Yoto Player review: This screen-free speaker keeps kids entertained and engaged

Less than three weeks into owning a Yoto Player, my three-year-old nephew began calling another speaker toy “Yoto” as well. Two months on, his delight at the gadget hasn’t waned — and his initially sceptical parents now love it as much as he does.

My sister and brother-in-law aspire to give my nephew a relatively screen-free upbringing, wary of raising a developmentally delayed iPad kid. They don’t own a television, preferring to watch the occasional film or episode of Bluey on a laptop, and they carefully ensure my nephew’s access to smartphones is strictly monitored and timed.

Even so, there are times when they’re so exhausted that they just need a break. Children have an abundance of energy that can be difficult to keep up with, especially when you also have both housework and normal work to attend to. There’s a reason why so many tired, desperate adults resort to screens to keep their kids entertained.

The Yoto Player aims to offer an alternative to screens, engaging children’s imaginations via kid-friendly audio they can control themselves with physical cards. It isn’t the type of toy I would typically pick up, my family being somewhat apprehensive regarding children’s gadgets. 

Having now tried it, it turns out the Yoto Player is a game changer.

What is the Yoto Player?

Simply put, the Yoto Player is a portable speaker that plays audio from cards inserted into a slot on the device. This allows children to control what they listen to themselves, deciding which cards to play, adjusting the volume, and skipping to the tracks they love the most. Yoto’s card system also ensures there’s no danger of children inadvertently straying into inappropriate content without adult supervision, as they might while browsing YouTube.

With child-friendly rounded edges, the Yoto Player’s large controls are easy for young children to operate independently, and click to provide satisfyingly tactile feedback. After the first few weeks of familiarising himself with it, my nephew displayed no difficulty using the Yoto Player’s knobs and buttons to navigate, deftly adjusting the volume, switching between tracks, and pausing playback. The controls aren’t labelled, but they’re intuitive enough that this isn’t a problem (your child may not be reading yet anyway).

The Yoto Player’s chunky, box-like design is also resilient enough to withstand the rigours of childhood, even if you choose to forgo the additional protection of a silicone Adventure Jacket. Just like any gadget, I wouldn’t deliberately throw it at the ground, but the Yoto seems robust enough to handle getting knocked around or dropped from a toddler-like height a few times.

The Yoto Player offers functionally screen-free entertainment

When I first presented my nephew with the Yoto Player, I was concerned that he would quickly lose interest due to its lack of a screen.

To be clear, while the Yoto Player is functionally screen-free, the device technically isn’t screenless. Both the Yoto Player and the smaller Yoto Mini have screens which display chunky pixel art reflecting the content being played. For example, a picture of a giraffe may be shown alongside Dear Zoo, or an image of Lightning McQueen during Yoto’s novelisation of Disney’s Cars. 

These pictures do change as the audio progresses, and can even helpfully display the answers to the audio quizzes found on some cards. Still, these innocuous on-screen icons are largely static, and more akin to occasionally turning the page in a picture book than watching an endless hypnotising parade of YouTube unboxing videos.

Fortunately, this lack of video has not deterred my nephew from his Yoto Player at all. While he doesn’t seem worryingly engrossed in the speaker, he is most definitely enjoying it, the gadget still consistently keeping him entertained and occupied months on. In fact, he’s found the Yoto Player engaging enough that he’s happy to quietly listen to it while lying next to a napping parent, or after waking up at an obscenely early hour of the morning. Both the Yoto Player and Mini are compatible with wired 3.5mm jack headphones as well as wireless ones.

His parents enjoy watching him enjoy the Yoto Player as well, whether he’s focusing solely on the story or listening while building a LEGO tower. Rather than allowing children to zone out as they would in front of a screen, the Yoto Player engages their imagination, similarly to being read or sung to. My brother-in-law praised the Yoto Player as “entertainment that doesn’t make him catatonic,” noting that it’s also an excellent gadget for car rides.

“[I’m] so much more comfortable leaving him with a Yoto than a phone,” my brother-in-law told me.

Yoto’s wide catalogue of cards includes Disney, Elton John, and C.S. Lewis

The Yoto Player is primarily operated via Yoto cards, which are purchased separately to the speaker. Put a card in the Yoto Player’s slot, and it will begin to play. Yank it out, and it will stop. It’s a simple enough system that young children can understand and operate it easily.

There’s also more than enough variety in Yoto’s card catalogue for you to carefully curate your child’s listening experience. Covering content for ages 0 to 12 and up, Yoto’s cards contain songs, stories, and even educational audio. Many of these are originals created by Yoto itself, however there are also numerous cards from well-known brands such as Disney, Harry Potter, Ladybird Books, and even Cocomelon. The song cards also range from nursery rhymes to Queen, the Spice Girls, Elton John, and the Beatles. You can even record your own cards too (more on that below).

However, my brother-in-law did note that it is a closed ecosystem, the Yoto Player requiring you to either buy Yoto cards or play Yoto-approved audio from the Yoto app. With the cheapest cards costing a few dollars at minimum, the price of accumulating a collection of Yoto cards can quickly stack up. As such, you’ll likely want to build your library gradually. The complete Harry Potter series alone will set you back a couple of hundred dollars.

Interestingly, the Yoto cards don’t actually have the sound files stored on them. Rather, they tell the Yoto Player that you own said cards, and direct it to download the audio from Yoto’s servers. As such, you will need to be connected to WiFi during setup as well as the first time you insert each card. Setup is easy though, and once complete the Yoto Player seamlessly interacts with the cards as though they contain the audio, starting and stopping when they’re put in and pulled out.

