Rather than hijack the recent Nintendo 3DS or 3DS XL thread, I thought it best to start my own question.

For the last 18 months my 8 year old daughter has wanted a DS. We managed to stall her last Christmas but my wife and I agreed to think about it for this Christmas. However about 3 weeks ago (before the official Apple announcement) my wife threw a swerve ball and suggested we look into an iPad mini instead (Once the pricing was confirmed).

However the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense. The iPad mini is about £100 more expensive but the DS games are more expensive. We already have a iPad 2 (which the whole family use) but we don’t really have any games for it.

I like the mini as my daughter will be able to listen to music, watch TV and films (when we allow her), read books and do other educational stuff on it. She also does some surfing on Disney and Nickeloedon websites. She won’t use the mini for email as she doesn’t have an email account or even know what email is.

So do any of your children have DS’s and iPads and how do the games compare?

If I buy the DS, I’m sure that within a year or two she would then want a tablet of some sort. I don’t want to buy a DS that is then redundant within a year or two.

I think the answer to this depends on how clumsy your daughter is – 3DS’s are pretty much indestructible, our daughters has been dropped, bashed and treated without much care over the past year and still works perfectly (and her DS before that).

iPad – would you let her loose unsupervised with your current iPad?

If you just want it for games a 3DS is fine – and you can pick up old DS games for not much cash (on ebay and Amazon). For anything more DSs are limited.

If you buy anything now – in 18 months time they’ll want something different anyway!

How long before Nintendo put games on iPads etc? Can’t see handhelds lasting long term if children want iPads etc?

I know your an ipad family but…

I’ve had a nexus 7 onloan for a week from work. My teenagers can’t put it down. Games graphics seem amazing. £110 less than an ipad mini