Nintendo DS's mid-life facelift

LIGHT, white, and the screen's very bright. That sums up the differences between the new Nintendo DS Lite handheld games console and its older sibling, the DS, which launched here early last year.

Nintendo probably got tired of reading about the brightness and crispness of the screen on the rival Sony PSP console and remodelled its flagship handheld with more candle power. The Lite's screens are the same size and resolution (256 by 192 pixel) and have the standard DS's 260,000 colours, but they now have four brightness settings, ranging from dim to incandescent. The standard model has two: dim and dimmer.

The bump in brightness transforms the look of DS games, especially my favourite DS title of the moment, Metroid Prime Hunters, a first-person shooter.

It pushes the DS's graphics capabilities harder than most titles and looks terrific on the Lite, with far more vivid colour livening up the cut scenes and making game-play more immersive. Sometimes it's almost too good, with pixelation made apparent by the greater clarity.

Nintendo trimmed the weight of the DS from 275g to 218g on the Lite. The new model's dimensions have been reduced by a third.

Instead of battleship grey, the Lite comes in iPod-like polar white.

The problem of losing styluses when they dropped out of the none-too-secure hole on top of the unit appears to have been fixed with a beefier stylus slotting into a snugger slot in the side.

The control layout has been altered with the Start and Select buttons moving from the top of the lower shell to the bottom right.

The on-off button has gone from the top to the right side's lower shell.

A removable cover sits in the slot for Game Boy Advance cartridges, which stick out further on the Lite than on the standard model.

The old model's nifty wrist strap has been left out of the Lite box.