Nintendo 3DS Battery Is Quick To Die and Slow To Charge

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Opposable Thumbs blog: "The battery in the Nintendo 3DS is as bad as we had feared, and it's a major impediment to enjoying the system. ... With the screen at a reasonable brightness, 3D and wireless turned off when the game allowed it, and no sound, we were about to get to a little over 4.5 hours of playtime. If you like a brighter screen, keep 3D turned on, or if you have that speaker going, that time is only going to go down. ... Using the cradle whenever the system isn't being played is a habit you're going to want to pick up, especially with a charging time of around three and a half hours."

Slim, slow, long lasting, powerful

[Shikaku]

Pick 2 for handhelds: Slim, slow, long lasting, powerful, large.

Won't bother me personally.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

4.5 hours is still about 4 times what I get on my laptop, and twice what I get on my PSP.
Not to mention I'm a loser and have access to electrical outlets almost 24/7

Sad

[llZENll]

You know kids are spoiled when they have a mobile gaming system that is 3D and think that 4.5 hours of battery is short! It's also a testament to Nintendo's games and system when 4.5 hours can be over before you know it. That is a long time. Seriously, if 4.5 hours of battery is the biggest complaint they have about this system I have no idea why this is front page news, the battery looks like you can just pop in a new one so what is the big deal?

Nintendo 3DS Battery

[prakslash]

To be sure, it isn't the battery that is "bad".
It is the same Li-ion rechargeable battery used in prior systems.
It even has more capacity: 1300 mAh. This is about 50% more than the 850 mAh battery used in DSi and 30% more than the 1000mAh batteries used in DsiXL and DSLite.

The problem, as the Republicans in the US often say, is spending. With the brighter screens necessary for 3D, wi-fi and better video and sound support, the thing will suck juice like a mutha.
The other option for Nintendo would have been to tack on a laptop style battery which wouldn't work for a portable game system.

Re:Slim, slow, long lasting, powerful

[jayme0227]

How about never try again for a first post?

Re:Sad

[SethThresher]

On top of that, this assumes that you have someone who would regularly sit down and play this 3DS, uninterrupted, for over 4 and a half hours. FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. For an adult like most of us here, at that point you're probably shirking some responsibility, not to mention eating, etc. For a teenager, when was the last time any teen had that much uninterrupted time free of homework, school, chores, sports, clubs, and all that crazy stuff? For a child, just for starters kids are advised to have, at a maximum, no more than 2 hours of screentime a day. And really, how many attentive and effective parents would allow their kid to veg out for that long? Sure, we have the irresponsible, the lazy, etc, but that's not what this is meant for. Yes, 4.5 hours is a heck of a lot shorter than the 12+ I get from my DS Lite with the brightness turned down and the WiFi off, but I'm not going to sit there and use it in one sitting. You will have outliers and extenuating circumstances, long car rides/flights included, but if you know you're going to be in a situation like that, you can probably plan for better than one form of entertainment for that long.

Yes, Nintendo can try and engineer a fix for someone who wants to play gameboy for 6 hours straight, but should they? 4.5 is perfectly usable for normal use. Just get in the habit of plugging it in to charge when you're done playing.