LeapReader

Update in 2020: I ***would*** like to purchase one of these for each of my niece/nephews as this has best learning toy we've found so far. This is especially since all parents of little kids right now are looking for screen free activities to engage their kids during COVID lockdown!!! Unfortunately, leapfrog is no longer supporting products for this pen. So you can't easily purchase the books/activities that go with the leapreader. So frustrating! I know they have a new "pen" called LeapStart Go, but my impression from briefly looking at reviews of that product suggest it's just not the same. The leap reader is completely screen free and encourages a lot of interaction with books (even for kids as small as 3.5 years old). ==========old review============= We have used leapreaders in our house for approx three years now. The oldest one I had finally gave out b/c the optical scanner malfunctioned. Even so, I think it's a great value and I purchased new ones for both kids. (And really, I cannot blame the company, my kid was NOT particularly careful with his LR). ******Why do I love it? It's a great way to keep young kids entertained without the use of a screen!!!****** You can download audiobooks and music via their stand alone computer based app. My older kid (approx 5 yrs) listened to a geronimo stilton mouse mystery on constant repeat during our last car trip and it kept him very engaged. (we had to beg him to listen to a stink and a junie B jones story to give us a break sometimes). My younger kid (approx 3) listened to a laurie berkener song on constant repeat during that same car trip. Of course, it is not just a mini MP3 player for kids. The interactive books you purchase are GREAT, it's not just about having the pen "read the book" for your kids. Each page of the books is interactive, so when your child touches an image there will be a corresponding sound or dialogue. It really brings books to life for them. Furthermore, there are great games/activities in some of the sets, we particularly like the body board "book" that includes a fun song about brushing your teeth and a game naming different parts of the body. Pretty much every book has an activity associated with it - for instance the beginning reader books have activities that help them with phonetics. PLEASE EVERYONE LET LEAPFROG KNOW THAT THEY ARE BEING SHORT SIGHTED. I believe the company is focusing their efforts on tablets, which makes sense market-share-wise. But they could also provide the leapreader as a choice for discerning parents that are looking for screen substitutes. Right now I've decided to stockpile leapreader supplies in case they get harder to find in the future. Keep supporting the leapreader please!!!!!! Our family LOVES them! I want to be able to give them as gifts for nieces and nephews, but it's hard to do when I'm not sure about the future of the product! (you know, since some of them are still infants).

This LeapReader is one of my highest recommended items for preschool children - 2 grade or so. My daughter has owned one of these since she was three. It has different levels of reading to children, sounding out words, reading word by word, or reading the entire page. Most pages have a game that encourages children to demonstrate comprehension of the lesson. Plus you can download tons of content onto it and use it as an MP3 type player. LeapFrog offers trivia challenges and songs and audiobooks in addition to the books you can buy with all sorts of different subjects. My daughter loves the trivia and spouts all sorts of animal facts or human body trivia. With a pair of headphones, my daughter can use this in the car where reading makes her ill, and let her imagination fill in the characters and action of the story, helping her grow to become a tremendous reader. She just finished kindergarten and reads well above grade level. With lots of different subjects and difficulty levels, the LeapReader can be fun and educational for years. We just bought our second one because a lot of love and use left our first one vulnerable to a drop on a hard concrete surface, but we absolutely replaced it because this is such a valuable tool. While my daughter might outgrow it soon, for the price it was an easy decision to replace it. And I can easily throw it in my purse to carry in case she needs some entertainment unexpectedly.

I purchased the LeapReader from Amazon as a gift for my 4 year old daughter. I desired a product she could use for learning on her own while I taught her older sister (we homeschool). I wanted something that got her away from electronic screens. I was familiar with LeapFrog's tag system, but we never had one so I cannot compare products. We are in love with the LeapReader. My 4 year old happily carries around her pen listening to the preloaded learning songs and is starting to sing along. For the first few days she happily played with the sample book. What comes with this system package is the pen (partially charged), usb cord for charging and downloading content, and a sample book which consists of 1 page of 8-10 books LeapFrog offers for the LeapReader. I'll be honest this was a disappointment to me because I was expecting a full book to read through. For those looking to purchase this as a gift, I would recommend purchasing an additional book so the child has something else to read in full. I have since purchased additional books here from amazon and we are enjoying go through them together. It has been a breeze to add new content to the LeapReader pen. Simply touch a page of the new book you purchased (you can do multiple books at a time), then plug the pen into the computer. The content you have 'requested' will automatically begin to download. I also purchased an audio book directly from the LeapReader content screen and was able to use paypal which made the process very smooth. The speaker on the pen is clear, feels stable and high quality, and has been easy for my 4 year old to navigate through books, audio books, music, and trivia (which she hasn't done yet). I highly recommend this product. While the LeapFrog tablet may be tempting, think about how great it can be for kids to interact with a non screen electronic and physical books.

