You don't have to do it everyday, the batteries last a long time. You have to do it every day with playstation controllers to be sure you don't run out. If you forget, like I used to, then gaming is done unless you have a 15 foot usb cable handly (which I didn't) and unless you like playing with a cord (which I don't).
The DS4 lasts 10+ hours. Usage of 5 hours a day is already quite excessive, something I would consider to be way out the norm and more the exception than average usage. If you portrait habbits of playing over 5 hours per session, you can still get away with charging every single time. Fair play that the Xbox controller lasts longer (the DS3 does too btw), but this talk isn't about DS4 vs Xbox controller, but rather fixed powerpacks vs. replacable AA - in essence, the discussion is around a hypothetical DS4 with rechargables vs. a DS4 in its current state.
Joker said:
How exactly is it any better to be stuck with a device like an older playstation controller that has a "few years old" battery as you say and no longer holds as much charge? Here using your own words to make the example in case it's not clear:
Playstation controller A - brand new - fully charged 1000mAh
Playstation controller X - few years old - fully charged *500mAh
In that case your X controller won't last as long and too bad there is nothing you can do about it except buy an all new controller. You view that as better than having the option to replace older AA batteries that don't hold as much charge anymore?
To be honest, we don't really know to what degree the battery decreases its life cycle. If you go back a few pages, I noted already that a DS3 with 7 years of usage hardly suffered much - then again, it's difficult to quantify that, because the DS3 had an exceptional life span, so even if it dropped by a few hours, it would still be exceptional and difficult to quantify without hard messured numbers. How the DS4 will stack up, we'll see I guess. No doubt, the effect will be more noticable on a DS4 due to it using more power.
Back to the example: While you are of course correct, don't forget that a singular battery will see less cycles than a AA rechargable battery that you are swapping and mixing between devices (which was the context of the example). The PSX controller will only decrease the cycles when you use it. And that will happen, regardless if there's AA replacable in it or a non-user-replacable one. True, the fact that you can't replace it is a drawback - one that doesn't entirely make sense given you could on a DS3 - but we are still yet to find out how much of a draw back this will be in reality.
It's not different than your average smartphone, comparing a Samsung Galaxy with a iPhone, one that has a user-accessible battery and one that does not. It's a nice feature that you can with the Galaxy, but over 2 years of extended usage (and charging the phone every single day, and usually even at work! - so easily 800+ cycles) I am yet to see a messurable decrease in the batteries performance. Given controllers aren't likely to see as many charge/discharge cycles as an everyday device like a smartphone that is used 24/7, I'm not sure a controller would portrait signs of a weak battery even after multiple years. As I said, in the case of the DS3, I didn't see any, though that too might vary depending on usage.
Coming back to my Galaxy - it's still nice that I can swap the battery - but in reality, I never needed to. Not with my current one, the one before it, or the one before that one either. In reality, the necessity to change a faulty battery is quite rare to say the least. It can happen, but it's probably quite unlikely. Even if we assume a drop of 10% after a 700+ cycles, you would still get 9+ hours of usage from a DS4 which I would bet, would be hardly noticable in the grand scheme of things. On a Galaxy that lasts between 5-20 hours (depending on usage), it wouldn't be either.
Joker said:
You don't run out because AA's because they charge fast nowadays so they are always ready to go.
My question was actually targeting the concerns of memory effect, not the duration of the charge itself (which is probably even more miniscule on a DS4 given the battery is relatively small). In other words - if you encounter an empty controller (and have no spares) - would you be able to charge the battery for 15 minutes, stop the charge and play for 60+ minutes without concerns of damaging the battery? I would guess this depends on the type of battery?
On a DS3/4, this is easily possible - on the DS4, plugging the controller in for 15 minutes would probably give you play time of roughly an hour (if not more - a full charge requires I think ~1 hour, so if that nets you 10+ hours of gamig, technically 1/4 of that time should theoretically yield 2.5 hours).
In my personal experience, I can get around 3 to 4 2+ hour sessions over the duration of a week of play until my controller runs out. My sessions are around 2-3 hours long, sometimes longer. As I said, if the controller runs out - pluggin it in for a short duration (~15minutes) would yield a (for me) satisfactory amount of game time. I would have to test to see how long the actual amount is on a 15 minute charge though. Now that I think about it, 2+ hours should be reasonable.
Anyway, I never said user replacable AA batteries have no benefits. They do. Clearly. But in my opinion, the convinience factor of internal non-replacable-ones outweigh them. This is, I admit, subjective, as per the reasons I named above. I am accustomed to pluging in devices after usage - as I'm sure most people are, as pretty much anyone with a recent smartphone pretty much needs to do that on a regular basis. A gaming controller like the DS4 in that sense isn't much different. The minor inconvinience in having to connect it to a console on - in the worst case - daily basis or in my case once a week but not requiring the use of any external chargers or batteries are a plus and outweigh the negatives for me.
If you're used to using universal chargers for batteries, I can see that having to do that for a controller wouldn't be a big inconvinience either.
