style battery that the controller charges by itself, and you can very easily replace every 5 years or so by just removing a couple screws and slapping a new AliExpress special in there. The key here is to make batteries easily replaceable, of course, ideally without any tool, but a standard philips screwdriver is acceptable too.
Almost no one is using NiCd anymore. It’s not hard to design something to run properly from alkaline, NiMH & Li-Ion cells. We have efficient switch mode power supplies that can step the battery voltage up or down to whatever the device needs to run.
When AA batteries go flat you swap them and the controller is already running while the old batteries charge on your separate charger, which you can’t do with pouch batteries.
Also, it’s a game of relying on a company’s good will to provide a compatible battery, or of some Chinese manufacturer to provide it. While AAs are standard.
There’s nothing that can change my mind on the subject outside of “these batteries are standard and available everywhere forever” which you can already say for AA NiMH batteries.
If it’s a popular enough device, Chinese manufacturers will copy its batteries for more than the lifetime of the device itself. I’ve bought new replacement batteries for a smartphone over 10 years old off AliExpress.
If it’s not, chances are it’s using one of the standard pouch battery sizes (yes, that’s very much a thing, AA is not the only battery standard out there), which Chinese manufacturers will keep producing for longer than the lifetime of the universe.
The only tangible benefit is the hot-swap feature.
To me it doesn’t outweigh all the drawbacks of having to charge batteries separately. For a controller like this it literally doesn’t matter, you can just plug it in to charge while playing.
For VR controllers it does matter more, but I would still much prefer some explicitly rechargeable standard size, e.g. 14650, with a way for the controller to also be a charger still.
Like I said… This did not change my mind