But the DS Lite’s beauty is far from skin deep. As I already mentioned, the dual screens in the original DS were pretty lacklustre, but Nintendo has addressed this issue. Not only are the screens far brighter in the DS Lite, but they look subjectively sharper, while the viewing angle is light years ahead of the older displays. The touch screen is especially impressive, considering how dull it was before, while the improvement in viewing angle is nothing short of staggering - the picture below shows how the touch screen looks like it's switched off on the old DS.
You can set four levels of brightness for the screens, with level one being roughly equivalent to the original DS. Obviously the screen brightness has an effect on battery life, but even with the brightness set to maximum, you’re still looking at around eight hours of play time – that’s more than double what you could expect from a PSP. To be honest I actually found the top setting too bright, and was very happy with level three, or even two, so I’ll probably be looking at well over 10 hours battery life - that's level three in the picture.
The buttons and controls have all undergone an overhaul as well. Despite being smaller, the D-pad on the DS Lite is far more tactile and offers far better control, especially if you’re trying to pull off something tricky. Conversely, the Y, X, A and B buttons are all slightly larger than on the original DS, but like the D-pad, there’s more travel than before, making the buttons feel more like a full size console controller.
The Start and Select buttons have been moved from above the Y, X, A and B buttons, to below them. This allegedly makes them more easily accessible, but I’m not convinced that it makes much difference either way. Finally the power button that resides above the D-pad on the original DS has gone completely on the Lite, replaced by a sliding power switch on the right hand edge – definitely a far more elegant solution.
Talking of elegance, there’s no gaping hole at the front of the DS Lite. The original DS had a large hole at the front for inserting GameBoy Advance cartridges, but it was prone to collecting dust and debris when you weren’t playing a GBA game. That’s not to say that the DS Lite can’t handle GBA cartridges because it can. It’s just that this time around Nintendo has seen fit to provide a blanker in order to stop dust ingress and make sure that the clean lines remain uninterrupted. Of course those lines are spoiled when you insert a GBA cartridge since it will protrude from the front of the case, but then I don’t find myself playing GBA games that often on my DS anyway.