The reviews are a bit mixed and I think that's understandable because there are times it's hard to get the device to do what you want. But it *is* possible to do what it advertises and it's really fantastic when it works, and once you have it configured it works fabulously well and your child is basically never forced to confront any of the frustration from the platform, so I won't deduct any stars for that. I'll try to break it down but will start by just saying that my 5-year-old daughter has used this for a little over a year and she LOVES it. The books have very small dot patterns embedded throughout the images on all the pages. The pen is "loaded" with data for various books and when it knows what book it's looking at, it knows what the dot pattern for that book means and it reads, from the page, whatever it's instructed to do. This might be: read the story, read a word the child taps the pen on, play a game (e.g. identify something of a color, find an emotion, find an object, do some math). There is really a *lot* of interactivity with the books through the story and games that you get with this platform. But if you don't have the book on the pen, the pen will tell the child to ask a parent to update the pen with the book. This is where it gets challenging because the software just doesn't work very well. I use it with Windows and sometimes the device isn't recognized by Windows, or the LeapFrog software can't seem to talk with the pen, or it's hard to navigate through the LeapFrog software to find the books to load onto the pen. This is (thankfully) rare, though, and the pen has reasonable capacity to store a lot of books (I have 10-20 on mine or so) and once it's set, it's ready to interact with your whole library. I think all of the frustration with this platform is in this process. Three other things I'll mention. 1) As other reviewers have said, there are some backward compatibility issues, I guess. I haven't encountered this. I originally got an older generation pen from a used kid stuff sale before I bought one of these pens (eventually I got too many books for that very-old pen to store). I fully believe this is an issue for some books + pens because I've read about it multiple times, but it's never impacted me. 2) People ask "why can't they just put all the books on the pens?" but the answer is kinda obvious if you think about attempting to support that kind of business. There are tons of books you'll never see or care about and it doesn't really make sense to build in storage for a full library of everything. And the library expands, so if you buy a pen today and a new Disney movie comes out tomorrow that your kid wants the book for, you'd be out of luck if they tried to design it this way. ("Why can't they just support MicroSD and put a proprietary format file on the card for the book?" would be an EXCELLENT question, though...) 3) The books are ridiculously expensive and you almost definitely should not buy one new. Go to your local GoodWill / Salvation Army and you'll find some here and there.

I got this to replace our older Tag reader. It has more memory, so I was able to place all of our Tag book audio onto it, with room to spare. We were fortunate that the Tag books that we had were all compatible with the new LeapReader (not all of them are, check their website). However, the board book Tag Junior books aren't available on the new LeapReader, which is a shame. With the previous Tag reader, I could place both hardcover Tag books and board book Tag Junior books on it. My kids, ages 2 and 4, love this new LeapReader. Surprisingly, it actually tells stories on its own, without any books required. The kids love this function. They walk around pressing the buttons on the LeapReader and listening to its stories. It also plays educational songs from the Letter Factory and Talking Word Factory cartoons, among others. It's very expensive (retail price $59.99 in Canada), but I was able to find one cheap on amazon and we already have the Tag library of books to go with it. When I first plugged it into the computer, it took about half an hour and 4 updates before it was ready to use. Transferring audiobooks is easier than before, as it automatically starts syncing whatever audiobooks you decide to download from the internet. (In the old software, you had to download to your computer, then once that was all done, slowly sync to the device). However, the software is still nowhere as easy to use as it could be. So I'd recommend the LeapReader, but it could be better improved by (a) lowering the price, (b) adding more backwards compatible Tag book support, especially Tag Junior books, and (c) improving the computer software for it.

Great gift

This afternoon I was trilled to receive this LeapReader, I even skipped noon snap and was awake waiting for the delivery. It didn't work right away, guess the power was all off, until after it being charged for 1 hour, the on/off button finally worked. Then I followed the quick set up card to sync it on the leapfrog.com/connect, registered a parent account and then downloaded a couple of free eBooks and music. Each page of the sampler book is about a popular cartoon, and there is a brochure in the package that introduces the books stage by stage. My 11 month old saw me using the pen to read the book twice, then she opened the book, grabbed the pen and imitated me pull and push on the page! Amazing! I am a huge fan of Leap Frog products, my little one also has the Talking Picnic Basket, The Pink Violet mobile phone, the My First LeapTop, the Leap Remote Control and a LeapPad Ultra is on the way, I'm looking forward to letting my little one try it, to get her away from being bored.

This was a fun purchase for my kids.