Nintendo DSi – General Impressions

PharaohsVizier is finally a proud owner of a DSi! I’ve been saying I’d get it for some time now, but kept delaying. I seriously thought someone out there was setting everything up just to keep me away from a DSi. Now that I have one, be sure to check back often since I already have a stockpile of products to review.
Anyways, this blog article is a brief outline of what I feel are the major strengths of the DSi, and what are the faults. I will be going over things fairly briefly, as I haven’t had the chance to study the hundred-page manual religiously yet, but I have definitely had sufficient time to play with each of the little features and get acquainted with the system.

Let me begin by saying, the DSi is getting FAR too LITTLE credit. It is a console worthy of replacing the DS Lite, and quite honestly, I can’t see why people are bashing this console. It’s true that the price tag is a little higher than what I’d like to see.

The price is currently $199 CAD ($169.99 USD) compared to the DS Lite’s price-tag of $139.99 CAD (129.99 USD). While $60 CAD or $40 USD is quite a bit of money, I would most likely pay it in almost all scenarios. And you’ll find out the reasons why.

Let’s begin with the start-up screen. I was seriously worried when I saw the health and safety screen. The text isn’t sharp and crisp and I was thinking, did they decide to scale up the old screen to save 10 minutes? It looked pretty horrible. Thankfully, you tap the screen, and you are greeted with the setup. It was a pretty painful way to spend the first 5 minutes with your DSi, setting parental controls, tapping in your name, etc, but in the end you get through it, and you breathe a sigh of relief as you enter the main menu.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the commercials or the YouTube videos of how the menu works. It is a horizontal list of channels or icons, and you select it with buttons or the touch screen to enter the game or program. It is smooth, and it boots up onto the icon you last used. I feel that in terms of getting to your game cartridge, it is slightly slower than the DS Lite menu, but it seems (inferred by the 40 blank spots) that it is much more efficient in getting through a ton of applications.

Now onto the “gimmicky” features, the camera and the sound channel. I think the camera channel is quite fun. I mean it won’t replace a real camera, the quality just can’t keep up, but it works well for taking random pictures of your friends and morphing them to look like they are angry or happy. The quality of the photos isn’t great when you blow them up on computer, but on the DSi screen, they look pretty good, even when you zoom they are acceptable.

What really impressed me are the features. It has face detection and there are presets for different moods, or merging faces together. Obviously you have the scribbling and the Nintendo related frames, but I was amused by the preset moods. They bend your mouth to make it look like you are smiling or frowning and squint your eyes. They obviously look mutilated, but hilariously so.

The sound channel is also nice. Recording is definitely gimmicky, but the quality of the recorded sounds is much better than I’d expect. You can change your pitch and speed, and there’s fun in making them sound like a parakeet, but these features felt pretty tacked on. What I was happy with was actually the music player. Using AAC music wasn’t much of a problem for me, but I can imagine that it’d be annoying to convert. But once you do have it, the DSi will detect any AAC music file on your SD card and list out the folders they are located in, so you can have playlists in folders and such. For those that think, we have MoonShell, we don’t need a Nintendo music player, you are dead wrong. MoonShell pales in comparison to the DSi Sound Channel.

First we have the quality of the speakers. They aren’t amazing, but finally a Nintendo product that has decent speakers! The music actually sounds like what they are supposed to sound like. And the headphone jack isn’t bad either. This obviously helps in game as well, but I thought it would be more relevant here than anything.

The scrolling for music is pretty smooth, and all the expected buttons are there. The seek features works instantaneously and the features for the music is amazing. The visualizers are unique and original, and some of the added effects are fun (turning the song into an 8-bit track is really amusing). Even more is the ability to drum or clap along to a song. The Sound Channel performs as a solid music player, but it also adds some gimmicks that are fun for kids. Quite honestly if you are complaining about gimmicks, you don’t have to use them and the music player itself is perfectly fine and functional.

On the main menu, we also have features we all know already, haven’t delved too much into Pictochat or download play, but I assume they are the same. DSi Shop was also barely touched as I am too cheap to buy random games for now.

However, I did pick up the Nintendo DSi Browser, and I have to say I like it. It is faster than the DS Lite browser, and it is free. The controls are similar but some of the menu has changed. I can say that I won’t ever browse on this thing unless I have to, but I probably will be checking my email. Load times are acceptable to me, probably not true for everyone else, but for something that is free and mobile, it isn’t bad at all.

And finally, we have the menu for games. It boots up a game or some flash carts. I won’t comment on any flash carts at the moment, you guys can wait for the reviews.

So now that the software is out of the way, I can finally talk a little about the system itself. Let me put this simply, it is not as sleek as the DS Lite, but the DSi seems to have been designed with durability in mind.

The bullet points for hardware are, I like the matte finish, it doesn’t have a problem with fingerprints or scratches, but shows perspiration more (especially for black). I don’t like the look as much, but that is acceptable. The console may be slightly longer and wider than the DS Lite, but so little that you won’t notice until directly comparing them. The thinner profile is good for those who want to stuff the DSi into a pocket, but my hand doesn’t grip onto the console as well as the DS Lite. The buttons are a bit stiffer, and offer a nice click, giving it a more defined push. It might slow you down for snaking in Mario Kart, but lets you count the number of times you click a lot easier for turning pieces in Tetris DS. The L and R buttons are exposed at the back, making them much easier to press. I am not a fan of digital volume adjusters, but then there are people who like it. And finally the SD slot. The slot itself is great, nice strong spring, but the cover is way too short and gets in the way often. I’m hoping the plastic softens up over time, but I really hate it.

I have to devote an entire paragraph for the screens. They are fantastic. They are nice and big, and the scaling works just fine. The text in games are still crisp, the colors are great, and it can get really bright. I remember some people talking about the DS to DS Lite jump being a bigger jump than the DS Lite to DSi because the DS Lite’s screens are a huge step forward. I think I can say the same about the DSi. I can’t help but stare at some of the games because they look so much better than before. And if you are looking at pictures on the internet, they don’t do justice to the system. Go find a friend or a store with a DSi and just STARE at the screen. If you aren’t sold by then, I don’t know what will impress you.

To summarize, the DSi’s channels are gimmicky, but I found them fun. Without the gimmicks it is still a fully functional system. The photo and sound channels are both amazing. The system itself is rather good. I found the cover to the SD slot absolutely annoying, but many of the other hardware changes are great. The most notable being the large screens, I love them! And obviously we have the lack of a GBA slot. Bit of a loss for me, but I know plenty of DS users that claim to play GBA games but don’t actually use the second slot. Let’s face it, a GBA system costs $5 to buy nowadays, and I’m not even going to mention emulators and such.

Stay tuned for more posts that go into more detail about the DSi. Remember these are general first impressions, and they may change as I play with the system more over time.

DSi Photos With Effects