DSi XL Hands-On

I said I’d do it, so here it is. My hands-on review of the brand new DSi XL.

Saturday afternoon, directly after my university open day, I bought a shiny new DSi XL, in Earth Brown. As mentioned in my previous post, I don’t like brown, but the way it was suggested to me was that the whole frigging console was in Brown. It would appear, that this is not the case. The top and inside of the DSi XL is black, which makes me a very happy bunny indeed. Good start, methinks.

I opened the box in haste, the moment I returned to the car and could not believe quite how large this actually is. I knew it was bigger than the DS Lite, by quite a bit, but I didn’t realise quite how much bigger it actually was. I mean, it’s not so big that it’s stupid, it’s a fair increase in size to make it one heck of a console.

Seen above, is a picture of a DS Chunky (Ignore the damage, I’d had it for a long time and subsequently the top screen no longer works), a DS Lite (Not mine, lost my one, which was Black… Still looking in the sofa from time to time) and my shiny new DSi XL. This’ll give you a fair idea of quite how big it is. The screens, much bigger, the buttons are the same size, but given a lot more room, ideal for the larger fingered people such as myself and, although not picture here, is a new Power Button, located below the D-Pad, instead of above or on the side, Buttons for volume control, rather than a slider. The DSi XL, much like it’s smaller brother, the DSi, is lacking a GBA slot, but with the amount of time the DS has been out, the downloadable games service and plenty of little neat things you can do, you really won’t miss it. It also sports a nice little SD card slot in the side, to allow extra storage space for pictures, edited sounds, little animations you may have drawn (more on that soon) and any other stuff you want to put on to it.

On to the Software. I was aware the DSi had improved software features over the other DSeseseses, but it’s a nice little touch. I had plenty of fun mucking around with the Sound Editor application, which lets you tinker with people’s voices and give it rather weird effects. Many lols making people sounding deep and slow talking and playing with an odd effect which turns the speech into a series of trumpet blasts. The picture software along with the Camera is really, as far as I can tell for now, just a little piece of fun kit that doesn’t have much of a functional use. However, using the software to compare two peoples faces and check the resemblance between them is enjoyable, even if it says Josh and his girlfriend, Jeannette are 35% alike and supposedly cousins. Weird hmm? Another good software feature is the Flipnote Studio application, which free to download from the DSi store. It effectively allows you make animations using a flipbook style of animation, with plenty of accessible features to allow the artistically challenge to have a bit of a laugh with, while having enough depth and tools to create something pretty impressive. I’ve also got into a little downloadable game called Paper Plane, which in it’s absurd simplicity, keeps bringing me back for more. All you have to do is use the Left and Right buttons of the D-Pad to guide the paper plane down a series of obstacle. Any game with an “Endless Mode” is always going to make me come back really and it’s really quite fun.

Overall, this console is a fine addition to the DS tree and well worth the upgrade from a DS Lite, which is essentially what I did. The games look superb and the speakers are much, much better than the Lite. Upgrade now!