5tags

Prior to buying the Nintendo DS lite I knew that there were a few problems with the left hinges. I thought that the people that were having trouble either played it a lot or were rough with their systems. It turns out that by just leaving the system sit on my desk the top left hinge can crack! Lately I have not been using the system but sometime between last week and today, the hinge simple cracked. I have a few photos to show the crack.

It’s really not that big of a deal but since the whole screen half is connect with this hinge, it actually is pretty important. The crack its self is hairline, I actually thought it was a stray hair. The word around the internet is that Nintendo is fixing these for free but there have been reports that customers were charged $50 to $100 for the repair. I’m not sure if Nintendo can simply repair these things or if they totally replace them but it seems like a waste of money on their part. Then again I guess they could just make a half decent product considering their main market is children.

It was reported that about 14% of DS lites had the hinge crack. The interesting this is that the system came our in June 2006 and the warranty is 12 months so there is a lot more time for new problems to appear. I would maybe say that 50% will have the problem in the warranty perioid and at least 80% will have a cracked hinge in the 2 year period.

I really like my DS lite, although I don’t really play it a lot. I pretty much just use it for the web browser and playing the odd Mario Kart game. I really hope Nintendo repairs or replaces this for me. I’d be more happy with a coupon to $150 (cost of DS lite) off the Wii though!