great idea, not sure on the product quality
Written: Feb 06 '04 (Updated Jan 06 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: educational, expandable, fun
Cons: our touch part of the screen is broke after only a week
The Bottom Line: great educational toy but unsure of quality
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| mom2emma's Full Review: LeapFrog Leapster Multimedia Learning System |
My daughter recently had her 4th birthday, though I love leapfrog products the leappad and other toys have not held her interest. We recently bought the new Leapfrog videos though and she LOVES them. You can watch videos on the Leapster so when she had $90 in birthday money I thought it would be a neat product to buy. In day 1 she played with this more than the combined time she ever played with her my first leappad and definitely more than the untouched regular leappad she got for Christmas. When her sister who is 7½ years old got home she too played the game so much I had to send them outside to get some exercise.
Now for the ins and outs of the Leapster. My description would be that this is like an educational gameboy as it plays games, has a directional arrow for playing these and A and B buttons (which we have not used yet as none of the games on the introduction cartridge need this). The introduction cartridge comes with 4 games. At Rabbit River even the youngest kids can learn their numbers. This game is similar to the old leapfrog, you jump across the river on logs. The levels vary, on all levels they first make sure you know the concept by allowing you to just jump on empty logs. On level 1 you then progress to jumping on numbers, any number rather than a shape. You then progress to jumping on certain numbers and then counting. It progresses all the way to adding and subtracting on level 3. After you use up all your rabbits you get a bonus round where you collect carrots on the logs. The next game is chicken coop, it is similiar to playing memory, you match things. You can very much personalize this game, you chose the number of "cards" you will have, the things you will be matching (from shapes, phonics, music, numbers and more), and the level. The next game is the shape shop, if you are familiar with tanagrams this game is very similar, you progress from just dragging and placing shapes on their outlines to eventually having to figure out how to fill in the shape with different shapes to make the large shape. The last game is Catcher Fields, you catch different items in your bucket, this game mainly teaches recognizing of letters. At first you catch a certain level but you have hints because the letter is on your bucket, later on you do not have this or you are doing upper and lowercase.
But the Leapster is also like a color pixter it has a nice functioning coloring program, the Color Corral. You use the stylus to color on this program. You can chose backgrounds to color or a plain page to color on. You can chose different colors and patterns, stamps, weather, time on day, etc. You can chose from an eraser, a bucket (fill in) feature, a paintbrush, or a "pen". I don't own a color pixter so I am not sure if it is similar to the black and white pixter but comparing it to my black and white the differences I can see are at least with the introductory cartridge you cannot save or add text. You also cannot send like you can between 2 black and white pixters. Cartridges are available though just as you can get cartridges for the color pixter. From what I have seen on the website though the cartridges available are limited for now, as far as I could tell the only one for coloring, etc was one for teaching writing their letters.
The last area is the bird feeder. As you play games you can earn and collect bird seeds. You then go to the bird feeder and can put your seeds in and the birds come to sing and eat. The more seeds you have the longer the birds stay. As the birds are there they will sing for you, you can click on them to change the birds and music.
OK, now onto the details of the toy. It features on/off button, bright and dark, contrast, volume control, a directional game control, "A" and "B" buttons, a stylus, hint and pause. It also has a headphone jack and a place to put an AC adapter. It also has a removable, flip back screen cover made of nice rubber material that snaps on and also snaps out of the way while you use the toy. The battery compartment (takes 4 AA) does screw on, with attached springed screws so younger kids won't be messing with it, you won't lose the screws and it is easy to do. You sign in and it stores information on up to 3 players and also has a "guest" option. The base of where the stylus attaches as well as underneath the directional control lights up, it lights up as you receive instructions, ie "you use the stylus for this game" would be said as the stylus one lights up. The toy does have an auto off. It also has tutorials you can chose by pressing hint or will automatically give you the option if you miss too many answers. It features a nice color screen with good graphics and nice sound. It can also be calibrated easily as needed for the stylus.
