NYKO WIRELESS SENSOR BAR - No strings attached!

Ah, the Wii - the elusive holy grail of gaming even a year after release. And once you find it - depending on your setup - that may not be the end of your problems.

For those of you not in the know, the Wii - Nintendo's latest and greatest console - depends on wireless positioning of the controller to accurately move Mario through his paces. This requires - well, a point of reference. This point of reference is the sensor bar, a little widget that sits on top of your TV and projects an inferred light that the wiimote can detect and report it's position properly. You don’t necessarily need the Nintendo given sensor bar - I've seen videos of people using birthday candles and any source of illumination for the Wiimote to lock onto.

But you don’t need anything as primitive as that - no need for you to burn down your house for the sake of entertainment (unless, of course you are into that sort of thing). No, all you need is something like, well something like the Ryko wireless sensor bar.

I bought the Ryko bar not as a replacement for the Nintendo bundled one, but so that I has one less thing to haul over to my friends when I packed up my Wii. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the wire on the Nintendo bar is so long and thin that it was only a matter of time before I tore it loose. So - my Ryko travel buddy it is!

The bar feels very solid, with no wires to tear loose. It sports a battery-saving alarm that you can set to remind you to turn it off. Also as a nice touch, Ryko added a sturdy rubber grip on the bottom, perfect so you don’t have to use that messy double sided tape on your television, and it stays in place really well.

The price is right too! It lists for 19.99, but I picked mine up for about 13 bucks on sale. Depending on where you look, you can find them for around 15-18 bucks, depending on where you shop.

It does take 4 AA sized batteries and the battery life seems pretty good - but of course any Wii owner worth his weight will already have some rechargeable batteries handy for Wiimote emergencies, so even if it craps out, you should be good.

Nyko claims that their bar has a 25-foot range, while I haven't put that to the test yet, it does seem more powerful than the Nintendo bar. Since the light is infrared, I cant tell you if the bar is any brighter than the Nintendo bar (my bionic eyes haven't shown up in the mail yet), but I do notice less jitter than when I use the standard sensor. Before, the standard sensor bar couldn't detect very small and precise movements - but with the Ryko, games like Wii Golf and Wii Boxing seem more accurate. There's still some twitch when twisting the Wiimote, but it does look like an improvement.

The only real downside to the sensor bar is the batteries. An AC adapter would be nice - but that would kind of defeat the purpose of having a wireless sensor bar, wouldn’t it?

Now if only we could just get rid of the cord between the nunchuck and Wiimote. . . .