Customer Reviews

Vtech - MobiGo Touch Learning System

5 star:		(103)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I bought my son the Fisher-Price iXL for his 4th birthday. See my review on that one, but the long story short, after 3 weeks of waiting for it to be useable, I took it back. I liked the Leapster Explorer, but will not tolerate the excessive advertising and consumerism pet game. Wasn't crazy about their software choices for the 3-4 year old crowd either. Demoed all of them and had my son try them as well. He liked the Mobigo immediately... The graphics are nice, the goal setting in games looks fun. He can handle it fine for most games on easy. He loves it, and he has reached for it more in two days than the iXL that he had for three weeks.

Yeah, it's educational enough. I don't expect some handheld toy to replace his mom or me reading and talking to him, so I stopped stressing if the v-tech "curriculum" was as good as the Leapfrog's. It seems plenty educational, and more fun. It is a toy, after all.

Screen doesn't have a cover (like the iXL), and takes carts, but was much cheaper than the other two systems as well. I also don't think the iXL software would engage anyone over 5. The Explorer would have been a nice choice, but the Leaplets sound like a money pit, and by the time he would age into enough of their software, there would be something else around by then. He can have an ipod shuffle of something for his mp3's, so I won't miss that aspect of the Fisher-Price (on which I still wouldn't be able to put mp3's right now even if I didn't return it.)

Drawbacks - the QWERTY keyboard is hard for him to slide out sometimes. The screen has no cover without the case. With no stylus, he won't get writing practice, but we have plenty of paper and pencils in our house. While I think a physical keyboard is nice, it's probably no more or less cutting edge as a stylus for introducing kids to electronics.

This one is priced right, and has been a great purchase for us.

I bought two Mobigos, one for my 3 year old son and one for my 5 year old son. The included cartridge contains 6 generic games, each of which has an easy level and a difficult level. I like the color touch screen, it is much easier for my kids to use than the attached stylus on their original Leapsters. The Mobigo has a slide out Qwerty keyboard that allows the kids to type their name the first time they start it up, and is used in playing some of the educational games. This really feels like a sophisticated modern device, and teaches them basic technology skills that they will later apply to other things. The graphics are fun, colorful, and cartoonish.

These games are a big success! So far we're still playing with the original cartridges, I did buy two additional cartridges but they have not felt the need to try them yet. The games are fun and holding their attention for hours. My 3 1/2 year old needs help sliding the keyboard out, and sometimes asks for help with the game, but is having fun and not frustrated. My 5 year old who just finished Kindergarten is equally fascinated with the game, although he is easily able to do everything himself and was even able to put in the 4 AA batteries (not included) and replace the battery covers. You can turn off the background music if it gets annoying. My 5 year old is helping his brother when he gets stuck, which is nice since we are still actively working on sharing and taking turns every day! I like that the Mobigo is portable and they each have their own. The Mobigo comes with a USB cable to download games from the Vtech site(not yet available) and their are jacks for an AC adaptor and headphones (not included). I do wish there were more game selections and that the device was rechargeable; I should buy rechargeable batteries. I'm not sure how educational it will turn out to be, but I love that they will become better acquainted with a touch screen and a Qwerty keyboard.

I bought this for my 3 year old daughter because we have a long commute in the car,she enjoys pretending to text so I liked the keyboard, she loves electronics and I was tired of her playing games on my phone. She enjoyed the system with the exception of everyonce in a while it won't recognize the cartridge and it has to be reset, then mom tried the downloads. She loved the downloads more than the cartridge games (we have Dora and ToyStory 3), and I find them slightly more educational such as spot the difference, a piano keyboard, and coloring pages....The HUGE drawback is that only 3 downloads fit at one time and they disappear when you turn off the system or put in a cartridge. Had I known this I probably wouldn't have bought it. I had actually been considering buying an ipod touch due to the amount of "educational" apps I could find at a very cheap price (.99-1.99), but who buys a ipod touch for a 3 year old. I was also excited to see the games for the mobigo were around 5.99 (however the first year is free) considering the games for the leapster explorer are significantly more expensive. I am wishing more than ever that I just gave in and bought an ipod touch. For just slightly more than the cost of the system, games, downloads and accessories I could have gotten her a touch with a camera, the ability to watch movies, cheap "educational" games, and a way to listen to her own music, I even found a Dora game for 2.99 for her. It doesn't make sense to me that adult/teenage "toys" are made with so much more sense than kids games.

Overall a fun system, but could have been made much better and advertised in such a way that the downloads need to be replaced everytime.

So we download my daughters favorite game, drive off to grandmas and my daughter plays her favorite puppy game we downloaded. On the way she turns off the MobiGo, takes a nap, and when she wakes up grabs her MobiGo to play her favorite game again. Except, the game is now gone. We then must pullover at whatever neighborhood off-ramp we are at, pull out the laptop, find a wi-fi connection, and download her favorite puppy game to the MobiGo again, hoping she does not turn it off again until we are at grandmas.

We recently purchased the MobiGo for our 3-year old daughter. She loves it and would never notice the few things I did: 1) The advertised Vtech progress tracker - a significant factor in our choice over other products - does not exist yet, only a web page with a user interface example of what it might be like. 2) the down-loadable games from the website, are unfortunately lost each time the device is turned off - indicating flash memory rather than a memory card. And 3) the internal memory is only 30MB or so, a bit low in today's world, and allows only three games stored internally.

