Nintendo 3DS battery mediocre

We've gotten quite used to our handheld devices giving us some long life these days, unfortunately this is not the case for the Nintendo 3DS according to Opposable Thumbs. Opposing Thumbs has been having a hard time hitting the upper limit even with certain settings either lowered or completely off in the case of WiFi.

With the screen at a reasonable brightness, 3D and wireless turned off when the game allowed it, and no sound, we were about to get to a little over 4.5 hours of playtime. If you like a brighter screen, keep 3D turned on, or if you have that speaker going, that time is only going to go down. No matter what you do, there doesn't seem to be a way to get more than five hours of battery life if you're playing 3DS games. If you're playing older DS games the estimated battery life is five to eight hours, but we haven't tested that yet.

Even though Nintendo announced a 3-5 hour battery life, it appears that the five hours is a stretch. Good thing 3rd party power accessories like the Nyko Power Pak and Nyko Charge Base are coming out.