Dance Dance Pads

B. Carbajal
December 27th, 2009 - 09:41

I brought this battery in the hopes that with a high mAh output such as this, I would expect to have very high battery life for my DSi. That was my intention. Well when I got it, I did the usual letting the battery drain all the way and charge it back up to full. Oddly, that didn’t last long. So my first exposure with the battery went as follows:

First keep in mind. Yes, I do have a Flash Card device. I already know that the device drains more battery than being in the native mode of the DSi. I timed playing a game for about 3 hours. Wireless was off, brightness was at level 3, DS Download Play, Soft Reset all off. Anything that would drain the battery more. Well as it turns out, that’s how long the first round of this battery fully charged went. Here’s the stranger part. Closing the lid (putting it to Sleep Mode) actually drained even MORE battery than playing it!

I’m honestly not exaggerating…the second the LED of the power light went to red, I had about 20 seconds more of gameplay until it blinked and then after 3 blinks…it died.

My second attempt wasn’t much better either. I then played with a game that I did own (Pokemon Platinum) and just went around and leveled up and caught pokemon blah blah. This time I had the brightness at 1 since it was dark while I was playing. My timing on that was about 3 hours again only this time I had gone back the DSi menu and I had two bars of battery left. A few minutes later, it became red…just simply being in the DSi main menu.

After I was done testing everything, I took the battery out and looked at it more and then I noticed something about this battery. Right there are the words “DSi Compatible”. Doesn’t sound like a big deal right? Well, what bugs me is why does it say “compatible”? Isn’t this battery MADE for the DSi? I mean it fits perfectly with no struggle. Is there another mobile device out there that has this same battery type and form and then these guys just market it as “oh, it should work with the DSi then”.

I’m not upset at the seller because it’s not their fault. Dragon-electronics is their main website. Just google it.

Scroll a bit down and there you will see that same battery in the same packaging as I got it. So in conclusion, despite the labeling and supposed 1800mAh, it actually made gameplay worse and it didn’t last long at all. Back to the stock 840mAh for my DSi…cuz at least it was MADE for the system. I don’t recommend buying this battery but to stick with the stock battery the DSi comes with. Nine months since it’s release and you’d think some third party batteries would have been released yet. Just wait till March 10th, 2010 when the DSi XL comes out…
Rating: 1 / 5