I tried these new AA batteries with USB and now I'm £1,960 better off - and lazier

It's always been a problem in my house, and since having a baby it's only got worse. I'm the kind of person who loves gadgets: I have three OLED TVs, a Pro, an , a PSVR2 headset - you name it, if it's geeky I probably have it.

I just ordered a Switch 2 today. The downside is that so much of this needs batteries. Batteries, batteries, batteries. It's a constant battle in this house to find batteries to power remotes, controllers, LED lights and now, of course, all my son's baby toys constantly demand a stream of AA and AAAs too that run out within about a week because he never stops pressing all the buttons.

About 10 years ago (I like to think I was ahead of the trend), I made the decision to change to rechargeable batteries only, to help the environment and save money too. Now, everything in this house has a rechargeable battery, either AA or AAA. Even the clocks on the wall. No more hurling batteries into landfill, destroying the planet in my quest to control everything at my fingertips across the house.

But I was given the chance this past month to test a completely new type of battery which totally solves one issue: the recharging.

These Trust USB-C Rechargeable AA and AAA batteries solve one big stumbling block of being an eco freak: the fact I'm really lazy. And they also save a lot of money.

Right now, when the AAs in my Xbox controller die, I have to pull each battery out, then go to the kitchen and whack them into a wall charging dock. The dock is big and bulky and can only go in a wall outlet where it will fit, not into an extension cable or squeezed into the corner of a room. So I'm constantly trekking to one corner of one room with a pile of dead batteries charging more AAs and AAAs.

These USB rechargeables are a godsend, then. You literally just plug a USB C cable into the battery itself, with the tiny little USB port on the battery.

So I can just pull them out of the remote, stick a cable in, and carry on. It means I can charge them anywhere I have a cable. I've tried charging them plugged into my laptop, plugged into my PS5, and plugged into a portable power bank.

All of them worked and charged them straight away. It pretty much means wherever I am inside or out, I can always charge these AA and AAAs with the same convenience as a portable power bank. That's handy.

The other saver is the cost: right now, the cheapest AA battery pack on Amazon is £7.49 for 12. That means they are 62p each.

These are £19.99 for four, which sounds like more, but they last for 800 recharges.

If you spent 62p per battery, for 800 batteries, you would spend £496. Across all four batteries, that's £1,984. According to energy cost calculators, it costs 0.001 to 0.005 pence to recharge one of these batteries, so even across 800 charges, you're spending £4 on charging, at most, across their life cycle.

That means these batteries at £19.99 and £4 for charging will save you a whopping £1,959.99 over their lifetime compared to buying non-rechargeable batteries. Not only that, you save 2,396 batteries from going into landfill, and you get to be much lazier - there's really no downside.