But what about the accessories? At $20, is the Sony Playstation Vita Cradle a plastic rip-off, or a plastic err...non-rip-off? Find out, as usual, after the break.
At bighugenerd, we've never really gotten on with cradles, especially for phones. They're a bit of a nuisance for so many reasons: First, getting your phone into a cradle or dock is always a royal pain, and usually involves scraping up the phone's connectors or flailing blindly as you try to line your device up. Second, you shove your phone in the cradle to charge, and then you realize you forgot to check your mail, Facebook, - whatever. Then you have to jigger the device back out, do whatever it is you need to do, and then repeat the ghastly process of putting the phone back in. This is not fun. At all.
But for a game system a cradle makes a good deal more sense. We tend to use our consoles far less sporadically than our phones, so we were willing to give the Vita cradle a chance. And we're glad we did, because it's great.
Getting the Vita into the cradle is a startlingly simple affair. Yes, the connector in there looks deceptively dangerous, - like a... stabby thing!. We think you could probably do some nasty damage if you're not careful, but you'd have to be really careless. The simplicity of insertion here is because the connector doesn't hold the Vita that tight, so it just slips right onto it with no force. It's easy to line up the Vita with the cradle because you can line up the cradle's Playstation logo with the letter V on the Vita itself. And if this nerd can do it easily without looking, you can, too!
Then, you just connect your USB cable from the Vita's power cord to the back of the cradle, and you're set. And no, you won't find the cable in the box with the cradle, because Sony didn't include one. They'd much rather you spend $15 and buy another if needed (one came with your Vita system).
Round back we have that USB connector for power, and it has an audio out for speaker/headphones. You can quite happily unplug the power from the cradle and lie in bed with it on your lap, watching a movie - if that's your thing!
So What's to Like?
Simple, easy to get your Vita in and out of, smart-looking (despite being plastic), a convenient and safe place to leave your Vita when you're not using it!
So What's Not to Like?
It's really quite plastic, doesn't come with a USB cable or power cord.
Verdict:
It's hard not to like the Playstation Vita Cradle. It provides a secure way to store your Vita at night, charges the device, and looks very smart in the process. If you didn't know it was plastic..., you wouldn't know it was plastic!
We award the Sony Playstation Vita Cradle a rather sophisticated four nerds out of five!
Amazon link below!