Innotab Review In Depth

This Vtech Innotab Review will look at this kids tablet in depth. One of the hottest kids tablets out there in the market, the Vtech Innotab comes with a lot of ultracool features for hours of educational fun. Both the Innotab tablet and Leapfrog’s Leappad are cashing in on children’s familiarity with touchscreen devices like the ipad and the iphone. Here’s my detailed Innotab review on Vtech’s latest toy. 

Firstly parents, this is an educational toy tailored with applications, activities and other features to suit little kids. It’s not an iPad/an adult’s tablet so don’t come to the table looking for a real tablet. How much your child enjoys it will depend on how familiar they are with technological gizmos.

Kids who have played with iphones and ipads extensively may find the Innotab tablet or the Leappad simplistic, but it all depends on the child. It’s a great toy and an excellent introduction to tablet like functionalities for little children

That said the Innotab is a fantastic tablet and here’s what I consider to be the pros and cons —

Innotab Review – The Pros

* Compact design – It’s durable and kid-proof  but the kick stand is going to come off sooner than you think especially with toddlers around. Preschoolers can hold the tablet easily and it fits quite well in their lap. The screen size is fine for young children though a slightly bigger screen would have been great. It’s easy to navigate with the touchscreen and the tilt sensor comes in pretty handy when playing games or using the coloring applications.

* Usability – Quite user friendly kids as young as three can figure out how to use this tablet on their own. The system gives excellent feedback that motivates the little ones, which is pretty cool.

* Applications – There aren’t as many applications as I would like to see but Vtech says they’ll have a 100 apps available by the end of 2011. (At the time of writing this in depth Innotab Review) For now the pre-loaded games such as the Penguin Ice game are entertaining. Most of them feature really popular cartoon show characters such as Scooby Doo, Dora the Explorer etc, so kids get to learn with characters they know, which is neat. The Color and Pop, coloring book is great but there are only 8 very similar types of color pages; Am looking forward to being able to download more later. Apps are also very inexpensive at $2.99 each. You also get to buy apps for free at the start with several V-coins when you buy the tablet.

* Animated E-reader – Having the ability to listen to stories is pretty neat and kids can tap on a word to explore it further.

* Additional Features – Can add notes and appointments to a datebook/calendar. There’s a slideshow, interactive globe, alarm clock and friend’s address book too. Great functionality to get little ones to be more responsible. Check out more features of the Innotab.

* Music, Movies and Photos – The ability to load my own content into the Innotab is really big positive point for me, along with the option to expand the memory with an SD card. I’d really like to spotlight this in my Innotab review. It’s important because it gives a parent a lot of options as opposed to having to pay for every piece of content you put in there. With a 16GB card you can load numerous games, songs, movies, ebooks and pictures and still have plenty of space leftover.

*Quality – The Mp3′s sound good and the speaker is great for it size. No complaints with the picture quality either.

* Software cartridges – These are good value at $20 to 25 each and comes loaded with activities and an ebook in addition to games. Typically it contains around 3 games, 2 creative activities and an ebook.

Innotab Review – The cons

* Battery hog – This tablet eats up batteries pretty fast, but so does the Leappad so you’ll want to invest in an adapter very soon. Would have been nice if they had included one but you’ll have to buy one separately. Rechargeable batteries work too but be prepared to be charging them quite often. (I’m making a point to highlight this in my Innotab Review because buying batteries to keep it running gets annoying quite fast)

* Preloaded photos – The preloaded photos in the Vtech Innotab are quite annoying because you can’t delete them. However you can add your own photos but its still bewildering as to why they are there.

* Age range – the age range stays 4-9 but kids around 9 years are going to find this toy boring unless they are total technological novices. I’d say 3 to 8 would be the age group that finds the tablet entertaining.

*No thumbnails – There aren’t any thumbnails for the video player and mp3 player which is a bit frustrating. If your child can’t read yet, they’ll have to track through all the videos and songs to find the ones they want.

Conclusion

To conclude the innotab review – This is fantastic educational toy that your child can use as a fun gaming system, dvd player, ereader and mp3 player. At $79, it offers excellent value in a touchscreen tablet form and there’s lots of opportunities for young kids to learn everything from hand/eye coordination, to letters and numbers.  The -ves aren’t too big a deal and I see this tablet as having a lot of potential. You can take a look at my Vtech Innotab vs Leappad Explorer comparison to get  a fuller picture of how they score against each other.

The ability to load content really expands the usability of the device and the software cartridges offer good value at their price point. It’s an excellent gaming system for toddlers with tilt motion or touchscreen control. Kids will love the mp3 player, the animated ebooks and fun art studio apps. Invest in a little expandable memory and a wall adapter  and the Innotab should provide exciting entertainment value for at least a few years for young kids.  I hope this Innotab review has given you a clear picture of its functions and play value. If you’d like to take a look at the current best price on Innotab check it out here.

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Tags: Innotab review, innotab vtech reviews, reviews for innotab

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2011 at 10:55 am and is filed under Learning Tablet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.