Since Nintendo first asserted sole domination over the handheld gaming market with the release of the paperback-sized Game Boy in 1989, the company has striven time and again to make its pocket systems smaller, meeting fantastic financial success along the way. Nintendo did it with the Game Boy Pocket, the Advance SP, the Micro, the DS Lite and again ever so slightly with the DSi -- the last even at the expense of backwards compatibility and battery life. Now, for the first time in the company's history, it's made an existing platform bigger, with questionable reasons as to why. Does the Nintendo DSi XL squash its predecessors flat? Or is Nintendo compensating for something? Find out inside.
Nintendo DSi XL review
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Gallery: Nintendo DSI XL / LL unboxing and hands-on | 64 Photos
Form
Of course, Nintendo isn't letting that heft go to waste -- every ounce contributes to the DSi XL's phenomenal design. Though practically every port, light and button from the original DSi is duplicated here in its entirety (down to the power jack -- you can use the DSi charger), Nintendo has crammed in a pair of crisp, clear 4.2-inch LCD screens with nearly double the original real estate, and further rounded the corner grips so they no longer dig into our palms during extended play. It's the comfiest DS we've held, and the most durable -- the unit barely flexes even when twisted, and closed we felt completely comfortable sitting on the thing. (Stress testing, anyone?) The only missteps are the two oh-so-dull colors available (which, knowing Nintendo, will soon see remedy), and the glossy plastic fingerprint magnet Nintendo inexplicably affixed to the top of the unit -- which developed hundreds of smudges and miniature scratches well before review time. Please don't fix what ain't broke, Nintendo; you got it right with the matte finish DSi.
Function
The one undeniable improvement in the DSi XL experience is audio quality. We're not sure what Nintendo's done to the unit's speakers other than provide larger grills, but where previous DS units provided only a sizable sound bubble, the XL's two speakers can fill an entire living room with clean audio on max volume. Believe it or not, it's the first Nintendo portable where we'd recommend against using headphones.
Wrap-up
When we were 15, we crammed our shiny new Game Boy Advance into our overloaded school backpack -- but one day we dropped it, only to hear a sickening crunch. If we could travel back in time and stick a sturdy DSi XL in there instead, we never would have had to cry over that cracked, inky black LCD screen.