Nintendo DSi

Console Package

The Nintendo DSi comes in an attractive box.

Inside you will find:

• Console;
• Spare stylus;
• Charger;
• Manuals and other paperwork.

Console Dimensions

Dimensions of the Nintendo DSi console.

• Length: 137 mm
• Width: 74.9 mm
• Thickness: 18.9 mm

Dimensions of the Nintendo DS Lite console.

• Length: 133 mm
• Width: 73.9 mm
• Thickness: 21.5 mm

Here is a surprise: despite losing the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot, the DSi is longer and wider than the DS Lite. Only its thickness decreased, by 2.6 mm.

The DSi was originally designed with two DS cartridge slots, which would have made it even larger. Nintendo removed the second slot to reduce its size, but other parts of the design, including the larger screens, had already been approved. The resulting console was still larger than the DS Lite.

For more on the console's development, see History of the Nintendo DSi.

What Changed from the DS Lite to the DSi?

Let's start with the four main changes.

First, Nintendo removed the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot and added support for DSi games.

Second, the DSi gained an SD card slot.

Third, Nintendo doubled the processor's clock speed to 133 MHz and quadrupled the RAM to 16 MB.

Fourth, Nintendo introduced downloadable games and applications through DSiWare.

Together, these changes were meant to give the console a new role.

Let's start with the loss of Game Boy Advance support.

I am not a fan of playing GBA games on a DS. It feels strange to leave an entire screen and the X and Y buttons unused.

The GBA slot has other uses, though. DS utilities can write to compatible GBA cartridges and perform other tasks involving them. Some DS games also use the slot for accessories: Guitar Hero, for example, has a special controller that plugs into it.

Even if you never play GBA games on a DS, then, losing that slot means losing some useful features.

You might expect the faster hardware, SD card slot and online store to make up for that loss with plenty of new and improved games.

In my view, the results were disappointing.

The reasons become clearer when we look at the console's development, covered in History of the Nintendo DSi.

First, the SD card slot was initially included simply because Shigeru Miyamoto wanted one. Only later did the developers see how useful it would be: the DSi had cameras and music playback, and those photos and audio files needed somewhere to go.

Second, the extra processing power and RAM are available to DSi software, such as DSi games and the browser, rather than ordinary DS games.

Third, DSiWare never received the sort of major releases that would have persuaded me to upgrade. Plenty of big games appeared after the DSi's launch on November 1, 2008, including Pokémon Black, but they were sold on cartridges. DSiWare focused on inexpensive games and applications that would have been difficult to sell as full cartridge releases.

For me, that is a disappointing trade-off. GBA support is gone, and the download store closed in 2017. The extra processing power mainly benefits smaller, inexpensive games. To give you an idea of the DSiWare catalog, even Klondike solitaire made IGN's list of its 15 best games.

That may sound like a poor case for buying a DSi, but it does have some advantages:

1. Better wireless networking. The DS Lite supports only the older WEP security standard, while the DSi also supports WPA2. This makes it easier to connect compatible software to a modern network;
2. Louder, better-quality sound, with volume buttons replacing the slider;
3. Slightly larger screens, by 4 mm, and an extra brightness setting, bringing the total to five;
4. A weight reduction of 4 g;
5. A power button that restarts the console with a quick press and turns it off when held down.

Usage

I much prefer the DSi's matte plastic to the glossy finish on the DS Lite. It feels more comfortable to hold.

The buttons are harder to judge. Their layout is the same as on the DS Lite, but the mechanisms underneath are different.

On the DS Lite, each button presses a conductive rubber pad against two contacts, bridging them, much like the buttons on a Game Boy Advance. The buttons feel softer, sit higher above the shell and have more travel than those on the DSi. I find this makes both ordinary presses and diagonal inputs on the D-pad slightly easier.

The DSi uses switches beneath the rubber pads, much like the Game Boy Advance SP. The pads press these switches instead of directly bridging contacts. The buttons feel firmer and give a distinct click. They also sit lower and have less travel.

