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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Sure but the switch 2 has a rechargeable battery unlike the game gear which had to be supplied with new batteries every time which cost money.
I’m not sure if rechargeable AA were common in those days.
Rechargeable batteries were common, but in my experience they tended to not hold up as long as normal batteries and took 6-8 hours to recharge. At that time they also degraded quickly, were expensive, and overall just a massive hassle to try and manage.
The IBM thinkpad that runs on windows 95 that I have still has a vaguely functional battery. The battery can last a whole 5 minutes still, damned battery was probably more expensive to produce than the entire rest of the laptop.
rechargable AA's before Eneloops were all absolute dogshit
The biggest problem with rechargeable dry cells is that each one supports 1.2 volts, while alkaline are 1.5. Some devices wouldn't even run, most run more poorly and run out of battery even faster.
Fwiw, should you need it, there are AA lithium batteries with a usbc slot for charging and they deliver 1.5v. I bought a pack out of curiosity and was very pleasantly surprised.
Make sure to get some that mimic battery power loss at the end. Some models just shut off when they are empty and others slowly reduce the voltage so that battery indicators on devices are able to pick that and display a warning to change batteries soon.
I didn't know those existed. I read they just stay at 1.5 until they run out. Now I'm not sure what mine are, if they exhibit this behavior 🤔