Well, Game Crazy has probably seen more of my money in the past two weeks than it has in the past year. There's just something about sales that make my brain OK with having diarrhea of the wallet. Anyhow, our local store is actually shutting down tomorrow with remaining stock going to other stores. They had six or so XL's left so I decided to bite on the 30% discount. Ended up about 145 after tax. I really struggled with whether or not I wanted to bite, considering I've got a DS Lite and have been pretty happy with it. Beth's been really wanting to play the Layton games though, and I didn't want to fight with her over the DS. Plus the large size really intrigued me. On the other hand a new DS system is looming, and the XL price actually dropped recently in Japan. In the end though I decided to bite.
HOLY CRAP guys, it's like night and day. There's a lot more real estate on these screens than you initially think. You can see detail in new games you didn't notice before. In my experience, every game I've played upscales rather well and the graphics suffer little if any. The unit itself is very substantial in feel.
I know the regular DSi had a larger screen than the Lite, and I don't know if I'd really see the point in upgrading a DSi to an XL, but for someone who just had a Lite I'm finding it was a rather worthy purchase.