The Yoto Player - An Honest Review
One of the most common questions I get asked is “Is the Yoto better than the Toniebox?” I’ll give you my honest review here, no fluff n’ stuff.
We purchased the Yoto Mini’s for each of our kids 2 Christmas’s ago (ages at the time were 4 & 5). We’ve since purchased another for our 2 year old, and although he isn’t by any means using it like the “big kids” are, he wanted to be included, and the sale was poppin so we added another player to the bunch. It’s worth saying, these are hands down the best purchase we’ve ever made for our kids. The content selection is extensive, the battery life is great, they are small enough to travel with us anywhere and the ability to steam new content on demand from the Yoto app on my phone to the individual players makes the novelty of them never ending.
We have integrated these into our homeschool rhythm which has been a huge blessing to everyone - the kids get to immerse themselves in subjects they love, the house is quiet while they use their headphones, they aren’t zoning out on a screen and we have the freedom to mix it up whenever and however we want.
As members of the Yoto Club, a subscription service, we have access to nearly 1,000 titles of member-only content on the app. This includes three levels of phonics, math (appropriate levels for our kindergarten and first grader), geography, languages, chapter books, history, science, music … the options are robust, interesting and worth the monthly (or annual) membership fee. You can quickly stream from the app to a player or you can instantly link a blank Yoto card to the content. Our kids enjoy scrolling the Discover page to choose what they want to listen to. The blank cards are super affordable and can be reused with different content over and over. These are a great way to build your library without breaking the bank (I like to snag these when they have the occasional sale. We recently bought a 10 pack for only $15!)
One of my favorite features of the Yoto is the ability to upload audiobooks, podcasts and my own recordings to the app to link to blank cards. This makes virtually every audio option available to play. The process sounds complicated, but it’s actually very simple!
For the sake of transparency, we have never owned a Toniebox, so I can’t tell you definitively the Yoto player is “better.” But I will tell you why I chose the Yoto over the Tonie. It really was only 3 reasons:
I didn’t want to deal with storing the Toniebox character figurines (this is how content plays on the speaker). It felt like more clutter and a hassle getting mixed in with other small toys. The Yoto cards are the size of a credit card, simple to organize and keep track of and super easy to travel with.
The versatility of content on the Yoto Player is unmatched. With the ability to make your own cards in addition to a huge library of free content and cards for purchase, I felt like this was a device that would last us many years versus just through toddlerhood.
The price point of the Yoto cards is also better than the Tonie figurines, making it easier on the wallet to build a great size library (and easier to say YES to when our kids ask for a new card, and I am all about being a YES mom whenever I can be).
A final note, I have been impressed with Yoto’s customer service being super timely, friendly and helpful. We had a situation where the speaker was having issues after a year and a half and there was zero hassle. Yoto had us send back the used player and replaced it with a brand new one. I was surprised and so grateful.
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