What to look for when buying a Vita

[Blankfire5]

I'm looking to buy a used vita I would like to hack it. I have few questions, what firmware version should I look for? Fat vita or slim? Any other questions you can think of? Any help would greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Advertising

[randname]

Of course you need a Vita working on system 3.60 since Henkaku only works on that, but it might be more expensive. A Vita on system 3.61/63/65/67 can only use VHBL/ARK for PSP homebrews (and other homebrews/emulators based on PSP mode exploit), no Vita native homebrews.

A slim model might be better. They got bigger select/start buttons for you to push easily, they got a micro-USB port that you don't need to use a proprietary USB cable as fat models, and they got 1GB internal storage. If you want to use SD2Vita adapter, this is fairly important: A fat model must use a proprietary Vita memory card to set up molecularShell and other plugins for you to use SD2Vita, but a slim model doesn't need that thanks to the 1GB extra space built in, so you don't need to borrow or buy a Vita memory card that you may never use anymore except setting up the Henkaku and SD2Vita.

In my opinion I don't prefer Vita TVs. You cannot take and play it anywhere since they need to be hooked up to TVs/monitors. and they got no touchscreens, cameras and motion sensors so some games are not playable on them. However if you have special requirements such as recording your gaming footage or streaming your gameplay to Youtube, etc. then it is your choice. All you need is a video capture device and you are good to go. There is still no stable video output solution for portable Vitas though there are developers working hard on it now.

A Vita from any region is OK--- EXCEPT MAINLAND China. (but Taiwan/Hong Kong models are still OK). Vitas from mainland China can only access Chinese region PSN and only allow Chinese region accounts to login. Besides, Asia models use O for confirm and X for cancel (by default), while European/America models use X for confirm and O for cancel. This can be changed by Henkaku.

Besides, it is said that models with 3G are more difficult to disassemble compared to Wifi-only version, but I am not pretty sure. If you decide to tear the Vita apart for fixing by yourself if the hardware inside goes wrong in the future, you can choose to by a Wifi-only model. All slim models got no 3G.

Advertising