Maybe I’m a Nintendo Wii owner that is plagued with problems and concerns, but the little box which is seeing a great deal of love has caused another issue for me. The first, if you missed reading the review, was in regards to the short battery life, something that has since been changed thanks to the Charge Station, but there’s another problem. This one however isn’t necessarily the fault of Nintendo, but instead the animal kingdom. Yes, you did in fact read that correctly.

The problem is concerning the sensor bar. Sure, it’s a necessity for the system, but there can be a few complications depending on where you’ve decided to place it. The biggest problem, at least for myself, and I’m sure others, is the fact that there’s a cable on it. Okay, maybe it doesn’t sound like an issue, but add this into the equation; I have three cats. Now, I don’t know which one of them is at fault since this occurs in the dead of night when everyone else is asleep, but apparently the cable seems to be a plaything. I can’t count how many mornings I’ve awoke to find the sensor bar lying in the middle of the floor, and I’m almost certain that one day I’ll find the cord has been chewed through. Once again however Nyko has come up with a solution.

Enter the Wireless Sensor Bar, the ideal thing to keep your Wii and its accessories completely and totally free from any accidental trips, pets, small children, or anything else that could possible yank the wired version onto the floor and disrupt game play or even worse, result in damage. The Wireless Sensor Bar runs on four AA batteries and like all the products from Nyko we’ve cover here so far, setting it up is easy. Just unplug your regular sensor bar from the Wii, decide where you’re going to put it, then hold the silver button on the top of the unit. The LED light will turn blue indicating that it’s on. The unit also has a switch on the back that allows you to determine how long the shut off time will be; one hour, two hours, or none. Should the sensor turn off, just hold the silver button again to turn it back on. The unit even features an alarm letting you know when it's been on for too long and with a range of up to 25 feet, it's an ideal replacement for your old sensor bar.

It all sounds easy, right? Well, it actually is. I’m sure one concern is how responsive is the unit, and it works just as well as the regular, wired bar that comes with your Wii. There are a few changes that I would have liked to have seen however. The bar can be mounted with sticky tape that’s found on the bottom, though I think that the use of suction cups would have been a bit better as most television or entertainment centers have the correct surface to accommodate these. Also, after having used their Charge Station and Front Man Wireless Guitar, the addition of actually having a wired option here that allows the batteries to be charged would have been a nice touch. Maybe future version however will include features such as these.

So far from the products that Nyko has shipped us to examine and review; all of them have been ideal additions for any gamers arsenal. While Nintendo, Sony, and even Microsoft might be making the systems that keep us playing games, it’s the third parties, Nyko in this case, that are coming up with the essentials to make gaming even better. The Wireless Sensor Bar is just another example, and now that I don’t find it lying in the middle of the floor, this handy gadget gets my vote for being a must have.

-mike-