Wii Dual Charge Station & Turbo Cooler Reviews

• Switch Does NOT Control Fan

  
  By AYKY6K78GTJP2 on 2008-02-25
  Just to remark on another review, the on/off switch does not control the fan. The fan stays on whenever the unit is plugged in. The switch only controls the blue light.
  I have made an adjustment in my charging center to get the switch to control both the light and the fan.
  In order to do this you must:
  
  1) Remove the sticky feet and the 4 screws underneath them
  2) Remove the circuit board (2 screws) that the fan wires goto.
  3) Unsolder the fans black wire (+) from the bottom of the curcuit board
  4) Solder the fans black wire to the on off switch where the red wires from the blue light are already soldered.
  5) re-screw the circuit board
  6) rescrew the 4 screws under the feet
  7) Put back on the sticky feet.
  
  Now the on/off switch will control both the fan and the blue light.
  I rated this an overall rating of 3 because this is a stupid design and the on/off switch should have controlled both without me having to modify it.
  Doing this modification was simple.
  I am not a great solderer so was worried at first, but when I took it apart I saw how easy it would be.
  The modification took less then 10 minutes and could be done easily by anyone.
  If this modification was done by the factory, I would have given this unit a 5 star review, but since I had to mod it, I am giving it a 3.
  
  
  

• This is the Wii Charge Station to get!

  
  By A213XDNALMBK14 on 2008-01-15
  I have been looking through all the reviews on charge stations, but none appealed to me more than this one (without no reviews nonetheless). Comes with 2 Battery packs that is pretty much the steal right there! Everything works perfectly out of the package. Easy to hook up. Switch to turn fan on/off (along with blue LED). Wiimote slips right in the charger and make sure you move the strap out of the way to get the full charge. You must charge this for 12 hours before using!!! That is very important and also says so in the manual. Red LED indicates charge and Blue LED indicates charge completion. I hope this has been enough information to influence you to buy this GREAT Wii accessory.
  
  

• Wii dual charger with fan

  
  By A1G8G16FIJNMJF on 2008-03-07
  I purchased this thinking it would be good since it does not require an additional power cord and has the two charger docks and batteries. When I received it I found that the on/off switch does not control the fan just the light and the base charging units. I also have some issues with the charging docks. They are too deep for the remotes. The wrist strap gets in the way when you insert them and I have problems with the remotes making contact to charge. I read the other reviews and sure, if I take the wrist straps off the remotes would fit better but I have two young children that are not going to take the time to do that. If the on/off switch controlled the fan as well and the docking stations were not as deep it would be a great charging station for the Wii. Over all I am keeping it but I am going to follow the other review on modifying it to have the on/off switch control the fan. If the remotes making contact to charge becomes too much of an issue I will purchase a different type of unit. Until this item is modified by the manufacturer I would not recommend it unless you need to save the money and have the time to fool with it. It is a great design idea I just think it needs a few modifications.
  
  

• Works well!

  
  By A1CY5O301C0SLX on 2008-02-15
  For the price, you can't beat this! Not only does it come with two rechargeable batteries for two controllers, but the stand has a built-in cooling fan for the Wii!
  
  

• Good product that does what it should

  
  By A2PVX3DDJWH2BJ on 2008-03-27
  To begin, I do believe the appearance of this charging station is pretty cool. It holds both the Wii and two Wiimotes which makes for a nice presentation. It is almost worthwhile in itself that it comes with two battery packs for your Wiimotes also. I had a little difficulty at first getting the packs into the Wiimotes but with some effort they did lock in place. Also, the Wiimotes don't fit perfectly into the charging stand - you will have to remove the jacket if you have one, and I have to move the wrist strap to the side to get it to make contact. I would consider this only a minor inconvenience though.
  
  As was stated in earlier reviews, the On/Off switch does not control the fan but only the base light (which is pretty bright I might add) and the charging function. The charging base and the Wii console are routed through the same power source, so when the Wii turns on the fan does too. This really doesn't bother me that much but might some others.
  
  So far I've really enjoyed being able to just fire up the Wii, play for an hour or so, then stick the Wiimotes back in to charge up. The convenience of having no batteries to worry about is great! I would have given five stars if the Wiimote slots held the Wiimote better, but still a very good product!
  
