From a person who owned both 1000 and 2000 Vita at the same time, OLED is overrated as fuck and the 2000 is better in every other way, and vastly superior overall.
"Should" probably wasn't the right word to use, but I wouldn't settle for a weaker alternative that Sony has clearly stopped supporting.
This. The Vita-2000 is a much better model. There's the thinner, more modern design, where the white/black screen bezel and coloured back remind me of what Apple did with the iPod Touch. There's also Micro USB and the screen is covered with oleophobic glass rather than cheap, scratch-prone plastic. So fingerprints rub off really easily from a shirt hem, rather than sticking around forever like they did on my launch day Vita. And battery life sees a huge boost: I easily get 6 or more hours out of less visually intensive games, like Tales of Hearts R and Danganronpa.
And of course, the LCD panel in the Vita-2000 is just better, just by nature of it being a 2013 panel whereas Vita-1000 used an OLED display that is distinctly second gen, from 2011. Here's an argument I made in its case from another thread:
OLED tech has come a long way since Vita's second gen Super AMOLED Plus panel, which is equivalent to what was in the Galaxy S II, so oversaturated colours, an inaccurate white point (whites look like blues), screen grain/Mura and burn-in. The OLEDs of today, like in the Galaxy Note 4, have caught up with LCDs where they fell behind before, but the one in Vita-1000 just isn't great by today's standards and is certainly a first/second generation product.
Here's a quantitative analysis of the Vita-1000 display, you can see it doesn't produce natural colours, has a white point that's completely off the charts and very low brightness of 117 nits. Today's smartphones hover around 600 nits. Bear in mind that that display review was from 2012, and things have moved on even further since then. What was once an impressive display just isn't anymore.
By comparison Vita-2000's LCD display produces much more accurate colours (a subjective comparison with my iPhone 5s shows they are very similar, the the iPhone 5s display is well calibrated), very good viewing angles and it's brighter outdoors. My only criticism with it is that the backlighting is uneven along the bottom, which is noticeable when the screen's displaying white colours. Also, it would be nice if Sony bonded the glass with the screen itself, something I wish Nintendo did with the New 3DS XL (which itself has a much improved screen over the old 3DS XL)
Of course, whether you'll miss the OLED display of the original depends on whether you prefer oversaturated colours to natural ones. I prefer seeing my games as designers intended them, so I really like the Vita-2000's display.
The colour difference isn't down to whether it's OLED or LCD at all, rather it's down to Sony calibrating Vita-2000's display better. It would be nice if Sony pushed out an update that allowed us to choose colour calibration for the original model. Nokia did the same for their Lumia smartphones -- I had a Lumia 820 and while its OLED display shipped with oversaturated colours, an update allowed me to select a calibration setting that made it display natural colours.
For further reading, check out this
DisplayMate article on how OLED display tech had evolved between the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy S4, comparing both with the (at the time in 2012) best-in-class LCD of the iPhone 5. Note that the Galaxy S III's OLED is a generation ahead of Vita-1000's.
"The Galaxy S4 continues the rapid and impressive improvement in OLED displays and technology. The first notable OLED Smartphone, the Google Nexus One, came in decidedly last place in our 2010 Smartphone Display Shoot-Out. In a span of just three years OLED display technology is now challenging the performance of the best LCDs. Each have their own particular strengths and weaknesses, but if you scan our color coordinated Comparison Table, both displays and technologies perform quite well and look quite good and comparable overall – we’ll see how they both evolve and improve in the next generation, which we consider next…"
