[JoshTriplett]

> I'd much rather keep rechargeable AA(A)s on hand for that kind of stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rechargeable+aa+batteries+usb+c

But in practice, I greatly prefer devices with integrated batteries, because they're more likely to be able to give me useful feedback about the battery level (e.g. a reliable low-battery indicator), rather than just winding down, or having a low-battery indicator with only a passing correlation to reality.

[cogman10]

> But in practice, I greatly prefer devices with integrated batteries, because they're more likely to be able to give me useful feedback about the battery level (e.g. a reliable low-battery indicator), rather than just winding down, or having a low-battery indicator with only a passing correlation to reality.

That has less to do with the battery being integrated and more to do with different battery chemistries having different voltage curves.

Nothing would prevent a device from accurately detecting battery levels of NiMH batteries. The problem is all these devices are tuned to an Alkaline battery voltage curve which is much more slanted than NiMH. NiMH has a nearly flat curve with a sudden drop off while Alkaline have a pretty steady decent (with a sudden drop off).

[JoshTriplett]

I'm aware of why it happens, but the net effect is the same. No device powered by AA/AAA is in practice going to be able to detect battery charge level correctly. Combine that with the annoyance of separate chargers versus integrated USB-C, and the result is that I never want to use non-integrated rechargeable batteries. (In practice, I also prefer to avoid devices that use AA/AAA/etc at all, for some of the same reasons.)

[Someone]

> Nothing would prevent a device from accurately detecting battery levels of NiMH batteries

Wouldn’t the NiMH batteries have to be smarter in that case, keeping track of their own historical behavior? That changes over time, and devices with integrated batteries can take that into account to indicate charge levels. If you can swap batteries, you lose that information.

[chaosharmonic]

I'm aware these aren't mutually exclusive. To me, the bigger benefit of not integrating them is that I can just rotate in freshly charged batteries anytime they die, and don't have to care about being within proximity of a charger.

(I also find this important for gamepads, to the extent that I don't just opt to play wired.)

[JoshTriplett]

I do wish more devices supported hot-swappable rechargeable battery packs. My headset does that.

But in the absence of that, I'll take USB-C and the ability to charge while actively using. I find that useful even for wireless gamepads, because then I can attach them to a generic charger on one side of the room, and not run a cable across the room to the console/TV area, because the communication is still wireless and only the power isn't.

[sjs382]

I use these USB-C rechargeable batteries in my travel kit, too. I love the flexibility of being able to pickup some AA/AAAs, charge the ones that just died, or swap in the 2 spares I travel with.