I’ve enjoyed owning a Nintendo 3DS. It’s a great portable system. It’s not feature-rich or very powerful, but sometimes those characteristics aren’t enough to make a great system (or necessary). With the 3DS it boils down to how the whole package comes together and the types of games available for it. In my case, I still enjoy many of the classic Nintendo series so this was my portable gaming system of choice.

None of my gaming systems, including the 3DS, are played on a regular basis for various reasons. However, since it’s portable I’ll often carry the system around if for no other reason than to use the StreetPass capabilities.

The original 3DS was a great system but I decided that it was finally time to upgrade to the 3DS XL with its larger screens. This wasn’t my original plan. I was quite happy with the 3DS, but I received an Amazon.com gift card of $100, which easily covered half of the cost of the system.

Overall, there isn’t much of a big difference between the two systems except for the screen sizes. However, if one has a chance to move to the 3DS XL then I highly recommend it simply for this feature. I’ve never had problems with the 3-D features of the Nintendo 3DS, but having larger screens is a more enjoyable experience.

My only complaint about the 3DS XL is its battery life. However, it’s actually an improvement over the 3DS factory battery. I’ve become spoiled with the battery life of my old 3DS because I had replaced the battery with an extended one that, when new, could easily power the 3DS in stand-by for an entire week without losing half of the charge. This is not the case with the 3DS XL and, unfortunately, I have yet to find a replacement battery that I consider affordable (at least one does exist, but at about half the cost of the system itself it’s just too expensive, in my opinion).

This is a fun purchase that I’ve already enjoyed considerably. Perhaps in the near future the cost of an extended battery will drop dramatically. Until then, I’ll just have to remember to charge the 3DS XL more frequently than I did the 3DS (due to the extended battery the system almost never ran out of power before I got around to recharging it).

All of my information from the original 3DS was transferred over to the new 3DS XL using the software provided by Nintendo. The only issue I had, which I knew would be a problem, was that the 3DS XL I purchased came with a copy of Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. As a result of the transfer that game was lost. I already owned a copy of the game, which I had previously purchased via the Nintendo eShop, so it wasn’t a terrible loss as I could have used only one copy anyway.