Why is 5 seconds every few days better than 2 minutes every few years? You just keep talking up how easy it is to replace AAs as if that's somehow the only important thing? For it to be worse, it has to be worse than the alternative which you just don't seem to understand is going to take up less time?
That is obviously not the case with the Steam controller.
How do you know? Do you have a preview?
But you've again completely ignored the point, which is that the non-AA alternative is quicker to swap, so the time to swap was never about the battery type, was it?
Once you've understood this we can talk about the point you never initially mentioned, but I'm not opening a new discussion when you're being so willfully ignorant on the first one.