Special thanks to:
For providing the M3 Lite Perfect review sample for this review.
– Introduction –
The M3 Team is known for their high quality products, boasting of perfect GBA and NDS capabilities, and obviously a large price tag. The M3 Lite Perfect is their solution to the DS Lite, sporting a high speed, spring loaded MicroSD reader, a perfectly flush design, and of course, all the features of the older, larger, bulkier M3 flash carts. Unfortunately, all these great features come at a price, a high price, $74.99.
The M3 Lite Perfect is often compared against with the G6 Lite, another flash cart of the same company, featuring many of the same features. Both carts are often regarded as the best performing flash carts on the market, even to this day, only the M3 Lite Perfect and G6 Lite can truly claim that they have 100% support for NDS games, GBA games, as well as high compatibility with homebrew.
The M3 Lite Perfect is one of the most well known flash carts, and even today, still competes as a top contender in the market. It is often put into consideration for users seeking slot 2 flash carts, whether for independent use, or for use with a slot 1 cart
– Design –
The only way I could describe the M3 Lite Perfect packaging is by using the word cheap. The material of the box is quite cheap. The thin cardboard is definitely not suited for the rigorous damages suffering from shipping. The text on the box seems cluttered, and despite the lack of grammar mistakes, it seems that the text has been written by a person who is very unfamiliar with the English language. However, the designs on the box are quite nicely done, and I can imagine the amount of effort put into it. Either way, the box does not really matter; more importantly is what is in the box.
Not the prettiest box, but it gets the job done.
Inside the M3 Lite Perfect packaging is a CD with the instruction manual and very outdated software inside, five extra cases and of course the M3 Lite Perfect itself in a shiny black case. It seems that the M3 Team put some effort into making sure that the M3 Lite Perfect is aesthetically pleasing because these cases matches the different colors of the already released DS Lite consoles, which include, white, black, enamel blue, ice blue, pink and a white GBA sized cartridge.
As you can see, all of the cases are of high quality.
All of these cases are quite nicely done, however, the colors are slightly off for the white and the black. The M3 Lite Perfect itself is a tight fit inside a DS, however, over time, it seems the slightly soft plastic adjusts to DS Lites and eventually fit quite well. The MicroSD slot of the M3 Lite Perfect is spring loaded, and works really well.
The color doesn’t match perfectly, but it is close enough.
– Software –
The software that was bundled with the M3 Lite Perfect was way outdated, so you have to head over to their site to download the newest software.
When that has been done, I found that the software was almost exactly the same as the one used with the G6 Lite. It was easy to use, although their terrible English on their readme and instruction manuals made it hard to understand the more advanced features, I understood all the features after about five minutes of fiddling.
No matter how great the software, you can’t beat drag and drop.
The patcher is quite quick, and obviously writing to the MicroSD card doesn’t take long either. All the options were easily accessible, and overall it was a very good and easy experience. Thankfully, the freezing that occurs in the G6 Lite patcher doesn’t occur in this patcher.
– Use –
The M3 Lite Perfect requires a passme to boot, or flashme. This means that your DS has to be flashed, or you must have extra equipment to play the NDS side of the M3 Lite Perfect.
Many of the current slot 1 carts feature passme capabilities.
When turned on, the M3 Lite Perfect shows a screen telling you that it isn’t endorsed by Nintendo, then it takes about ten seconds to write the sav file. Then you get a menu showing 8 options, movie, music, picture, book, game, PDA, extend, and setup. Obviously most of these features are modified versions of Moonshell and DSOrganize, so I will not elaborate. The setup, frankly, I found quite useless, there was barely anything you could even change.
The menu isn’t very pretty.
In terms of game, you get taken to a few folders where you can locate your game with its icon. You simply click A to turn the game on.
As you can see, you can see the icons as well as the information.
Personally, I found the menu quite ugly, and I couldn’t find any means of skinning the OS. However, the menu does work well and is quite versatile as it allows you to do many things at a touch of a button.
– Functionality –
The M3 Lite Perfect is known for its perfect compatibility, and in short, I have not been disappointed by this claim. The M3 Lite Perfect truly is the ultimate cart when it comes to compatibility.
For NDS games, all games work. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that you can patch and run any game, the newest games are usually buggy and require some of the advanced options on the patcher. However, it isn’t too difficult to find this information on various websites. And of course, these games run without lag on my Kingston 1GB Made in Japan MicroSD.
The M3 Lite easily has the greatest performance of all slot 2 flash carts.
Obviously, GBA games are what most of you are probably purchasing the M3 Lite Perfect for, as your R4’s can already do NDS games perfectly. All I can say is, the M3 Lite Perfect runs all GBA games perfectly regardless of how you patch it. However, the save state can mess up a game sometimes. GBA was great to use, and overall, I can say honestly that it is one of the best options for GBA emulation.
In terms of homebrew, the M3 Lite Perfect has everything, it has the RAM that some homebrew applications utilize, as well, it has a DLDI patch. This allows the M3 Lite Perfect to run pretty much any homebrew software necessary.
– Conclusion –
Overall, it seems that the M3 Lite Perfect is a great slot 2 device, supporting all NDS and GBA games with high homebrew capabilities. It runs perfectly, it looks great, it fits great. For a cart that has been out for so long, it is impressive.
It doesn’t just look good, but it works great too.
If you want to play with NDS and GBA games, the M3 Lite Perfect is a great choice, and it has removable media. It is quite easy to use, and it has great compatibility. It comes with great looking cases, the spring-loaded MicroSD slot works great, and overall, it is just fun to play with.
However, the cost for this cart may put you off. At $74.99 without a MicroSD, it costs to play all your favorite games. However, this price is cheaper than the G6 Lite, and is easily the best option on the market. If you need to have all the features, then your only choice is the M3 Lite Perfect.
In conclusion, the M3 Lite Perfect works great, and it is a great option for anyone that needs a slot 2. The M3 Lite Perfect works great independently as well, it works great with a slot 1. If you only wish to use it for RAM and GBA, you can use cheaper quality memory cards with less memory, cutting costs down even more. In general, it is a high quality cart with a solid team behind it.
The M3 Lite Perfect is a great flash cart to have, but it is a little pricey.
– Score –
Design – 4/5
Software – 4/5
Use – 4/5
Functionality – 19/20
Tilt – 5/5
Overall – 36/40