LeapPad Is Almost Here–Kiddies Rejoice For Their Own Tablet!
If you’re a parent then you’re about to get really excited about a new tablet…for your child. Leapfrog is preparing to begin pre-orders for the LeapPad tablet. Yes, this thing is so hot it’s going to have preorders which begin June 29th. Why the hype? This thing is an iPad for your child…maybe it’s better described as an iPad 2. But before I get too into it let me tell you about the pricing because that’s pretty key here: “LeapPad Explorer will be sold at MSRP $99.99, with downloadable applications priced at MSRP $7.50 and up and game cartridges at MSRP $24.99.” OK so what do you get for that price? It’s a 5” color touchscreen (with stylus support so it’s likely resistive), built in camera (which includes video recording and some animation editing tied in to it), an accelerometer (you know, it knows you’re moving it or if you turn the tablet) and 2gb of memory for storing pictures and video. And it’s built for durability and has a 100+ library of games and apps. And it’s from LeapFrog and anyone with a kid probably has a library of their books, dvds and toys like I do. This is the top of the line in educational products wrapped in a fun experience that I’m already dying to get my hands on and let my kids play with. Seriously more excited for this than the Xbox + Kinect I just ordered…not sure what that says about me…
Anyway, let’s watch some videos of this bad boy in action:
They’ve got a great tagline: iPad for You. LeapPad for Them.
Well played. Here’s the launch page where you can sign up to get an email to remind you to preorder. I’ll definitely be getting one of these and I’ll share my thoughts right here. Anyone else getting in line with me?
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lol Well, we just got a LeapFrog Explorer for Christmas, so I think I’ll pass this year. Maybe next year.
@MartiM: Well you can look at the screenshots and pretty much figure out what they did. a 3.2″ screen goes to a 5″ screen. Add the camera and accelerometer. Make it backward compatible (that’s 40 games/apps right there). So it really is the next generation. Interesting to see that the progress we are used to in phones carries over to kids handhelds too.
I bought the Tag Reader a few months back – still like it but I was waiting on a better ebook reader to come because I wasn’t in love with the Vtech one. This one seems to hit a lot of the right notes though so it does educational games and books…man my son won’t even realize he’s learning;)
Everything sounds good, but what about the recharger? or the only way to play it will be using the 4AA batteries? …Does anybody knows?
@alex: the stats are out. It’s just rechargeables and that’s sort of disappointing. The other thing is that it’s 400mhz chip. I saw a video on Engadget and the load times were pretty poor. Probably 8-10 seconds to do any task. It’s making me think that an iPod Touch may be the way to go because then apps are a lot cheaper. I don’t think the apps are the same quality but there’s likely more than 100 and some of the apps for LeapPad are for older devices and the resolution looks low. I know it’s for kids but still 🙂 Oh and add on a capacitive pen to the iPod to make it competitive.