The handheld system to own (Nintendo DS Lite)

Member Name: LastLine

Product:	Nintendo DS Lite
Date:	04/06/09 (4 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent battery, range of games, touch screen

Disadvantages: No Gameboy backwards compatability, fiddly stylus

I bought the DS lite some years ago now with the view of using it for one particular game, the name of which now escapes me altogether.

At the time I bought it the original DS was still out and I bought the DS lite due to it's smaller and lighter size, and to be honest it also looked much better than the other option at the time. The unit cost me a little over £100 with a game included which was quite a bargain really and still feels like it would be reasonable value today.

The unit comes with 2 screens, the lower of the two of which is touch sensitive either to your finger, or to the rather fiddly touch stylus. This allows game creators to create a number of different ways for you to interact with the game, or simply to have a large profile screen to play over.

The stylus that comes with the unit is quite frankly pathetic, it's only a couple of inches long and isn't particularly easy to hold, I have experimented with using my finger but have ultimately found that a better answer is an extendable stylus available off of sites such as ebay which extends to 3/4 inches, much more like a short pen.

Load up times for the games are great, but that's the benefits of it being a cartridge system and using Flash style memory. The downside to the idea being that the file sizes are somewhat limiting meaning that graphics or game length tend to suffer a little - not that the DS is built to be a real graphical power house anyway so no great loss there.

The device also has a Gameboy Advance slot at the front for your old GBA games ensuring a little backwards compatability, sadly it doesn't take my old collection of original Gameboy games, though I can't seem to find the reason for this, it does mean that I keep an old GBA on my shelf too.

The speakers are rather good quality, but the headphone socket does mean that if you aren't happy with them you can use your choice of audio output be it external speakers or, more likely, headphones.

Battery life is simply amazing, I don't have an exact number but I would guess at least 24 hours use at a time between charges, it just goes on forever. Definitely a travellers friend.

Summary: Only surpassed by the new DSi