DSi vs. DS Lite - Is The DSi Worth It?
Did you pre-order prematurely?
The DSi is upon us – I have little doubt that you may already have one in your hands…if you don’t you’ll be picking up your pre-ordered copy soon! But are you sure you didn’t just waste your precious pennies? Let’s put the new DSi against the older DS Lite and see what exactly you’re paying for…
Size
So the obvious difference, straight out of the box, is the size of each unit – you’ll be happy to know that you have been provided with a whole quarter of inch more screen which is always a nice little treat!
And don’t worry, you aren’t getting a brick just because you’ve been given a 3.25 inch screen – although the size of the DSi is a few insignificant millimetres larger than its predecessor it’s still 4 grams lighter than the DS Lite so your arms won’t hurt quite as quickly.
Colours
Unfortunately you might have had your hopes up for more colours in your bigger screen – alas, no! Both the DS Lite and the DSi sport 260,000 colours which is a bit of a shame. Surely they could have crammed a couple more thousand in that extra quarter inch, but they didn’t – let’s put it behind us…
Battery
But let’s talk about the importance features like batteries. Unfortunately you aren’t getting a better battery for your money, in fact you’ll be losing a few hours for your trouble. At its highest brightness the DS Lite provides you with between 5 and 8 hours gameplay but the DSi only delivers between 3 and 4 hours which is quite a scary drop…
However Nintendo are trying to make up for the poor battery by making you wait for less time for them to charge – the DS Lite took around 3 hours for a full charge and the DSi will save you about half an hour taking around 2 and a half hours.
SD Memory Card Slot
Welcome the introduction of the SD memory card slot – it’s about time I hear you crying from the rooftops. The DS Lite provided the DS card slot and the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot, but as you can’t play Game Boy Advance games on the DSi they’ve replaced it with the much-needed SD memory card slot.
Buttons
The buttons can be found in exactly the same places on both devices – perhaps they didn’t want to confuse anyone? Either way you’ll be able to pick up a DSi and roam around the buttons as if you had been playing a DSi for years – the only difference is with the power button which has lost its slider feature and has been moved to the bottom left of the console.
And there’s more…
But that’s not it – Nintendo are throwing in two cameras, an online store for you to download content from, a built in music player, a built in Internet browser and an internal memory upgrade!
Maybe it’s worth losing an hour or so of battery power…
What about you?
Have you bought a DSi? Are you planning on sticking with your DS Lite? Leave us a comment and let us know…
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