Topic: Is the PS Vita a solid piece of hardware?

Interested in knowing what people think. Is the Vita solid. If playstation came out and said this is the only version there will ever be of the Vita. Would you say fine or would you be like the nintendo fans and wait for a redesign.

I'v not had a chance to try a Vita yet, waiting for the release on saturday. I'm sold on the fact that it's a great piece of hardware but what say you?

The only change I'd like to see is for it to have a replaceable battery. 

I'd like to see them rip the cartridge cover off and leave it off. That thing is a pain to get open, not to mention having to insert the game carts so far down into the slot to get them to click into place. Other than that, it's rock solid.

It's a pity it's only a 5 hour battery charge but when you see what it has to do you can't blame it. It puts 3ds to shame. That only has what again nearly 3 hours. I think the cost on memory is a bit of a pain. You can buy a terribite hard drive for cheaper than a 32gb stick. Wonder how long it takes for secondary partners to produce new and cheaper ones.

Actually the battery is around 3 hours on the Vita if you're playing games like Uncharted without headphones. Drop the brightness down a bit and pop on a pair of headphones and you'll add an extra hour to it though.

(Like usual) The release of the Vita is coming and now I'm not sure if I should get it at launch. There are like 4 games I want for it but still...

Very solid indeed. I owned the PSP 1000 and later purchased a PSP 2000; the difference in quality is obvious by weight and design. I suspect that a re-model for the Vita will be similar, since the internal improvements become cheaper as the years go along. That same thing happened with the original Xbox 360 model; nearly five different motherboard revisions were cheaper for them to make each individual console, along with efficient construction.

Haha, this thread title really threw me off. I thought this was gonna be a discussion of how durable the Vita is to dropping or scratches or whatever. (Hopefully, pretty durable.)

Anyway, I think the hardware is beautiful! However I'm definitely hoping that an eventual redesign (looking at the PSP line, perhaps a year or two in?) is substantially smaller. My tiny baby hands simply can't hold the Vita at all! And I usually get systems about a year or two in anyway.

By the way, like Slapshot said the Vita battery can drop to 3 hours if you have high brightness + loud volume + intense game, same as 3DS drops to 3 hours with highest brightness + max 3D. Normal play my 3DS seems around 7 hours so I reckon Vita/3DS batteries are about equally matched (both mediocre).

@WWWW you get 7 hrs out of the 3DS?! I haven't experienced that long of battery life with tr stock battery. However, thanks to the Nyko power grip my 3DS can last a long time.

I'd say they will end up doing something similar to PSP with upgraded hardware. A longer lasting battery would be idle. I hope i never hear the sentence" And now you can play games in 3D on your Vita" Don't do that to us Sony.

Haha, well it's very possible for stereophonic 3D incorporated into future models. Look at the ps3; 3D is a big feature for their first party games, along with the ps2 HD remasters.

@cyphid: Power saving mode + lowest possible brightness + avoid using the touch screen as much as humanly possible = more battery life than you might expect.

@MitchConcannon: Haha maybe it wouldn't be too out of left field considering the existence of 3D PS3 games but I think it would be pretty dumb. 3D on a touchscreen is no good and the battery life would end up being like 30 minutes...

I was thinking yesterday I would like a PSP Go-esque Vita but the rear touchscreen wouldn't work out, would it?

@WWWW I see, I don't think I'd play with such a low brightness!

I think one of the selling points for Vita for myself is the 5" OLED screen; anything smaller wouldn't suffice. A PSP go-esque Vita seems redundant; the Vita already allows you to play PSP games. The card based games were possibly the smartest move by Sony since the UMD was so flawed.