From what I have seen and looked into on their website there are several options that are and will be available. You will be able to buy a protective carrying case as well as a power pack that features an AC adapter and a charging base with rechargable batteries included. There will also be several different types of cartridges available. Supposedly the toy plays color videos (I am thinking a color version of video now but my nephew has a video now and from what I can tell Leapsters graphics are better and the screen is bigger), so far the only video that is available is "The Letter Factory", if it is the same as "The Letter Factory" available on DVD and VHS it is AWESOME. Or you can get game cartridges they usually feature 5-6 games and sometimes interactive storylines (think leappad), so far they have their traditional characters (Tad, Leap and Lilly) but also some more popular characters (Dora and Spongebob so far). They feature science, reading and math. They also are supposed to be coming out with another coloring program soon that will have coloring but also teach children penmenship. Unfortunately the cartridges are geared toward the exact age the toy is geared to, ages 4-8. My 7½ yr old likes the toy but doesn't learn anything from it like her sister does. From what I have seen so far there is only 1 cartridge that would offer her anything at all, Math Baseball is due out anytime and does feature multiplication and division. My hope would be if this toy is a hit the cartridge avialability will expand to other ages as it has for the Leappad.
Now for the problems, I know, I know, it sounded so good, maybe too good to be true for that price?? Even from day 1 my daughter would get frustrated with the stylus, though it works well for games and such there are some smaller details in the coloring pages that she would want to "fill in" and the stylus just wasn't precise enough to do this. Considering the age span this starts at that can equal major frustration. We have now owned the toy a week and last weekend after only owning it 4 days I started having to frequently calibrate the toy. Now after a week it won't calibrate because certain parts of the screen no longer work, we will be taking it back, hopefully it is just a fluke in ours but from the reveiws I have read elsewhere I am not so sure. I will update on how the new one does. I hope we don't have anymore problems because this is just an awesome toy and I had planned to get my 7 year old one if the cartridges start to expand by her birthday. She has been wanting a gameboy but we don't do video games this young and this has been what I thought would be a great compromise, she loves it but it is educational.
update as of 2/16: New Leapster is still working well, though the batteries have only lasted about 2 weeks with minimal use. The charging station is a lot cheaper than I thought it would be, at only about the same price as 1 cartridge ($25) so that may be a good option. The stylus is working well on the new one and has not had to even be recalibrated, I hope the original was just a fluke and this one will continue to do well, I am uping the durability score a tad but will wait to give it a really good score until I know if this one will end up at all like the first one.
Update as of 3/1: still no problems on the new one, we have since purchased Dora the Explorer Wildlife Rescue and Spongebob software for it. The Dora is really my favorite so far, you can go through an "adventure" story as you play games to rescue a pet along the way or just skip to the games. All the games on all the cartridges have unlimited chances to get something right, too many wrongs and they will walk you through it even. But yet they all have a goal, like the birdseeds in the original cartridge, in Dora your goal is to save a pet (there are several to chose from so you can have different goals), and in Spongebob you collect ingrediants for a new secret sauce. I did also learn that some of the games are harder to find. Dora, Spongebob and K and 1st grade can be easily found anywhere (Target, Toys R Us, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc) but, at least in our area, Wal Mart has the best selection, you can get the above games plus Mr Pencil's Write and Draw, Math Baseball and The Letter Factory video.
update 1/2006
The new leapster is still working, either I got a good one or my previous ones were duds or they fixed the problem. New problem though, apparantely my leapster gets too much abuse, several pixels (?) in a cluster on the screen have gone out, they show up as only yellow. That said this does get abused though, left in the van in hot and cold, possibly even stepped on. Then to top that my 11 month old likes to "watch" (read "have the video turned on while she abuses it") it. We've gotten another 4 games, all of which we love. My neice has also since gotten a Leapster. We don't want the LMax because this is a waiting room, trips and car "treat" toy. But I bet the LMax holds interest better than the Vsmile. The VSmile's graphics and games seem so slow and "old" compared to this Leapster and my daughter could care less about the VSmile. Though I am still dissappointed that no cartridges are available beyond 3rd grade as my 4th grader would enjoy this toy more than her Turbotwist.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 80
Type of Toy: Educational
Age Range of Child: 3 to 5 Years
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Epinions.com ID:
mom2emma
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Location: sc
Reviews written: 298
Trusted by: 29 members
About Me:
Shop and researchaholic to all baby and children's products.
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