Another birthday, another DS! (Nintendo DSi)

Member Name: kaitlinsmummy

Product:	Nintendo DSi
Date:	18/07/09 (66 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: New photo and sound features.

Disadvantages: Not worth the upgrade!

This is the third year on the trot that my daughter has requested a new Nintendo DS light, the first time as a novelty item and the fact that they could be bought in pink. The second year due to the fact she has knackered the screen or at least the sensitivity of it and the third year due to the fact that you can know take pictures!
This time I refused to buy her it myself, making her save her birthday money to buy the unit, unfortunately she is seemingly very spoilt and had enough money to buy this and two games, so much for teaching her the value of money!

The product I will now review is the Nintendo Dsi computer.

The unit itself looks exactly the same as the last unit she had, now with me being a complete computer novice, I did wonder whether we were being shafted and given the same as we have already got, and to be truthful I am not to far wrong with this statement.

The colours are different, before Kaitlin has had a pink one and a green one, this time she has had a black unit.
The case itself is made of mat black plastic and this time has an almost slip resistant covering rather than a sheen that the previous one's have had.

The features available are - 2 x LCD screens, the contrast of these liquid crystal displays can be altered to one of 5 levels, this can be done as before through touching the lower touch sensitive screen to alter.

There are also the power button and control buttons, these again are the same as the previous unit, a cross shaped curser button, the Y,X,A and B buttons, and finally the start and select buttons.

There is an audio jack slot, to fit headphones or microphones into, though obviously if headphones are attached nothing will be played through he speakers.

Along with the built in speakers there is also a built in microphone, this on the original unit was specifically to play along with the appropriate games, but in this unit there is a function to record sounds and voices, I will go into this a little later.

The new element to this unit is of course the built in cameras. These are situated on the top corner of the unit, on the outside part and one located centrally just above the lower touch sensitive screen, this is perfect for photo's of your friends and also to take a photo of yourself.

To set the unit up you simply follow the onscreen instructions, these being -

Power on, choose your language and country of residence, set the date and the time. You then choose a username, and at this point I would like to point out that this is the name that you will pay under, NOT a password, my daughter choose a name I knew she would never remember and told her so for her to come back with this vital piece of information, god did I feel sneeped!
After that you can enter a brief message, this is for configuration, but you could also put a self greeting message for each time you switch the unit on. The next stage is to choose a colour and set you date of birth.

The final stage is not obligatory but ideal due to the features on this unit, these being parental controls. These in a nutshell simply restrict the child (if it is indeed owned by a child), from downloading inappropriate games, talk to unknown people via pictochat and downloading or uploading photographs to again, unknown people.

Once you have gone through these your system will automatically start up and you will be ready to play games/take pictures.

When the unit is switched on you will be given the option of either playing games, or taking photographs.

This is again explained fully through on screen instructions.

To take a photograph of yourself you simply tilt the camera to take the perfect shot of yourself, this will automatically be saved into a file within the unit, this holds around 500 photo's.
To take photo's of anything "outside" the unit, ie not the player you simply press the X button or tap the "switch" button on screen with your stylus, and this switches between the inner and outer camera.

To take the photo you simply tap the "capture" button and there is a second delay before the picture you have just taken appears on the upper screen.

This where the fun begins, you have the option to either "mess" with the picture before taking it or after. The options include a setting that turns your picture into a hall of mirrors photo, distorting picture. You can frame, draw on, add wigs, hats moustaches..... The choices are quite extensive and fun! I have actually been just turned into Mario out of the Super Mario brothers, much to my children's delight!

To record sounds you simply tap the sound button which will there in your menu selection, through this you are given the opportunity to record your owns sounds and voices, and like the photo element, play around with them.

To record a sound you simply pick an empty balloon on screen and then press record, as soon as the unit picks up a load enough sound it will start recording, to stop you press ok. You then pck a coour from the list and this will stay in the memory of the unit for you to tweak until such a time as you want to delete it!

You can alter the recordings by placing filters on them, these range from budgie through to tunnel, this keeps the original sound but adds new elements to the top layer of sound.
You can then change the speed in which the piece is placed, either slowing down or speeding up, with there even being an option of changing the pitch of the piece, this again is achieved in the same way as the previous options.

You can also play your own selection of music, via the SD memory card, thus creating top 10 favourites, though I don't really see this being a useful addition, my daughter usually has her MP3 player going when playing on this!

There are other built in software features, these being the game feature, I mean after all that is a big part of this!
The others being DS downloaded play, this again doesn't have to be restricted in my house as the only other person with a unit is my sister, and even though she is 25 years old, she plays the same games as my daughter does!
Pictochat, which allows you to send pictures and messages wirelessly, again she only ever uses this feature with my sister.

Finally there is the DSI shop, this allows you to buy games via the internet, thankfully my daughter hasn't got hers set up for this, god knows how much would be bought and spent!

There are the obligatory extras that come with this unit, these being a spare stylus pen, a must if your children are like mine, I spend half my time searching for these runaway items! And also a charge for the unit, although this unit seems to have had a small charge before buying it, no doubt it will need a good few hours charge later!

This unit is available from so many places ranging from the extortionate (£179), through to the very reasonable which is what I paid £139, this was just for the unit.
There are few package deals to be had, all with a couple of games thrown in, though we never bothered with these as A, my daughter has a few games already and B, the games included in the deal were not very good and not worth the extra money they were asking for!

Our place of purchase was Toys R Us - www.toysrus.co.uk

Was it worth the update.....not really! The unit apart from the photographs and sounds, is the same unit, and even though the new elements are fun, I can't imagine them keeping anyone thoroughly entertained for long periods of time, but never the less this is a nice unit and my daughter (so far!) has been enthralled!

Thanks for reading x

Summary: See review.