A week with the Nintendo DSi

I had decided long ago to buy the Nintendo DSi as part of my tax return. With the purchase of Guitar Hero, that isn’t necessarily true anymore but I still wanted it. My old Nintendo DS is the old brick style DS that was originally launched five or six years ago. I had bypassed the DS Lite because I know how Nintendo likes to come out with new versions of handhelds and vowed to myself to get the next major iteration.

So here I am. It actually was pretty affordable too because I used a $50 gift card from Christmas, a $10 gift card from a previous purchase and a $5 coupon from being a Best Buy Rewards member.  So in the end, it turned out to be about $115, and I get $10 worth of DSiWare points too to get downloadable games so I feel like this was a very affordable purchase on my end.

The DSi itself, is as advertised much much smaller. It is about half the width of my old brick and has reduced length and height. From reading the comparison with the DS Lite, it doesn’t really seem that much smaller than the previous version however, it mostly seems a little bit thinner.

As a brick owner, it certainly was a welcomed improvement. The screen sizes are also noticeably bigger than the previous DS versions which is nice, and I also liked the addition of the different brightness to the screens though it would have been nice had they allowed you to change the brightnesses of each screen individually and allowed you to change it within the game in case you needed to make a sudden change.
The loss of the GBA slot kind of sucks, but honestly at this point there are few games I play on the GBA, and those that I would still play from time to time are easily played on either the original DS or the GBA SP. I think the size of the old DS equals more than the DSi and two GBA SPs combined so even this is a savings of space and not one that is needed all the time. I gladly take the inclusion of an SD card slot instead of the GBA slot.

Now for the real new features of the DSi… I looked at the downloadable stuff, and out the gate the included games are not impressive. I happily downloaded the browser and it works great. I’m very surprised that they included it for free as the browser on the Wii cost $5 and I personally felt that the DSi browser is more useful as I can now connect to the internet and surf on the go, whereas at home it is a small portion of the time when both my computer and my laptop are taken where I’d want to use the browser on the Wii (though it happens). I look forward to future games to download here because I think the games on the Wii thus far have been great. My main complaint here really is that the DSi points and the Wii points are not interchangeable. If you buy 1000 points in one, you can’t use them in either device which kind of sucks and considering the exchange rate is the same it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Going into the DSi launch, it seems that most of the attention has been drawn to the cameras, largely because they are the most visible change. Obviously this isn’t the only change, or even the most important, but they are still there. I heard a lot of complaints about the megapixels but actually it turns out that the cameras are fairly decent all things considered. The camera on the outside is 3 megapixels and the one on the inside is 0.3. To put that into perspective, the iPhone has a 2 megapixel camera on it so the outer one is much better overall than what you get on most cellphones (even the higher priced ones like the iPhone). The little toys that you get to play with pictures are nice, but certainly not game breakers. I personally like messing around with the color changing and the black and white toys the most and have made some cool pics with them. I also like how your pictures show up on the upper screen on the main menu. I think the verdict is still out on the camera, I play with it every now and then and plan on posting pics with it to twitpic now, but games that are made using the cameras will tell us how much these are worth it.

To me, my favorite new feature is that of well, the SD slot coupled with the sound gadgets. With these, I essentially have my own iPod, in fact I’ve called the device a DSiPod because of it. I think that what the DSi is better in a lot of respects than an iPod. I’ve actually been looking for an MP3 player and in that search I was looking for one with an SD slot for the expandability (which btw is extremely rare!). So this fits exactly what I was looking for. I have been using the DSi mostly as an MP3 player since I bought it actually. In addition, I have had quite a bit of fun playing with the various sounds and effects included in the system. I also think it was a nice touch to have various visualizers, and think it is fun trying to get Mario to collect coins during songs. My main complaint here is that the sound isn’t great, when listening to a song I have the volume all the way up and it sometimes is still problematic hearing everything. Especially podcasts. I wish there was a way to unlock the sound cap that they include in the system at the very least.

The other thing that I think will need the test of time to prove it out is the actual upgrades to the core of the DS that Nintendo included. A lot of reviewers said that it wasn’t the DS2, but looking at the actual improvements of the system, I am not entirely sure. The processor is twice as fast as the original,  4 times the RAM, tons more storage (256 MB compared to 4MB of internal memory), better wifi, SD card slot, bigger screens, and 2 cameras. The amount of new features are so significant that I personally do consider this to be the DS2. I think once we start to see games being made specifically for the DSi, others will begin to see the changes as well and I think this DS will be the standard for the next two or three years unless Sony’s PSP2 actually does well.

I think the Nintendo DSi is well worth the money, especially if you buy it while they have the 1000 DSi point promotion going on. Yes, the system is slightly more expensive than the DS but well worth it IMHO. I give it two thumbs up.