-Great screen quality and color
-Easy to hold for little hands
-Straightforward and colorful keypad and control buttons
-Good sound quality
-Download content (with SD card not provided) and follow each readers progress at the simple to navigate "Learning Lodge Navigator" (Download Center)
-Excellent for preschool and kindergarten age students who aren't ready for a Kindle or iPad.
-The color is perfect for girls, and comes in blue for both girls and boys
-Excellent for my ELL (English Language Learners)
-Excellent for my "under-motivated" 2nd graders who love the ability to have the story read to them as well as the follow-up comprehension activities.
-Writing practice is great, works well with fingers or best with the V.Reader pen that tucks right into the unit.
-Headphone capable, which is great on long car rides & classrooms
-Progress screen for parents lays out choices from language development, to reading, math, the sciences, and critical thinking.
-Makes recommendations based on progress.
-At the download center you can search by age group/level and stories are very reasonably prices.
CONs
-Doesn't come with SD card. Yes, you can purchase the vetch card for about $12 dollars, or simply use a camera SD card; but you can't download content until you do have one, as the internal memory is limited.
-Download content is very limited (Sesame Street mostly). Need to bring authors/publishers into the fold.
-Should come with content, nothing worse than not having a storybook to load right away.
-Batteries work fine; but don't last. Would be nice to have an adaptor included.
-Early usage: screen is holding up very well; but outside cover scuffed up right out of the box.
-Directions are hard to follow/read.
-Storybook cartridges are rather expensive ($17 to 20 dollars) per story.
-When you add up the SD card, 9v adapter, carry backpack, storybooks, this $60 e-book reader quickly goes into the hundreds.
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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program My five-year-old loved this toy! It has a surprisingly reactive touch-screen pad at the top, which both of my kids (5 & 7) liked. Although it's an e-reader, and you need to download content from the internet, there's quite a bit you can do with it without an internet connection:the writing app presents a word, shows how to draw the letters, and invites you to trace the letters. As it turns out, there's a little stylus included, but it took us a little while to find it my daughter actually played with it for quite a while just using her fingers to trace the letters.
there's a coloring application that lets you touch and fill in the colors. Not exactly a learning app, but it keeps the kids entertained.
I'm not a big believer in "learning toys", but after playing with it for 30 minutes, my 5-year-old wrote "apple" on a piece of paper I was very impressed.
Setup for the online content was a bit of a hassle, though. First, the device doesn't have any permanent storage of its own, so you need a mini SD card (not included) before you can download anything. Then, of course, you have to download a program to run on the computer that will synch up the e-books (rather
than just simply letting you copy directly onto the SD card). AND I needed to download a new version of flash player once I got the "learning lodge navigator" installed! This whole process took me about 30 minutes even with a fast internet connection.
Once I finally got on, though, everything worked correctly. It took me a while to find the "free" e-books, but I was able to find and download three free e-books (little red riding hood, jack and the beanstalk, and the princess and the pea). My daughter enjoyed the books enough that I'll probably go ahead and buy some of the premium ones.
There wasn't that much content online (even for pay), though; they're really trying to sell you the more expensive book cartridges. Still, this is definitely a great toy for a 5-year-old.
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Ok,I really thought this was cute and would be perfect for my 4 year old daughter.She always played with it on display in the stores. We bought this item first from Costco because it was a bundle deal. We put brand new batteries in it and it would never power on. I tried over and over, removing and replacing..nothing. So, needless to say, I returned to Costco. They were sold out, so I went to toysrus. I purchased, put batteries in before leaving the store. It went on. Went home, played with it for about 10 minutes before feeling as if we had seen pretty much all it had to offer. I downloaded the free stuff that it came with, and had two other purchased games for it. It appeared to only have a few things to do per 'game' purchased and we discovered that it could get old, really fast! We turned it off. When we went to turn it back on, it wouldn't power on. The only way to get it back on was to remove the batteries and replace them again. I had to do this 3 times. Brand new batteries. Once it was back on my daughter and I looked at it together. She is 4 years old. She does not know how to read yet..It turns out that the games we have will read to you, which is great. But to play the few other options the game catrige had to offer, she needed to be able to read. It required her to be able to find a specific word in the paragraph etc. This would be cool for an older child who can READ already. Even so, if she knew how to read, I felt it was going to get boring very fast for her. She was frustrated as she couldn't 'play the games' because they were too hard (for her, she can't read) so I decided with the powering on issues I've had so far (with both units) and the fact that we had seen all it had to offer in like 10 minutes, at the most..and the fact that she can't read yet, I decided to take it back to toysrus..THE VERY NEXT DAY. LESS THAN 24 HOURS LATER..IN TACT, WITH MY RECEIPT!Toysrus told me I could not return the item because I had opened it! Well, how the heck do you see if it works or if it's something you can USE if you don't open the box? Mind you this is the very next day, with receipt, the box, everything! Even the little clear screen protectors that were on it! They said I could only go get another one of the exact same thing..umm, no! I don't want this item..my daughter can't use it! I had to throw a fit, as I was panicking that I had just wasted $60 on this, and I"m not a rich woman. I can't afford to just take the loss. Especially less than 24 hours later! The manager made an exception 'just this once' and they tried telling me all retail outlets were the same with this policy. Nope. I told them I didn't think Target had that policy.. I checked, AND THEY DON'T! They said they'd never heard of such a thing. I wanted to exchange that day for another product, the leappad. I did not out of fear I'd get STUCK if for some unforseen reason we didn't want it. I just didn't feel comfortable with the 'stuck with it' policy. I purchased leappad and let me tell you.. WE LOOOVE THIS THING! It takes pictures, videos, has a much better narrator to help navigate your little one, with very clear instructions. It has TWO touch screen pens, and plenty, plenty of stuff to do. She loves the thing! She was giddy with excitement, literally, while playing with her new kid's ipad! It is more expensive, but WORTH THE EXTRA MONEY. And I"m broke, and I can still say that. I would not recommend the vreader. IT GETS BORING TOO FAST..Honest reviews on VTech - V.Reader Animated E-Book System - Pink
My daughter received this today as a Christmas gift and she loves it. She is 3 and can easily work it herself or with little help. My only complaint would be that it doesn't turn back on after you turn it off. We replaced the batteries to make sure that wasn't the problem and it wasn't. The only way we could get it to turn back on is by fiddling with the batteries every time. I was going to just exchange it for a new one but it seems to be a common problem after I read different reviews, so I think it's going back. :(Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for VTech - V.Reader Animated E-Book System - Pink
Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program First of all, I love Leap Pad toys. They have proven themselves to be durable, exciting to kids, and entertaining as well as a fun learning experience.So, having an e-readerlike toy for my 5 year old granddaughter was a fun idea. She loves mine, but there are few kids books for it.
How did it work out? She LOVES it! She carries it everywhere and proudly shows off her 'E-Reader". As with all leap Pad products I have purchased, there are additional stories with cartridges to purchase. The product only comes with one story. The story can be read to the child by the machine, and there are several games to play for each story that you buy. This particular model did come with a coin to use to download 6 free stories from the website, which was quick and easy to do.
She had NO trouble at all figuring out how to use the Vreader, whether it was using the stylus or the keyboard.
I would recommend this to parents or grandparents looking for a toy for kids who can sit quietly for a bit to play with it. I don't think it is going to do well with a child who would be dropping or throwing it. I did purchase both the AC adapter as well as the car adapter, which work well.
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