  
• Exactly what is promised
  By ANF5HNZ99R46E on 2008-04-12
  I have been using my dual charge station for a month and it does exactly what it says it will do. It recharges the batteries in the wands. It provides a blue light all of the time, unless you turn it off. The fan is always on. If this isn't what you want search for a simple modification on the web. The charging lights are red until the batteries are charged, then they turn blue.
  
  
• As a charger, great. Makes too much noise
  By A3A0SGE0G2C91Q on 2008-10-10
  I bought this hoping it would solve the never ending search for batteries in my house. However, now I have a battery charger that I hardly use because the "cooling system" fan is so loud. Get a standalone charger that doesn't include inserting the Wii. It looks cool, but sounds awful.
  
  
• Wii Dual Charge Station
  By A29GSOBFQUQJQF on 2008-10-18
  The straps get in the way of recharging the handsets. Only one of my handsets will recharge. The other one has never recharged or worked right. This was not worth the money.
  
  
• Batteries die after a few months
  By AJ9H0QMFXJV3T on 2008-10-19
  I've owned this unit for a few months now and I play with my wii console on and off. I haven't used the console for a month now and wanted to power the console up and play a game. To my disappointment the rechargeable batteries will no longer keep a charge of longer than a few minutes.
  
  I don't know whether I was supposed to always remove them from the charging station after the led's indicated that a full charge was complete, but most re-charging stations these days have a built in off-switch so as not to over-charge the batteries. I'm guessing this unit doesn't have this feature and that's how the batteries died.
  
  The design itself is annoying as well, since there is a constant noisy fan running while this unit is plugged in. the only way to turn off the fan is to unplug the unit.
  
  I would not recommend this product and i'm searching for a better replacement.
  
  
• Wii recharging station
  By AAVNUZLL3HETO on 2008-03-04
  It saves on batteries but is loud. The fan runs continuously while the unit is on and if you want to charge your remotes you have to have it on with the fan running. I would buy it again but wish I could turn the fan off when we are not playing Wii.
  
  
• Wii Dual Charge Station & Turbo Cooler
  By A10KL2TE3BIFKR on 2008-02-28
  This is a great piece of equipment. The only short coming is you have to take the jacket and strap off so you can make contact with the chargers.
  
  
• Good charger and cooling station!
  By A36T0FL35QMF20 on 2008-03-03
  Stylish and functional. Hey it works! What more do you want? You do have to remove any accessories from the remote before placing it in the charger. I trimmed the remote grips with scissors to make this easier.
  
  
• excellent fan, terrible charger design
  By A63PO4Z7GIY33 on 2008-05-01
  I bought this when I bought my Wii as I intended to use rechargeables right from the start. I sure wish I hadn't lost my receipt as this was a very disappointing purchase. Although the charger is very sexy with it's blue-lit base and the fan works exactly as promised I was primarily interested in the product for charging my Wii remotes. This it does extremely poorly. The battery packs are extremely difficult to get into the controllers and I had to almost break the plastic casings to get them to snap into place. Then to make matters worse the chargers are tight deep cradles into which the controllers will fit ONLY IF YOU REMOVE THE SKINS. After tearing 3 skins in the first 3 nights of trying to charge my Wii-motes I abandoned the nice skins I bought in favor of the thicker rubber default skins that peel back without ripping. It was EXTREMELY disappointing to find that 2 such common accessories for the Wii could be so vastly incompatible with each other. I don't know who's to blame, but some designers somewhere should be losing their jobs. Even the wrist-straps can get in the way and prevent charging unless you jiggle the controllers around until they are sitting "just right". In each of the charging cradles there are little metal tabs that make contact with the charging contacts on the controller (similar to what you would find on a cordless phone charger/base). Just this last week one of the contacts got stuck inside the base and wouldn't come out for 2 days depriving me of one of my chargers. It came out a couple of days ago on its own volition, but promptly disappeared again yesterday. Surely some of these issues should have been anticipated in the design stage. And shouldn't some of the problems have been found during testing? If you plan on gaming 12+ hours per day then this may be a good product for the fan alone if you can live with the crappy charging system, but if you're just looking for a charger for your controllers I couldn't recommend a worse product then this one. There are better solutions out there. I'm going to look for something better and try to ditch this on somebody who can really use the fan. Either that or I'll take it apart and fix it myself
  
  
• Cool Blue
  By A20WHMYMPWCNRL on 2008-05-19
  It works great and it has this sweet blue light base when the system is on. Otherwise there are small lights next to the charge ports, red means it is charging and blue means they are fully charged.
  
