Joysticks and button controls feel like new. There are no visible scratches or cracks. The condition is perfect! The OLED screen colors are beautiful. Everything works great.
I used to have this system (this 1000 Model in black PS Vita, just the North America version) from 2012 - 2014 and was nice to try it again! Luckily it is not region locked the vita so I can run NA games and apps on it as well as the USB cable will work here. There are third-party sellers who are much more affordable here compared in the west, and besides a bit of burn-in on the edges of the OLED screen, it was in mint condition which is great.
The PS Store is still up, but many games have been now discontinued from sale (including the entirety of the PS Mobile and Movies/TV sections). But what is still available is much more affordable compared to there physical NA game carts. You will also need to add funds by using a gift card or from the website, due to safety reasons removed adding funds directly from the system in any way.
The official system content transfer tool also no longer works (the installer at least), since it cant get the necessary files from the internet.
The product was advertised as new but based on other reviews I knew it would be a used console. The box contained Japanese literature, the charger is obviously used but the system although used came in mint condition with zero marks or scratches. I did have to clean out some of the previous owners software by resetting to factory settings and had to google how to set language to English as it was all in Japanese. Been using for a couple of weeks now and it’s working great! Zero complaints.
This thing is a beauty. It's weight is a comfortable kind of heavy. The screen is phenomenal. Frankly I'm disappointed I hadn't bought it sooner. The red is drop dead gorgeous. It complements the blue of the home button perfectly. If you're thinking of buying, go with new. Oh. And invest in memory cards.
If you're an import gamer then this beautiful Vita should be a great fit. It is region free (as are all Vitas), so you it will work with both US and Japanese cartridges. The only catch is that your user profile and memory card are tied to a single region's PSN store, so switching regions means reformatting the unit and then logging in with an account tied to the PSN store for the region you want to switch to. There are some good tutorials on line to walk you through creating a Japanese PSN account even if you can't read the language.
I picked this up as a second Vita in order to keep from wiping my downloadable content from the Japanese PSN store when changing regions. There is a lot of great download-only DLC, including remastered PSP games that were never released outside of Japan that I've finally been able to play.
The unit itself is the same high quality hardware as the unit sold in the US, with the only difference being the system info on the back of the case is in kanji. The color is a great metal-fleck blue. The system boots up in Japanese, but you can easily change the system language under the system settings. This won't change the language of your game if it hasn't been localized, but you will be able to use the built in apps in your language of choice.