Nintendo DS Battery

Review by Bob Walter:

I purchased this battery for a DS (not DS Lite). It wouldn't fit when I tried to install it. After a little investigation, I found that there are two little "tabs" on the top of the battery that are supposed to match holes in the DS battery compartment. They didn't match on my unit. I cut the tabs off with a nail clipper and the battery went in and works perfectly. Hopefully, this tip will prevent some needless returns.

Review by RADEON:

OEM battery finally died and needed a cheap replacement. Yeah, it's made in China, but so is the genuine Nintendo battery! This one came in a nice fancy looking package and looks to be pretty well made. It fit perfectly and lasts as long as it should on a full charge. Can't beat it for shipped!

Review by Christine Plotner:

The description of this item stated it fit a Nintendo DS. However, when this product arrived...it will not fit a DS. Returned this item and received a full refund.

Review by A. Olsen:

Don't waste your time or money with this product. I tried to insert the battery and it didn't fit in the battery slot. I compared this battery's dimensions to the Nintendo battery. This battery is .8 mm too big to fit into the battery compartment.

Review by Amazon fan:

Positive - the screwdriver that comes with the battery fits the nintendo DS lite screw well.

Negatives -

#1 - The battery I received is a very tight fit. This is advertized on the package as "you can swap batteries in a snap". It was difficult to get the battery in, and required a small flathead screwdriver to pry it back out (the screw is a phillips, so you need to take an extra flathead with you). Not what I would call "a snap".

The original nintendo battery goes in and comes out of the battery compartment easily.

#2 - The packaging claims "up to 3 hours extra play time". I have not tested the battery because of #1, but my son has played for well over 5 hours on the original nintendo battery without requiring a recharge.

#3 - nintendo offers a replacement battery that is supposed to be the same as the one included with the ds lite for plus shipping.

Review by Dale:

Works great for normal DS, I'm not sure why my normal DS Battery stopped working, but when I couldn't power it on anymore unless if it was attached to the power cord I decided to try this out. These batteries work great. You have to have a really really small screwdriver to change the battery out. The kind for glasses and small jewelery.

Review by Pyanfar Chanur:

I've had my DS Lite since the unit was released, and my daughter and I have logged many hours on it. When it stopped holding a charge, I realized that I really didn't want to have to replace the whole unit--I like the GameBoy Advance slot in the front, and the new body style doesn't have this.

Enter the perfect, cheap, renewable energy source: this replacement battery pack. For just a few dollars, we're back on our feet and playing away. It arrived simply packaged, with the tiny tool for undoing the screw on the DS Lite's battery panel, and within about 2 minutes we were done and on the charger.

A great way to bring your DS back from the dead.

Review by Pilchard:

We have had a DS Lite for a while, and recently it stopped holding a charge. This battery seemed like a reasonable solution to our problem. It installed easily, shipped promptly, and holds charge without any problem.

If you need a replacement battery for a DS Lite you won't be unhappy with this purchase. It comes with a small screwdriver to help remove and reseal the battery cover. The entire process took only a minute or two and the DS Lite was back up and running.

This battery looks very similar to the old DS Lite battery, but had more English writing on it.

Review by M. Zietlow:

Fits right in your DS and charges in a couple hours. I plugged these batteries into a LiPo analyzer and they can only hold 750mah, not 1600mah as listed. And even then I could only get a couple hours of playtime out of it. ... Take my advise and spend the extra 10 the legitimate 1000mAh battery from Nintendo.

Review by Dreamwinder:

This battery was/is advertised as a 1600 mAH battery. If you don't know, that number indicates the capacity of the battery when new. (The original DS Lite battery is 1000 mAH) I bought this assuming that I was getting a battery with over 1.5 times the capacity of the original. What I got in the mail was an 850 mAH battery. Nearly half the capacity of what was advertised! Some people have reported to have gotten a 1600 mAH battery, so I'd say this: If you want a higher capacity battery, or just a new one, only get this if you're willing to chance having to return it.

Review by D. Mackrell:

I bought this battery charger for my 10 day trip to Scotland, and it does work very well. 2 complete recharges from 4 Radio Shack brand AA batteries. The only hindrance to this unit is that it's modular. Instead of making the device with one durable wire from the charger to the DS Lite, it has a break in the wire to attach another smaller wire that connects to the DS. This obviously is to make it adaptable for multiple systems via different adapters and to cut manufacturing costs. So if this charger is for a younger child who has a knack for misplacing or loosing smaller parts, you may want to hang onto the charger during long trips - because without the adapter, the charger is useless. It's a shame that this handy device was short changed by the adapter. Cut corners by Gomadic are why I give the DS Lite Battery Charger 4 out of 5 stars.

Review by Samuel Rasquero:

Picked this up for a trip where the flight time (including layovers)was 18 hours. The pack works fine, you can play and charge at the same time, or just charge when not playing.

Just like a normal AC adapter.

Didn't have any problems with the tip. If you're worried about loosing it. A piece of electric tape will solve that problem.

Review by Brian:

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 myself playing a game for about 3 hours. Wireless was off, brightness was at level 3, DS Download Play, and 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 went fully charged. Here's the stranger part. Closing the lid (putting it to Sleep Mode) actually drained 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 in the room I was playing in. 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 "Compatible with DSi". 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, then it should work with the DSi as well".

I'm not upset at the seller because it's not their fault. Dragon-electronics is the battery manufactuer's 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. I hope my battery was an isolated case or maybe I got a bad battery. I won't deny that but I also won't get another battery to see if the new one will work. 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 companies would have made "DSi only" batteries yet. I've looked on eBay and other sites and I can't find any. Plenty of "DS Lite" batteries though lol.

Just wait till March 28th, 2010 when the DSi XL comes out. I hope the battery life really does improve...

Review by J. Leon:

I was hoping this battery would have more capacity than the stock DSi battery. It claims longer battery life in its website vs the stock battery. It is not. Both the stock and this have have a rating of 3Whr, yet the Dragon has a 1800mAHr rating and the stock battery has a 840mAHr. It is impossible for this battery to have 1800mAHr if you do the math. It didn't provide any more battery life than the stock battery. Very dissapointing.