If you’re in search of a substitute for unleashing your children on an iPad while you want just a few treasured moments to your self, the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition makes for an attentive and surprisingly partaking companion. Loaded up with parental controls aplenty and packed to the gills with video games and “skills,” the Alexa-powered Echo Kids Edition retains youngsters entertained whereas spurring their imaginations, all with you in management.
The $70 Echo Dot Kids Edition is, for all intents and functions, the identical gadget because the Third-generation Echo Dot, nevertheless it comes with a one-year subscription to FreeTime, an Amazon service that boasts parental controls, hundreds of Audible books, a whole bunch of Alexa video games and kid-friendly abilities, and ad-free tunes on Amazon Music.
The FreeTime bundle is a $36 worth ($60 for non-Prime members), so provided that the usual Echo Dot prices $50 (though it’s steadily on sale for a lot much less), ponying up for the Kids Edition can prevent some money. Also, take into account that a FreeTime subscription contains hundreds of books and movies which you could entry on an Amazon Fire pill, a Kindle, or an iOS or Android gadget. Finally, the Echo Dot Kids Edition comes with a two-year guarantee, versus simply 90 days for the usual Echo Dot.
Design and setup
If you have already got a Third-generation Echo Dot, you’ll already know what to anticipate from the Echo Dot Kids Edition, a minimum of on the {hardware} facet of issues. Basically a 1.7-inch-thick hockey puck of a speaker, each the usual Echo Dot and the youngsters model include 1.6-inch full-range audio system, a fabric-covered circumference, and a quartet of buttons on high that allow you to management the amount, flip off the microphone, and carry out actions similar to silencing alarms and organising Wi-Fi. A skinny, halo-shaped LED indicator lets you already know when Alexa is listening, has ready notifications, or has misplaced its wi-fi connection.
Indeed, the one actual bodily distinction between the usual Echo Dot and the Kids Edition is the colour choice, and surprisingly, the Kids Edition provides solely two selections: rainbow and blue. While the 1443243rainbow-colored Echo Dot is the extra eye-catching of the 2, we selected blue as a result of that’s my daughter’s favourite shade (or a minimum of it was on the day we picked it).
The preliminary setup course of for the Kids Edition is identical as for a vanilla Echo Dot: you plug the gadget into an influence outlet, anticipate the halo to glow orange, hearth up the Alexa cellular app, after which use the app to “discover” the Dot and join it to your Wi-Fi community. I had the Echo Dot Kids Edition up and operating inside a few minutes.
Setting up FreeTime
Once you could have the Kids Edition related to your Wi-Fi community, it’s time to configure FreeTime’s parental controls. Open the FreeTime Parent Dashboard within the Alexa cellular app and also you’ll discover entries in your children (which was pre-populated in my case, provided that the all-knowing Amazon already is aware of the title of my seven-year-old daughter), and tapping an entry enables you to begin tinkering with the assorted parental settings.
Ben Patterson/IDGThanks to Amazon’s FreeTime service, you may set each day deadlines for the Echo Dot Kids Edition.
Among the obtainable choices within the Parent Dashboard is the flexibility to set each day deadlines (you may program weekdays and weekends individually). I went forward and select 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. because the deadlines for my daughter Claire, which implies if she tries to summon Alexa at, say, 8:05 p.m., Alexa will patiently say “Sorry, I can’t play right now; try again later.” Naturally, my daughter tends to maintain nagging Alexa for some post-bedtime enjoyable, however after just a few fruitless makes an attempt, she typically offers up and places her head down.
The Parent Dashboard enables you to block the flexibility to manage any of your related good residence units, in addition to activate an specific language filter for music. The language filter is meant to work for any related music providers that assist the characteristic, together with Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and (in fact) Amazon Music, whereas any music providers that don’t assist a filter are blocked.
That’s all nicely and good, aside from the time my daughter was taking part in a Soulja Boy shuffle (Soulja Boy being a preferred music alternative at summer season camp this yr, together with the ever present Lil Nas X), and on one of many tracks, somebody let free with a hearty four-syllable invective—whoops. My child and I exchanged an amused look (hey, she’s heard worse) and stored on dancing. That was the one time I heard any dangerous phrases slip by FreeTime’s specific language filter, so it might need been merely a random and uncommon glitch, nevertheless it’s price mentioning.
Ben Patterson/IDGAlexa will solely permit your baby to ship messages to authorized contacts utilizing the Echo Dot Kids Edition.
The Dashboard additionally enables you to management whether or not your child can use Alexa’s messaging, Drop In, and Announce options. For the Drop In and Announce options, your baby can solely pay attention to or make bulletins over different Echo units in your family, whereas messaging is restricted to the contacts you’ve specified (Mommy and Daddy, in Claire’s case). I ought to word that as a dad or mum, Drop In is among the extra pleasant options of the Kids Edition, permitting me to summon my daughter with curt instructions similar to “Claire, report to me immediately.”