I cannot say that one design is clearly better. Opinions online are divided, and my own preference is for the DS Lite. I spent about 15 minutes comparing both consoles with a utility that displays button inputs. Diagonal inputs felt slightly easier on the DS Lite, although its buttons also felt a little loose.

The DSi has an 840 mAh battery, the smallest capacity of these three models. The original DS has an 850 mAh battery, while the DS Lite has a much larger 1000 mAh battery.

Along the top edge are the charging port, L and R shoulder buttons, cartridge slot and strap attachment points. Unlike the earlier models, the DSi detects cartridge changes without needing to be switched off.

The bottom edge has only the headphone jack.

On the right are the stylus slot and SD card slot. The stylus is 4.5 mm longer than the DS Lite's. The console supports SDHC cards up to 32 GB, and miniSD or microSD cards can be used with an SD adapter.

The volume buttons are on the left. I find they allow finer adjustments than the DS Lite's volume slider.

On the underside are the battery compartment, serial number and regulatory text. The outer lid has a camera and a small indicator light, whose purpose I am not entirely sure about.

Open the console and you will find the new power button on the lower half, an inward-facing camera in the center, and power, charging and Wi-Fi indicators on the left. On the upper half, the most noticeable change is to the speaker grilles.

Playing Games on the DSi

With the GBA slot gone and DSiWare added, it is worth looking at which games the DSi can run and how to access them.

DS cartridge games fall into three broad categories:

• Nintendo DS games run on both DS and DSi consoles;
• DSi-enhanced games run on both, with additional features available on the DSi;
• DSi-exclusive games run only on DSi consoles.

I have three original cartridges:

• Nintendo DS - Pokemon Diamond;
• Nintendo DSi Enhanced - Pokemon White;
• Nintendo DSi Exclusive - Face Training.

To test region locking, I used an unmodified Japanese Nintendo DSi, an unmodified Chinese iQue DSi and three European cartridges.

The standard DS game, Pokémon Diamond, ran on both consoles. The DSi-enhanced game, Pokémon White, ran on the Japanese DSi but not the iQue DSi. The DSi-exclusive game, Face Training, ran on neither console.

DSiWare offered downloadable games and applications that were not sold on cartridges. These were generally smaller releases, but that did not mean they were all uninteresting. Flipnote Studio and Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! are good examples. If, like me, you want to try them, there is a problem: the DSi's download store closed on March 31, 2017, so you can no longer buy them there.

That leaves your options quite limited on an unmodified console.

This article is not a guide to modifying a DSi, but I did test what a modified console could do. Two or three years before writing this, I bought a US DSi that had already been modified. All three of my European cartridges ran on it without problems.

For me, the most interesting feature of a modified DSi is its ability to run DSiWare games. The shared .nds file extension does not mean an ordinary DS flashcart, such as an R4, can run DSi software.

Getting DSi games to appear in the system menu takes some additional setup: install Unlaunch, add hiyaCFW and configure the console to boot into hiyaCFW automatically. TMFH can then be used to make the game icons appear in hiyaCFW. That is more involved than simply copying a game to a card; I plan to demonstrate the setup in a later video review.

iQue DSi

There is also the iQue DSi, an official version of the console released for the Chinese market.

Its menus have no English option. For me, that limits its appeal to playing standard DS cartridges or using it as a console to modify.

Is It Worth Buying?

I enjoyed exploring the DSi, and it overturned several of my assumptions. I had no idea that DSiWare had offered more than 1,000 games.

I still find the original idea behind the console unconvincing. Even so, I happily spent half an hour playing with the photo effects and voice recorder.

There is one complication if you are thinking of buying a DSi: the DSi XL, with its bright, colorful IPS screens.

Choosing between a DS Lite and a DSi is not straightforward. Add the DSi XL to the comparison, though, and the standard DSi becomes much less appealing to me.