LeapFrog LeapStart Go System, Charcoal and Green

First I want to say that I am a review reader. So I felt it important to leave one. I opened this prior to Christmas so I could charge it and preload the books we bought to go with it. The set up was simple and download didn’t take very long. You do need a laptop or computer with a USB port, you cannot use a phone. Just an FYI.The first day, my son wasn’t all that thrilled with it because I think he was a bit confused. We have now used it a few times and he’s gotten used to listening to what the pen is saying and used to what the different activity squares mean. That is the key.I like the educational value of the product as well. Added bonus: there is a headphone port!

This item is great for toddlers. We had the old book tablet version my kids have been sharing for years. Finally decided to upgrade to the pens.At first we were disappointed that leap frog added a screen to the pens, but after using we realized that the pen only sometimes shows a short video or graphic using the screen. Most of the interaction is still with the book. Keeps my 2 and 4 year old occupied for hours if we let them. We have almost all the books in the leap start library and they never get board with this.Pros:-Rechargable battery using USB-volume control-headphone jack-easy for little hands to turn off and on

I have the book readers. And what I like better about this is that there is no cord connecting this to the book. We started have issues with that on the other one because it wouldn't read all the time. Definitely the wires were getting loose towards the book. So having this with no wires and and it being rechargeable is fantastic. The other one I had was not rechargeable and it was a pain to always be replacing the batteries. I like that this one here I can just plug in and we're good to go so having it recharging is best. The little video part is fine it's just a cute little picture more times than not with a little story coming from it which is fine. It makes it a little more fun for my daughter to read. I have been able to get quite a few books I think we have 13 maybe 14 pen with just a tiny little bit of space left. So for us that's all of the books we have and that's plenty. I was worried that it wasn't going to be enough room but it turns out there's plenty enough space for all of the books we had. I like that my daughter loves it. And that this is smaller so it is easier to actually take along with us. My two-year-old also seems interested in the pen too so she sits there and does the books with her big sister. I also did buy the leap reader I had gotten both one for my daughter and one for my son. They both I think are fine and I don't think we do a whole lot of the stories The kids really just use them to read along with their books. So comparing the two I don't see a whole lot of difference except for this one I can use the le ap books and the other one is the leap reader books. So it really depends on the books that you're going to be using. I do feel like this one here is more geared toward my preschooler