Finally, you may pause your baby’s Echo Dot throughout the Dashboard by tapping a button and selecting how lengthy the Alexa “time-out” will final. It’s an important characteristic for when your child’s Alexa utilization heads into frenzied territory, however I want it have been simpler to entry; because it stands, it takes a minimum of 4 faucets to get to it.
Alexa, let’s play
Beyond its numerous parental controls, Amazon’s FreeTime service provides hundreds of Audible books and scores of premium abilities tailor-made for teenagers, to not point out the run of Amazon Music.
Before we get to the video games and the books, nevertheless, let’s discuss extra about music, as a result of {dollars} to donuts, that’s what your children might be doing with Alexa more often than not: taking part in their favourite tunes. This being the summer season of 2019, my daughter’s number-one request has been for “Old Town Road,” a track that’s now burned into my mind for all eternity. Coming in an in depth second is the Star Wars soundtrack, adopted by Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk You Up.”
While my daughter bought an plain kick out of utilizing her Echo Dot as a voice-activated jukebox, she usually grew aggravated when Alexa picked the unsuitable track, or chosen a canopy of a monitor quite than the unique. (Perhaps this was FreeTime’s specific language filter at work.) For essentially the most half, although, asking Alexa to play music was a giant hit—so large, the truth is, that I commonly used FreeTime’s “pause” characteristic to offer myself and Claire’s mom a break.
Then there are Alexa’s a whole bunch of kids-oriented abilities, which run the gamut from a bare-bones model of hide-and-seek to some impressively produced “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style studying video games from Audible.
Basic although it was, the Hide and Seek ability proved to be a preferred alternative, primarily as a result of it was really easy to win. The sport begins when Alexa asks your child to decide on a hiding house; as soon as your baby is hiding, Alexa begins to guess the place your baby is, and if she will be able to’t guess appropriately in three tries, she offers up. There aren’t any sensors or machine-learning expertise concerned when Alexa performs hide-and-seek; as an alternative, Alexa’s technique revolves round wild guesses, similar to “Are you behind the dollhouse?” (No, as a result of Claire doesn’t have a dollhouse.) Sure, Alexa’s model of hide-and-seek is a tad uninteresting, however for my daughter, profitable by no means will get outdated.
Another sport that proved a success was Master Swords, through which you conflict blades with pirates by spelling phrases. When you battle a nasty man, you could spell a phrase (like “right” or “forest”) appropriately to make your blows land; for those who get a phrase unsuitable, you miss. It’s difficult, enjoyable, nicely acted, and full of sound results, though Claire would often develop annoyed (“That’s weird!”) when the sport lower her off earlier than she may end spelling a phrase.
Ben Patterson/IDGMy daughter bought a kick out of Alexa’s myriad video games and abilities, however taking part in tunes on the Echo Dot Kids Edition was by far her favourite passtime.
We additionally loved the basic Choose Your Own Adventure books on Audible (similar to Space and Beyond), which contain listening to a narrative after which making choices about what to do subsequent at key factors within the motion. As with Master Swords, the Choose Your Own Adventure books we listened to have been slickly produced, featured seasoned voice actors, and included evocative sound results. Still, frustration crept in when Alexa often misheard Claire’s instructions and (for instance) shot our character out of an airlock quite than opting to remain throughout the confines of the starship.
Best of all was Star Wars: Choose Your Destiny, one other choose-your-adventure sport that my Star Wars-obsessed tyke discovered riveting. In the actual story we tried (you may decide between large adventures and “mini” adventures, by the way in which), Han Solo and Chewbacca needed to run an Imperial blockade as a result of they have been, um…. OK, does it matter? In any case, Claire was clearly engaged, instructing Chewie to restore the hyperdrive and ordering Han to run for canopy quite than blindly charging forward along with his blaster. Once extra, enthusiastic performing together with genuine Star Wars music and sound results paid main dividends when it got here to holding Claire’s curiosity.
Of course, we’re solely scratching the floor of Alexa’s numerous kids-oriented abilities—and certainly, in case your children are in search of a brand new exercise, they will all the time simply say “Alexa, let’s play,” and Alexa will decide a sport to strive; certainly, that’s how we discovered Master Swords within the first place.
Bottom line
My daughter declared the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition a keeper, and I’m inclined to agree. Entertaining with out turning into disruptive, instructional with out veering into boring territory, the Echo Dot Kids Edition managed to maintain my simply distracted second-grader engaged however not often spun her right into a frenzy, whereas letting me management how and when she may play together with her new digital buddy.