Can the 3DS Serve as a General Entertainment Device?

The 3DS has been the king of portable gaming for several years at this point, but it's also gotten apps for Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and has an included app for music. I decided it would be fun to test these apps out and see if the 3DS might secretly be a good device for more than just gaming.

Let's start with the music player:

The music player app will automatically search for MP3 and AAC files on your SD card. While listening to songs, you can have different backgrounds display on the top screen, some of which can be interacted with by pressing the "L" and "R" buttons. You can also change the speed and pitch of songs, which can be fun for a few minutes.

I was a little bit disappointed with the sound quality, which even through headphones is worse than the average smartphone. Not much worse, but it's noticeable when doing a comparison. The music player is passable, but modern smartphones will do the job better.

The Hulu app and the Netflix app are about equal in terms of quality, so I'll talk about both in the same section:

These apps are messy. They're incredibly bare-bones to the point that they almost can't be classified as functional. I can guarantee that the Netflix app worked much better when it first came out, and I suspect the same is true for the Hulu app as well.

There is no support for profiles, meaning the default profile is what you're stuck with if you have multiple on your account. And as annoying as that is, once you start a show or movie, you might not be able pause or rewind it. That's if you can muster the patience to navigate the app to find something to watch, as the interface is incredibly slow, and Netflix can take over a minute to process what you're wanting to watch.

Again, most of these complaints apply to both of the apps, which have likely become obsolete over the years due to changes in how Netflix and Hulu run.

Finally we have the YouTube app, which is by far the most recent:

The YouTube app is the very definition of functional. It plays videos, and anything else is a giant question mark. It's slow, horrible quality in terms of video and audio, and it doesn't support livestreams, which is a shame.

Like I said, the YouTube app is functional, but I can't think of a worse option.

Conclusion:

The 3DS is a great gaming device, but it's not a smartphone. If you expect the 3DS to function as more than a great gaming device and a subpar internet browser, you're going to be disappointed.