Suggested solutions: 1) finish the "progress tracker" coding and validation - or copyright/patent negotiation, 2 & 3) Add a memory card slot, to supplement the base memory. Last, this product appears it could play movies and store all games internally, dispensing with the Atari 2600ish era game card format.

Overall, a good product that deserves better than 3 stars but just cannot be given them. The team that engineered this had a great vision that is within the realistic bounds of today's technology, customer sophistication, and cost constraints, but has apparently been terribly corrupted in the manufacturing value engineering process to deliver a product with obvious potential but falls just short off. We like the VTech product engineering and truthful marketing approach - they are a company that is obviously a step ahead - so it really pains us to post this review.
*[after buying the MobiGo 'game storage' and using the learning progress function on the website, we changed out rating to 5-star].

Length:: 1:18 Mins

First off, the graphics look really good. We bought the vtech kid laptop and the screen was little, black and white only with very "blocky" graphics and simple games.

The MobiGo is color and the graphics look great. The game that it comes with is more fun when compared to the little play laptop we got only last year. It's also handy that you can play additional games by getting a new game cartridge.

Types Learning Games:
- Problem solving (like which one of these is different, etc.)
- Letter recognition
- Numbers
- Music
- The games are fun and entertaining

The Device Itself:
- Has a flip open QWRTY keyboard
- It has a touch screen with the right amount of touch sensitivity. We tried a different device that was similar but you had to have a special pen to touch the screen. This one works with finger touch.
- Weight: The MobiGo is a little heavy for 3-year old hands (as it states on the box 3-8 years old)
- It can run from batteries or DC power input
- It has volume control and a headphone jack

Overall, it's a lot of fun and a great learning device.

My eldest is 2 years 8 months old and keeps trying to play with my iPod touch. He knows how to slide his fingers on the touch screen to make the icons move, and I was very worried he was going to break it. So, I was looking for a touch screen video game for him when I ran across the MobiGo. I was very impressed with all the MobiGo came with, directional pad, QWERTY keyboard, touch screen...so I bought it and hoped it wasn't too advanced for my son, as the youngest games are for age 3. My son LOVES this video game. He currently has the game that came with the MobiGo, as well as the Adventures in Dillydale (sp?) one. He has a great time touching the screen to play the games, and has gotten quite good at a few of them. The MobiGo seems pretty sturdy, and has survived being dropped on the floor a few times. Everything is still working well, we have had it now for about a month, and it gets played a little bit every day. I would highly recommend this system for anyone looking for a handheld video game for a toddler.

This thing is absolutely bombproof. Our three year old son has dropped it, slobbered on it, poured syrup on it, touched the screen after his hands have been into almost everything....and it still runs! It was engineered with a 3 year old in mind--even the touchscreen continues to respond instantly after being through World War III. My wife and I have been raving about this for some time, but today was the kicker--as my wife drove off with the mobigo on the top of the car (my fault). She saw it fall to the ground and the game come out. After rescuing it she popped the game back in and it continued to rock. I wish we designed military equipment to stand up against such abuse.

Tried out both the MobiGo and Leapster 2 for my 4 year old.

Both are great products, but before you buy, be sure you understand what your getting.

Both have great games, online downloads and interactive touch screen. MobiGo adds the keyboard. Great so far.

The Bad: No Memory Card Slot, so if you turn off the MobiGo, you loose the games that you downloaded (Up to 4 at one time). You need to reconnect the game to your PC to reload. If your not near your PC, your out of luck and need to use the cartridges only. So if you travel, not the best system for downloaded games especially at $7.50 on average.

The Leapster 2 has SD card slots and great support, but no keyboard which is a huge feature of the MobiGo.

So if it is going to stay home, the MoboGo is a great choice, but if you travel, be sure it stays on and buy the additional power adapters to keep the game going. About $40 for both car and home power cords.

My 3-year old son loves the MobiGo. It has actually helped him learn quite a bit. Unfortunately, they only last a few weeks. We are on our second one in two months with a dead speaker! He does not play rough with it and has never dropped it. Read some of the other reviews. There are obviously serious quality control issues with these games. I'm not going to keep replacing it so he can play for a few more weeks only to be devastated again when it stops working.

In summary, this is a fantastic learning system for your toddler. Just make sure you buy a replacement plan or you'll be sorry. You might want to try the LeapPad Explorer instead and see if there is better quality there. Shame those are out of stock everywhere.

I'm really disappointed in this product. After reading many reviews and letting my son try various similar toys, I chose this one. What a mistake. The hardware quality leaves a lot to be desired and the games are a real mixed bag. This isn't exactly new technology and I expected much better.

My son loves it but is continually frustrated by the poor interface. The touch screen is of horrible quality. Most of the games require a level of accuracy the screen just can't handle. I've already had to contact customer service to get my money back on a downloadable game that is completely unusable.

The speaker stopped working after less than a week. It's only used with supervision so I know he hasn't dropped it or spilled anything on it or done something else that could explain the problem.

My recommendation is to try something else, this product just doesn't deliver.