It’s less wasteful to use disposable and non-rechargeable batteries?
Many of the competitors are entirely disposable. I’m not aware of any very small ones that are rechargeable.
There's more to these than just batteries. If they had sealed-in a rechargeable battery then you'd have to throw out the whole thing and buy a new one once it stopped holding a charge. This way you can just buy your own rechargeable CR2032 batteries.
I thought you were joking about rechargeable 2032's... and I was wrong. Had no idea. I don't know why I didn't look into these before; I have a number of things that use 2032's that I can use this for.
I looked in to it and it looked like they were at a different voltage which could be an issue. Also devices that use these go flat so rarely that it will take decades to pay off the charger. But I guess if you have 20 airtags that could come faster.
Be careful with that one, many rechargeables aren't suitable for low current/long lasting applications due to self-discharge. There are "low self-discharge" cells, but not sure about that in a CR2032 form factor.
Better to replace a single battery after a year than throw away an entire perfectly good speaker and earbud and a spent battery after two years, like with airpods.
probably just the only practical thing. don’t imagine people wanting to charge these things