I bought a 3DS XL sometimes last year. It was under $200.
After seeing the surge in demand, I feel lucky that I bought it when I did. I also decided to take it out and play some animal crossing new leaf for the first time and I’m really enjoying it.
I sometimes wonder if I should have bought the “new” variant back then, but they were much more expensive and I’m still not sure if the performance improvements would have been worth it.
I’m basically just using not for ds and 3ds games, so, I’m guessing the power difference would not really matter.
DS, DS Lite, and DSi/DSi XL for the DS line. DS was the original model, then they made it more pocketable with the Lite, and the DSi had the ability to download software, the XL was a bigger version of that. 3DS has completely different hardware, including glasses-less 3D functionality. There was the 3DS, the larger 3DS XL, the 2DS which was cheaper by stripping out the 3D functionality, then the New 3DS, New 3DS XL, and New 2DS, which had slightly better specs and better hardware, including a second analog stick (more like a nub).