If you are like me...

[Kitsunexus]

...interested in the R4 cart but haven't picked one up yet, best get while the gettin's good:

http://kotaku.com/5030319/nintendo-and- ... 4-in-court

I actually don't care how this turns out now. I just read that R4 lacks SDHC support, and since I have a 4GB microSDHC lying around, I'm just going to get an M3DS.

[Teclo]

R4 isn't very good anyway. I don't know if it ever was good, but for a while now it's been outdone by M3 Real in every way. I think there was even a firmware update that screwed up peoples' DSs/DSes (how do you pluralise that?) recently.

Whenever I hear people knocking the M3 Real it's always over things that actually aren't true. They're say "But the Cylco has [insert feature here]" when the M3 Real also has that feature. The only bad thing about the M3 Real is that the menu is annoyingly slow. When you click on an icon on the main menu there's a split second lag on anything happening. When you go into the games menu there's also a general slowness and the scroll bar on the right is totally useless.

However! If you go to GBAtemp.net you can get the English version of the Sakura firmware which is a vast improvement over the default one in every way - it's way faster, totally responsive, better designed and more intuitive to use and even has better skins. It even has built in support for playing movies and you can play MP3s while using it for other functions (other than NDS ROMs, of course) such as reading comics/manga or reading ebooks (or just things written in txt files). It might sound silly but it's actually good for (a) if you put the Comicbook DS application on or (b) if you're doing something like trying to learn a language; you can rip the audio CD to the DS and put scans of the book onto the DS too (I managed to find scans for a book I already had).

Note how I keep saying M3 Real and not M3 Simply; the latter hasn't been updated in over a year.

Oh and, er, remember to only play backups of games you already own.

[Kitsunexus]

[Paranoia]

[Riseatrance]

[scy]

Newer R4s have become kind of shitty (and then there's the whole R4/N5 stupidity); the bricking of DSes is due to them releasing a firmware to purposefully brick a DS that is using an R4 that isn't made by them due to the vast amount of R4 clones/ripoffs being released. Not like E7, N5, or whatever stuff but simply people selling a copy of the R4 packaged as one. It's a stupid way to handle it I suppose but, to be honest, if you're pirating games anyway ... well ... think of it as karma.

Edit: That is, buying an R4 now means you may get one actually made by Team-R4 or you get one that looks like an R4, functions like an R4, but was made by some random guy in the back of a truck and you'll brick your DS updating the firmware in September. If you're set on buying one, go the M3 Real route.

As far as I know, both the M3 and R4 are made in the same factory and are identical in terms of core functionality, with R4 having the better firmware updates (ie, faster updates). M3 Real has the better other support but it's not much (...really just SDHC).

Neither have any issue with homebrews or anything else. Quite frankly, they're virtually identical barring the SDHC support unless I'm missing something.

[ZetaBladeX13]

[Kitsunexus]

[scy]

Like I said, if you're buying one now just get an M3 Real. Essentially, they're identical products in core functionality but the M3 Real at least doesn't have the cheap knockoffs that the R4 does that will potentially brick your DS later.

[ZetaBladeX13]

[Paranoia]