They’re The controller is always charged because I put them it on the charger when I rotate them. am not using it.
So the controller never dies unless you’re playing for more than a day straight, and there’s no fiddly swapping out of batteries. The only downside is that you might need to replace the battery in like 5 years time with heavy use, and it’s only marginally more difficult than swapping out AAs.
Well the rechargeable AAs will wear out just like an internal battery, but there’s more of them and they’re individually packaged. It’s a bit more waste and a bit more money, even if it’s not a big difference.
Personally I think the big difference is in usability - I’d rather just leave the controller on a charger when not in use and never have to worry about swapping cells in and out. (I think battery degradation is overblown - it should last way more than 2 years, especially if you aren’t gaming for 20 hours straight)
You’re so close to getting it…
Well it will be fine even if you only leave it charging a tiny fraction of the times you use it. And with AAs you have to remember to change them anyway or it will die while you’re playing.
And if you think the process of:
opening the back cover, taking out the AAs (especially on the original steam controller), putting them in a charger, and putting new ones back in the controller
is even close to as easy as just setting the controller down on a magnetic charger, I don’t know what to tell you.