  You also save on batteries, this package comes with 2 battery backs(but no remotes as shown, that's just to show you how they fit into the device of course) that fit into place where your regular batteries would go. After you set them into place you will need to charge them initially for 12 hours, this is similar to the technology of standard cell phones.
  
  The fan is also a nice touch, computer systems always run faster when they are cool.
  
  
• Wii Charge Station is a lifesaver!
  By AL0RI03ASHGH2 on 2008-05-14
  The single most annoying and frustrating thing about Wii controllers is that they require batteries. Unfortunately, we were having to replace these batteries on such a frequent basis that it was becoming just too costly... and wasteful. Really wasteful. So, when I found this charge station on Amazon, I wondered if it would perform well and as promised. Happily, it does!
  
  My children use their Wii game constantly, and I no longer need to run out and buy huge quantities of batteries to feed that beast with the insatiable appetite! I highly recommend it to anyone who owns a Wii console. You won't be sorry.
  
  
• didn't last very long
  By A1Z1XZJGWQ51HD on 2008-05-30
  We first got this product the end of March...it was great until the middle of April. One day is started making a funny grinding noise and it has slowly died. Hoping we just got a bumm product...hopefully we can return it and try again!!!
  
  
• Both chargers don't work
  By A2Y5SURUKW2PR3 on 2008-06-12
  Purchased this for the rechargable aspect. The charger on the left was very difficult to get to charge when we first received it, had to wiggle charger a lot to get it to charge. After about a month it no longer works, only one of the chargers will charge. I lost the reciept so do not know how to exchange without reciept- open to suggestions I would not advise purchasing.
  
  
• Cool charge station!
  By AEJNXW279NJ7Y on 2008-09-16
  I like everything about this, the only down fall is you have to remove the remote skins (if your using them) about 1/4 of the way up from the bottom when you put the remotes in the charging dock they don't fit otherwise and the contact point won't connect. I do really like it though. :-)
  
  
• Docking station WII
  By AGE59Y7AU6PSO on 2008-09-18
  The docking station looks cool. I love the glowing blue light on it. Fan does make a little noise but it doesn't bother me. I knew about the fan issues ahead of time. The rechargable batteries work great. They hold a average charge. Price was great. I will purchase this item again and use it on my Xmas list:)
  
  
• MUST HAVE ACCESORY for all Wii owners
  By AHQX6ABG60HPM on 2008-09-30
  This is probably the best cooling system and charging station there is for the Wii that is around. Since Nintendo kind of goofed up on the options for not really being able to "turn off" the Wii, it's constantly running. (Aside from unplugging the Wii's power cord, I don't there is any other way to turn it off.) Even when you set to offline mode, the red light, you'll see that it's still technically running, the fan is always spinning. While it doesn't get as hot as it does when in online mode, orange light, or game mode, green light, it still can reach a fairly warm temperature which over time can damage components.
  
  So onn very hot days, I leave my Cooler on, to help prevent damage to my Wii system. The Cooler is much more inexpensive to replace, and it just makes sense to leave it on.
  
  The lights look cool, but I hope in the future a 2.0 version is released which different light schemes. It'd be pretty cool to have a host of being able to display different colors on your base station.
  
  At any rate, this is a top rate product. It does everything it says it does and it's well made. Replacement rechargeable batteries are cheap enough that, in a few years time, when they need to be changed, the cost is so effective vs. conventional battery use.
  
  I highly recommend this product as a must have accessory for your Nintendo Wii system.
  
  ~Kr4ckc0d3
  
  
• works great
  By AQ8895NPDJZE4 on 2008-02-26
  the fact that it comes with the rechargable batteries and that you can charge both controlers at the same time is great! also we really like the cooling fan feature! the blue light is cool but we don't like to have it on while playing so the fact that you can turn that off is a very nice feature. we've left out our wiimotes to be almost dead and this charges them up really fast it even has a light the switches from red to blue to let you know when they are charged. The only thing i don't like is having to take off the wii skin every night and then putting it back on- but that really isn't that big of a deal considering it takes like 2 seconds. we compared prices and this one was the best deal and we really are glad with our choice
  
  
• A little too bright....
  By ARA0DQ7V1HIMP on 2008-03-23
  The product works and looks great, but you can't turn off the light in the base without unpluging the charging part also. The base light is very bright and distracting when placed next to the TV.
  
