Review: Smart-e-Bear and Friends
Written on Jan 26, 2009 by Brian and filed under Intellitoys, Reviews
Smart-e-Bear is a collection of three interactive plush animals (bear, cat and dog) from Intellitoys. The animals contain sensors, a speaker and internal memory so kids can play games with them and listen to stories and songs. The animals are paired with a software that lets parents manage what’s on the animals. The software also connects to an iTunes-esque store where parents can buy more songs, games and activities for the animal.
Getting Started
Smart-e-Bear, dog or cat comes with a box stowed in his back that connects to your computer via included USB cord. The Smart-e is supposed to self install the software on first connection, but it didn’t work for us in Vista. We were able to get the Smart-e to show up as a removable drive, but we didn’t see anything that resembled a setup file on the drive. No matter, you can download the software (67MB) from the Smart-e-bear website.
The software, dubbed smart-e-software, takes some getting used to. The help documentation is pretty thin and on the first start, parents are largely going to be confused. You start off in the store, which does have a little bit of free content to go along with an hour or so of pre-installed free music, stories and games. But the store itself is hit or miss. Music is pretty easily searchable by artist, subject matter and the like, but stories for instance, there are nearly 100, but no sorting options at all.
The process of buying music or content could use a little help too. Select a free song for instance and there’s actually no summary or information about he song other than the title, artist and song length. If you select a free song or buy a song, the song gets added to your library, but doesn’t actually download until you go to the play planner section, which is where you manage the content on your animal.
The play planner has a lot to learn about too, including the differentiation between playdates and playlists. Rather than paraphrase it’s probably best just to quote the FAQ directly:
Q: What is a Playdate?
A: A Playdate is a collection of songs, stories, and games (or any combination of these) that you can put on your smart-e by syncing your toy with our smart-e-software. A Playdate can have games, stories, and/or a bunch of Playlists that each has songs with a cool theme in common. For example, you could have a Playdate that has Simon Says, The Three Little Pigs, a Playlist with tons of songs in Spanish, and another Playlist with three Lullabies. If you smart-e-sync your toy with this Playdate, your smart-e would then play all of these things.
Q: What if I want to just make a generic Playlist with songs that don’t have anything in common?
A: Our smart-e-software is pretty smart, so it will try and find something that your songs have in common. But don’t worry; if your songs really are about all sorts of different things, the software will just label your Playlist as “Music.”
Okay, so we honestly still don’t really get the playdates and playlists and after setting up several of each in the software, can’t really be sure which ones are loaded to the animal and/or how to access them. That’s not to say that it can’t be done, we’re quite sure the software is very robust and has a ton of functionality, but it’s simply not easy to use and the several parents we showed this to were frustrated with the interface. Even adding songs for instance can be confusing because the list of songs on the device is in a small scroll box on the right and shows the songs in the order they were added (or rearranged by the parent), not alphabetical. So it’s easy to have the same song added to your animal more than once.
The good news is, the company seems intent on offering a great product and is continually releasing updates to the software and firmware for the animals as well, so that’s a great sign. We would just prefer a more simple and easy to understand interface or the smart-e-software so it’s easier for parents, technical and otherwise, to get going right away.
Since the content on the animal has to be programmed to a certain extent, so the animals can say the titles of the songs for instance, you can only use content designed for the smart-e animals. There’s currently no mechanism to load your own music.
Within the software there is a great feature that’s simple but worth spending some time on. Parents can specify the name of the child who will be playing with the animal. There are over 1000 names to choose from, we found several more obscure names, along with the ones you’d expect. When the child turns on their smart-e animal, they are greeted with their own name, which is pretty fun.
Getting started with the smart-e is pretty easy until you get to the software, which incidentally is not required for immediate play with the toy. We suspect Intellitoys will endeavor to make the application more user friendly, which will go a long way to making Smart-e-Bear more likable for parents.
Using Smart-e-Bear
Once you get the data you want on the animal and re-stow the control box, he’s ready to go. The control box has the power switch, along with volume controls, something very much appreciated in a toy like this. It also has a headphone jack, which is another nice touch.
Children are greeted with their name if you’ve specified that, then are prompted to play a game or do to “squeeze my foot” to do something else. Get used to that…as squeezing the feet and hands are the only way to navigate the content on Smart-e-Bear. It gets pretty repetitive, especially for kids who are a little older and want to find a specific song or activity. A song that’s 15th on their playlist for instance would take nearly 20 hand and foot presses, with the verbal instructions issued the entire time. To be fair, this isn’t really an MP3 player, but since playing music is a core function, it would be nice to have an easier way to navigate through the content.
Functionally the animals are very well built. We aggressively tugged on our test dog and found the seams to hold strong with no tearing. The speaker is also quite a treat. Sound comes out nice and clear from the mouth area of the animal. And as noted, there is volume control as well, something not all toys like this offer. There are sensors in the hands and feet that respond well to touch. The ones in the feet though are really more in the toes, but nce kids figured that out, they didn’t have any trouble.
The kids we had play with the dog really enjoyed it, the smaller ones obviously didn’t really care about managing playlists and the like, they enjoyed hearing the stories and music. The older we got though, the higher the expectations and the less interest they had. Maybe we didn’t have enough content on the dog to appeal to the older kids, we hadn’t bought anything additional.
It seems the sweet spot is really in the 1-3 age range, even though the box indicates it’s for 2+. We think kids who are exploring sensory objects will get value, even if they’re not totally getting the control scheme. Perhaps a parent or older sibling is the best guide to help them get the most of it, we just note that the animals can skew younger than two.
Bottom Line
If the software were more user friendly and there were more free content, we’d give the Smart-e-Bear an extra star. For $70 though and to get the most out of the toy, a required investment in songs and stories, we have to hold back our recommendation a bit. We like the device and the direction it’s going, but it does feel a little first generation. We have no doubt that continued development will lead to an even better device and software package and we know that their customer support is very solid. These factors lead us to give Smart-e-Bear a solid recommendation when it’s on sale or after we’ve noted significant progress to the issues noted previously.
3 out of 5 stars
Update 3/21/09 – A new version of the desktop application has been released.
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