One mild disappointment is that though the Yoto Player appears perfectly designed for read-along content, many currently available book cards aren’t suitable for this purpose. Yoto does have audiobook cards for classic novels such as The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; James and the Giant Peach; Anne of Green Gables, and The Secret Garden. However, customers have noted that at least some of Yoto’s book adaptations are abridged, meaning kids can’t follow along even if they have their own copies of said books.

Fortunately, some cards for picture books such as Dear Zoo are specifically designed for read-alongs, providing audio cues for when to turn the page. I was unable to try this out with my nephew, but my brother-in-law believes it will be great for when he starts reading.

Lyrics in many of the nursery songs may be slightly different to what you remember from your own childhood as well. Rather than handing off hot cross buns to your sons “if you have no daughters,” Yoto Original card Old McDonald and other Pre-School Songs suggests you “give them to your daughters, give them to your sons.”

None of this should negatively impact your child’s enjoyment of the tunes. My nephew has been bopping along regardless, holding impromptu living room dance parties with his Yoto. However, such lyrical changes may throw off a few confused parents during their first sing-along.

Yoto lets you personalise cards for a loving touch

If such changes really bother you, fortunately there is a solution. In addition to its extensive library, Yoto offers blank cards that you can use to record your own audio via the Yoto app. This opens up a wealth of exciting possibilities, enabling you to create special, personalised cards just for your child. 

It’s a sweet idea, allowing grandparents and other loved ones to record themselves telling bedtime stories, singing songs, or leaving loving messages for a child. The child will then be able to play these messages back themselves whenever they want to hear their family member’s voice. My brother-in-law recorded himself reading a book and singing nursery rhymes with my nephew, assigning each track an image for Yoto Player’s screen to display while they played. Cards such as these are likely to be treasured for a long time to come.

Yoto’s connected app is for adults

Like pretty much every gadget nowadays, the Yoto does have a connected app. However, children can use cards to operate their Yoto Player without ever setting sight on the app, which would defeat the entire goal of screenless entertainment. Rather, the Yoto app is intended for adults. 

Parents can scan Yoto cards into the app, allowing them to play the related audio without the physical card, as well as curate a library from the collection of free sounds under the Discover tab. This includes audio timers for activities such as brushing teeth or tidying up, children’s podcasts, and family-friendly radio channels from both Yoto and Yoto-approved third parties.

There’s also a decent selection of sleep sounds even parents may benefit from, which includes audio such as white noise, brown noise, “Rainy Car Ride,” and “Kirthar National Park, Pakistan.” Every sound can be placed on a customisable timer that maxes out at 12 hours and 55 minutes, so you can set it to automatically turn off once your child is likely to have nodded off. You can also put tracks on repeat, as well as adjust the speed of playback.

All of these sounds can not only be streamed from the app to any connected Yoto Player, but played straight from your phone or on third-party speakers as well. I used Apple AirPlay to stream Yoto’s audio to my Sonos Roam, utilising the app’s sleep sounds for myself. Kids aren’t the only ones who find the sound of rain soothing.

The Yoto app also allows multiple users to join one family account, which is particularly useful for children who spend time in multiple households. I did encounter some issues joining my brother-in-law’s account, which was only rectified when we both connected to the same Wifi for the initial setup, but otherwise using the app has been a relatively seamless experience.

Yoto Player vs. Yoto Mini

Yoto offers two speaker models: the Yoto Player, and the Yoto Mini. The most obvious difference between the two are their sizes. The Player is a cube measuring slightly larger than four inches in each dimension, while the Mini is smaller at 2.7 inches across and 1.5 inches deep. 

The Yoto Player also has extra features such as stereo sound, a night light, a room thermometer, and both wireless and USB-C charging. Meanwhile, the Yoto Mini only supports mono sound and USB-C charging. Yoto states that the Mini also has a shorter battery life of 14 hours, compared to the Player’s 24.

Even so, my nephew didn’t seem bothered by any of these differences. He happily treated the two speakers as interchangeable, picking up the Yoto Mini even when the Player was available and fully charged, and easily carrying the Player around despite the Mini being specifically designed for portability. The Mini’s much smaller screen didn’t put my nephew off either.

Rather, it was my sister and brother-in-law who got the most use from the Yoto Player’s extra features, setting the night light to automatically change colours between night and day. This meant that when my nephew woke up at 6 a.m., he knew it wasn’t time to get up until his Yoto Player’s light turned blue at 7 a.m. — a blessing for parents in need of all the sleep they can get. 

Unfortunately, my nephew isn’t a fan of the night light, so they’ve since abandoned using the Yoto Player at night. My brother-in-law was also mildly disappointed that the Yoto Player’s night light only turns on when it is placed face down with the clock on its screen not visible. As my nephew is already reading numbers, my brother-in-law felt having the Yoto Player’s night light and clock both visible simultaneously could have helped teach him to tell how long it is until it’s time to get up.

Is the Yoto Player worth it?

I was mildly sceptical about Yoto’s speakers going in. While Yoto’s mission to minimise screen time is admirable, and I certainly replayed certain cassette tapes ad infinitum as a child, I wondered if purely audible entertainment might have gone the way of the stick and hoop. Perhaps a speaker wouldn’t interest a child when compared to the bright lights and cheerful colours of television.

Such concerns were entirely unfounded. Not only has my nephew fallen in love with his Yoto, his parents and grandparents are also quite pleased with it as well. My sister and brother-in-law even overcame their own scepticism toward children’s gadgets, happy that my nephew is engaging his imagination rather than being mesmerised by a screen. I have been sent more than one photo of my nephew listening contentedly to his Yoto Player, or joyfully rolling around with it on the floor.

If you’re struggling to keep a young child entertained but don’t want them engrossed by a screen, the Yoto Player is a great option to explore that will keep their minds active. And considering that Yoto offers cards for all ages, it could help you sort a few years of Christmas and birthday presents as well.

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Family & Parenting