How Long Does the Nintendo 3DS XL Battery Last?

By
Nadia Oxford
Nadia Oxford
Writer
  • William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute
Nadia Oxford is a former Lifewire writer with 10+ years' experience. Her articles have appeared in Pocket Games Magazine, Play Magazine, Game Pro, IGN and others.
lifewire's editorial guidelines
Updated on January 6, 2020

According to Nintendo, the battery for the Nintendo 3DS XL should last around 3.5 to 6.5 hours. This is an improvement over the Nintendo 3DS’s battery life of 3 to 5 hours.

As is the case with most modern devices powered by a lithium-ion battery, you can’t really set a stopwatch to count down how much juice you have left in your Nintendo 3DS XL before your gadget blinks out. That said, the Nintendo 3DS XL is definitely engineered with a longer-lasting battery than its predecessor.

Lifewire / Bailey Mariner

How to Make the 3DS XL Battery Last Longer

If you manage your energy carefully, you should be able to avoid ever seeing that dreaded red light when you’re miles from your charger.

The simplest tip for any device to last longer is to disable features that use more system resources. The more resources used the more power that's required and consumed.

There are several things you can do to stretch out your Nintendo 3DS XL’s battery life:

    • Play without 3D enabled. Since the device has to build and display two distinct images at the same time, all the while using the camera to track your eyes, it's no wonder that disabling it saves on battery usage.
      Adjust the screen brightness according to your environment. Lowering the brightness to a tolerable level, if you can manage, will have a drastic effect on the battery life.
      You can even enable power-saving mode to automatically adjust brightness and color on the 3DS XL. 
    • Turn off Wi-Fi to stop the 3DS XL from reaching out to a wireless access point. Like most things, this uses more system resources, all of which require a battery to run. Wi-Fi is only necessary for doing things that need the internet, like downloading updates, playing multiple games, and using StreetPass.
      Disabling Wi-Fi on your Nintendo 3DS XL can be done from the Settings. Toggle the Wireless Communication option to the off position.
  • On that note, disable the sound on your Nintendo 3DS XL to prevent those components from overworking the battery. This might not have a huge effect on battery life but it's worth a shot.

You can also play your Nintendo 3DS XL while it’s plugged into its AC adapter, though doing so lengthens the device’s charge time by quite a bit.

Was this page helpful?