People, just get a DSi XL. Supercomfortable grip, no breaking/cracking issues, nice stereo sound, some of the most beautiful LCDs i've seen on an handheld (true to life bright colors and no vertical/horizontal shift to speak of, almost like an IPS lcd).
Doing circles around that muddy mess of grayed out color blerbs that are DS games upscaled to 3DS screens. Stop deluding yourselves into thinking DS games on 3DS can be "great". They're just ok.
I concede you can use your 3DS XL for SOME ds games that benefits from the analog stick. Your thumb can sure hurt while playing Mario 64 on the d-pad. You know what, just buy a legit Mario 64 cartridge and update your 3DS to your likings. And play every other game on a DSi XL.
Btw you can safely ignore any non-XL console. There may be minor advantages here and there (btw AUDIO is not one: true the original 3DS is a bit louder than the XL, but it's also more metallic/tinny, overall worse to me), but the loss of EPICNESS is that bad. There's no going back to non-XL.
DSi XL and 3DS XL is where it's at. The rest is collectionism. If you're considering the DS Lite for the ADDED bonus of playing GBA games, just find another way to play GBA games. Stop trying to find a "one size fits all" solution when you have other inexpensive alternatives.