Review: VTech KidiDoodle
Written on Nov 28, 2008 by Steve and filed under News, Reviews, VTech
The VTech KidiDoodle is a drawing system that allows kids to have fun doodling with a friend. A wireless connection, accomplished with IR lights, allows drawings and e-cards to be sent and received. Included games provide cooperative play and teach some basic spelling, counting, and matching skills. The KidiDoodle comes in packs of two, so you’ll be equipped for cooperative play right out of the box.
The contents of the box are pretty simple – the two drawing pads, in different colors – which have attached stylus pens, and the manual. Each drawing pad uses 3 AA batteries, which are not included.
Features
Each drawing pad has a touch sensitive drawing area where the stylus is used to create drawings, select different drawing implements, and save or load images. When you use the stylus pen on the drawing area, the plastic membrane presses down on a “sticky” layer below it so that you can see what you’ve drawn. A slider below the drawing area separates the layers to “erase” the doodles.
To get the drawing to show up in the LCD screen above the drawing area, there is a button on the stylus that must be depressed while drawing on the drawing area. The resolution of the LCD is not amazing, so fine details don’t translate well from the drawing area to its electronic version.
Once you have a drawing that you want to send to the other KidiDoodle, sending it is as easy as pressing the “send” button right next to the LCD. Once the device detects another doodle pad, it transmits the picture and notifies the other participant that a new drawing has been received. To view the incoming drawing, just press the “receive” button. And don’t worry; the drawing that you were in the middle of will still be there when you’re done viewing the incoming message.
Beyond just “free-doodling”, there are several other activities that can be done on the KidiDoodle. These activities are launched using the round buttons below the drawing pad. If you want to send an Ecard, just press the Ecard button. In the LCD, you can navigate the ecard options by tapping the left and right arrows on the drawing pad with the stylus. Once you see the one you like, you just click the button on the stylus.
Another one of the activities is the Gallery. In the Gallery, you can browse your drawings that you’ve saved (by tapping the save button on the drawing pad) or ecards that you’ve received. You can save up to three of your own images and three that were sent to you. Once the memory is full, if you save another image, it will just overwrite the oldest image in memory.
There are ten games that you can play on your own or with another player on another KidiDoodle. Just launch the activity and press the right and left areas on the drawing pad to cycle through the options. The game options are: Patchwork, Bounce the Ball, Coin Counting, Spelling, Odd One Out, Tic Tac Toe, Memory Cards, Grape Gobble, Super Dancer, and Treasure Hunt. Some games require drawing, some require pointing, and some require counting and then tapping the right answer, so there are a variety of skills. It should be easy to find something that will fit your child’s interests and skill level.
There are a few other items on the drawing pad that deserve a mention. There is a frame button that lets you cycle through different frames to add to your drawing. There is a “reverse” button that will reverse the “colors” of your drawing the LCD. In addition to “pen” mode, which is the default drawing mode, you can also click the spray paint button or eraser button. When you choose either of these modes, you can either apply the spray paint or erase areas of the drawing by moving the stylus and holding the button on the stylus. The last button on the bottom right of the drawing pad is the erase all button if you want to start from scratch.
Performance and Usage
If your child is interested at all in drawing, the KidiDoodle is very engaging. Add a kind of “email” and it becomes a blast. It’s very fun to make an electronic copy of your drawing that shows up on the LCD, but as I mentioned before, the resolution of the LCD is low so fine details on the drawing pad can’t always be resolved on the LCD. However, this did not disappoint my 6-year-old at all. In the relatively short usage that I’ve had with the device, there are no signs of wearing out. However, I would expect to see some normal wear in the drawing pad area and possibly a decrease in the sensitivity of the drawing pad-to-LCD translation over the long-term.
Your child will certainly develop some favorite games on the device. Some of them will certainly hold their attention and interest more than others. Games like drawing the missing half of a picture (Patchwork) are actually quite challenging, and ones like Coin Counting will be too simple for most five- and six-year-olds.
The IR communication between the doodle pads works very well – much better than I anticipated. According to the manual, the two drawing pads must be within 10 feet of each other and the IR lights (at the top of the pad) need to be within a 30 degree field of view. From my experience, the drawing pads could communicate across large rooms easily and didn’t always have to be within that 30 degree field of view. For example, my son and brother were using them in the car; with both devices facing forward and they were having no problems. The other thing that the manual mentions is that you’ll need to avoid other sources of infrared radiation, like sunlight or other remote controls, as they could affect the communication between the drawing pads.
Conclusion
For a retail price of $30, you get two electronic drawing pads that can send pictures back and forth. In my experience they’re very engaging and fun. My 6-year-old loved it. VTech markets the KidiDoodle for kids that are 3-years-old and up. A 3-year-old would probably require a little bit of assistance to get started and to get things figured out, but 5 and 6-year-olds will have no problem picking things up on their own. It’s hard to say how long these devices will work as expected and the resolution of the electronic images leave something to be desired, but the KidiDoodle is a very good value for a fun and engaging toy that encourages drawing as well as teaching some spelling, counting, and matching with its included games.
4 out of 5 stars
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