  
• Works perfect!
  By A2VWOGOV6AUD1S on 2008-03-24
  It works perfect. Does the job.
  
  By the way, any one knows where to buy a additional rechargeable battery pack?
  
  
• A great addition to your Wii collection
  By A108CWE59ULRUY on 2008-05-10
  This is simply a must have for Wii owners. There's two reasons why you should purchase this:
  
  1. It's a sleek way to not only store your Wiimotes, it charges them as they rest in the station. I was going through about five dollars in batteries a week before I purchased this. The Wiimotes can go a surprisingly long time before they need charged again. I've read some reviews for Wiimote control chargers that claim the remotes aren't as acurate with chargeing stations, and I can say that's not the case with this one. The controls respond no different with charge packs as they do with batteries.
  
  2. It cools the Wii console and looks great. The ivory white against the blue LED goes so well with the Wii. The fan is built in to help prevent over-heating, although I've yet to hear about issues with Wii's overheating, but I guess it's good for piece of mind.
  
  So if you're looking for a way to display your Nintendo Wii in all it's glory then here it is. Cools it, charges it, and displays it. You won't be dissapointed.
  
  
• Like it but cooling fan is noisy.
  By A1JGWWHR1WS7F9 on 2008-05-27
  Like it but cooling fan is noisy. I unplug it when everything is charged so I don't have to listen to the fan.
  
  
• Blue Light Go!
  By A27PBN9DCNXMAY on 2008-05-29
  Very nice little charging station. Fan can be turned on or off, along with the lights. Can't charge wii remotes with the skins on them. Lights are very cool. Battery life is very good, okay to store them in the charger, battery life does not seem to be affected negatively. Overall, good product.
  
  
• Disappointment
  By A1274KYXGVYMEU on 2008-07-01
  I bought this charger in February, it broke in May. Not the kind of return on investment I was looking for. The internal fan no longer works.
  
  
• Must have been an early design
  By AYWH4ELODFJNK on 2008-07-05
  I thought it was a good price for 2 rechargeable batteries, a charging station, and a Wii stand with cooling fan. It's only about 2" wider then the standard Wii stand. You cannot charge the remotes without atleast peeling back, if not removing, the rubber jackets that the remotes come with now. I havent been able to get them to charge with the straps on either. So, if you dont mind removing the wrist strap and folding up the bottom half of the jacket on the controller while charging, I think this is a pretty good deal. It also would have been nice if the on/off switch controlled something other than just the light.
  
  
• wii turbo charger
  By ADDDUKTU0TSR7 on 2008-08-15
  I don't understand some of the negative reviews. I purchased this product a few days ago because I wanted to be able to have my remotes charged and ready to use. When I open the box I was impressed with the appearance and I liked the led lights that informs you when the remotes are fully charged. I had read other negative reviews on another site about this charger and was skeptical about purchasing it. After I weighed all what I had read and there were a few good reviews as well I decided to try it anyway. My remotes set in the charger nice and snug as it should with no problem and it charged just as the description stated. I called nintendo and they said these chargers are not made by them and they do not support them. I tried it anyway and the wii system set right in the base nicely and everything looked so nice together. Though I am not an electrical technician there wasn't anything I could see that would or could be threatening to the wii itself or the remotes. The fan keeps it cool while the remotes charge and even if you choose to play the wii unit. Some reviews stated that the fan does not turn off when you turn the on/off switch off only when you remove the wii from the base. I'm not to sure about that because I forgot to check for that but what I did was unplug the unit after the remotes charged. I'll check that out. Nonetheless I still like it and it's nice to have an attractive unit to store my remotes when not in use. I can't state how often I use the unit because I just got it and as of the last four days my remotes are still charged and I use them everyday having no sign of needing a recharge. At this point I would recommend it. As far as cost most things we purchase today are not worth the price we are given but what can you do. Based on other charger that gives you less and cost the same I had no problem paying. If I come across some problems I will post another review. I hope this will help.
  
  
• Great addition to my entertainment system
  By A2HP5YB1E6D31X on 2008-08-26
  The Wii Dual Charging Station does everything it advertises. I am very happy with the combination charging stand and console holder which consolidates my entire system and keeps everything in one tidy place. Plus, the design is great and makes the system look first class with the lights positioned under and around it. Additionally, the charge indicator lights make it easy to know when the remotes are fully charged. I am very happy with this product for the cost; and,[[ now that I've left this message, I just hope it won't break down tomorrow.
  
  

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