The Portal is an extra item to keep track of, if I lost my skylanders in my messy apartment I wouldn't be able to play the game at all, and I had to change the batteries once (contained in one of
those annoying battery compartments held closed with a screw).
I found it a bit
annoying to remove a
battery from the
compartment, but you'll only have to do that roughly every 40 hours of playback time, according to Skullcandy — and that rating is based on playback with the bass at the maximum, ridiculously pumped - up level.