First, the bad: Getting this bugger out of the box! Leapfrog systems require setup, and they're rechargeable batteries, so they require charging. Both of those things mean you have to open the box and set it up BEFORE you give it to your excited toddler on Christmas morning. But this thing is not a willing participant when it comes to coming out of its box. I had to basically total the box to get the pen out, and there was no getting it back in without fresh glue, so in the end it ended up in a gift bag with the new books, and thankfully my girl didn't complain that it wasn't new in box this time. That, to me, makes "gifting" it a big problem.As for setup, standard Leapfrog: install the Leapfrog Connect software on your PC, wait for a long time for the books download and install, if you're a Leapfrog customer you already know the drill. It's not the most convenient system in the world, but at least the downloads are small, and it could be slower. (Installing the Connect software for her LeapPad, where it must download every single massive video she owns before it will let me even look at anything, is MUCH slower, so I'm not going to complain about this one.) Took me about an hour or so to install all of her old LeapStart books on the pen, and it came with the sampler book preloaded. Left it charging overnight to be safe before I put it away to be gifted.Getting to the charging port is a complete pain. If this were a battery powered device, I could get it. It's for little kids, and you don't change books all that often, so hiding the port makes sense. But it's a rechargeable battery. You need to plug it in daily. Make it easy to plug! There's no way my daughter can get to the plug on her own at the moment, she does not have the fine motor skills to get the cover open, which means she needs me to charge it for her, which is a drawback to her learning independent responsibility for her devices. On top of that, the cover itself feels like its days are numbered. Everything about it reminds me of the charging port cover on my old Galaxy phone, which we needed to replace four times. I guess when it finally breaks she'll be able to charge it herself, but I prefer not to be looking forward to things breaking when I buy them.Now the good:Love the increased file size. We have a lot of books, so many that she used to have 2 separate LeapStart pads, each with different books, because they didn't all fit. This fit all of the old ones plus several new ones and has room for several more. I think the description says 13, but it would depend on the book. The 3D books are larger, and the new Go books are the largest downloads, but I easily fit 10 of the older books, some of which were 3D, and both of the new Go packs with some room left over to grow into. I don't see her needing a second one of these, thank god. (She has 3 Tag pens and counting, the storage on those was so small!)The battery life seems great, and charging is very fast. She played with it on and off all Christmas day, so when we sat down to dinner I plugged it in to charge, and it was fully charged again by the time we were finished eating. It should hold up to your average child's use in a day I would think. She has been playing with it very heavily since we got it, and mostly just playing videos, which is generally the most power intensive thing any device can do, and it's held up fine. Looks like we won't end up with battery life frustration like she does on her tablets, even if it is a video device.The animation:I was unsure on this feature. We had purposefully NOT bought any of the 3D systems or books, (we wanted less screen time, not more!), and I was very hesitant to buy the pen because it WAS animated. I would have been less worried about buying it if it had not included the screen and just been a regular Tag/Leapreader style pen. But my daughter is left-handed, and the systems did not get the use they probably otherwise would have because the stylus was always a problem for her. She uses her Tag pens for hours on end, but the LeapStart she rarely touched, even though she liked it. It just seemed too hard for her, even though it was apparently meant for much younger children. We opted to get this pen at the Black Friday price just so that her existing LeapStart books might get more use, and we knew that she was comfortable using the Tag pen so this one should be comfortable for her as well. In that respect, it definitely is. She's thrilled with it, and she is not getting frustrated anymore.She LOVES the animations bonus, and we discovered as a nice surprise that even though she did not own any "3D" books, this pen does work as 3D with all of the books that were re-released as 3D versions: Scout, Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, etc. So she has plenty of videos to find, which has made it very exciting for her today. It has also been a nice bonus on several of the games in those books. For example, there's a "find the hiding birds" game on the Paw Patrol book that there's no visible payoff on, you follow the instructions about where the bird is hiding and it tells you if you found it or not, but with the animation, when you do find the bird, there's an animation of the bird you found. A lot more fun at that age. Wish they would animate the Leapfrog character books the same way. She is getting a few animations on those books, spinning a spinner game pops up an animation of the spinner, etc, but more animations would be extremely welcome.And that's where the current issue I have with the animations is. When she got to the pages/points, even in the sampler book, that had audio but no animation, she turned to us and said "it's broken!" The finer nuances of hot-spots are hard to work out at these children's ages, and it may be a while until she can accept that the pen isn't broken, it's just not supposed to play a video there. And I'm afraid that she will avoid her non-3D books in favor of the 3D ones since they're not as "exciting", no pictures. Which would be a shame, as the skills in those books are more important for her than the ones in the small selection of available animated titles. It would be very nice if Leapfrog would go back and animate its own licensed titles, like the Learning Friends, Mr Pencil, and Let's Go to Kindergarten, as those are all characters she loves and would really like to see in animation, and those are all necessary preschool/kindergarten skills that aren't covered by the Disney/Nickelodeon titles they did animate. Hopefully the new School Success title with Tad and Lily will make up for some of those gaps (I haven't received mine yet). I am even considering re-buying the new Human Body set, even though she already has the same exact set in the original Tag format, just because the animations are useful and she might learn a tiny bit more with them. Originally I had dismissed that title as an unnecessary waste of money, but she's been using that one sampler page all day, even though she's already had the older set and used to death for the last 3 months. Seeing the individual body parts separately and in motion instead of all getting tumbled together and partially hidden by each other inside the body map could be worth it.Overall, I would say the system is definitely worth the $30 it's currently going for, and I'm very happy I bought it (as is my child).

When my daughter stopped napping at 3, I decided to continue with 1 hour a day of quiet time in her room, and I wanted her to be semi-resting rather than playing or using typical screens. I got her this as a learning tool but found that she got too distracted by toys when I gave it to her in other parts of the day. During rest time, however, when she knows she’s not allowed to play with toys - she will HAPPILY play with this thing for an hour plus. I have about 10 books to go with it, and she learns SO much (she started telling me about her esophagus one night during her dinner, which one of these books teach about). she loves it, I love it, and I just got a second for my 18-month-old so they don’t have to fight over it.

Love it! The original leapfrog Leapstart system broke down within a few months of usage. I was quite upset because I just bought a few new books and have yet to download them. I thought I had to discard them until I saw that leapfrog Leapstart go system! It’s light and portable unlike the old one which is quite bulky. Hope this can last for awhile.

Great product! My kids love it!

Cannot connect to computer.