Review: LeapFrog Crammer

Written on Feb 26, 2009 by Steve and filed under LeapFrog, Reviews

The LeapFrog Crammer is a “study and sound system”.  Aimed at kids between 8 and 14 years old, the Crammer provides a way to study and simultaneously listen to your favorite studying tunes.  It’s a straight-forward and intuitive device that can absolutely replace a multitude of flash-card decks, but is it cool enough to take a significant portion of a child’s gadget time?

Studying the Crammer

The Crammer’s main goal is to make it easy to study.  While your child is working through flash cards or quizzes, they can listen to their tunes.  All of the educational content is managed using the LeapFrog Connect software.  This software lets you set up the Crammer, browse the downloadable content, and manage files on the device.  The educational content is organized by subject (math, science, social studies, language arts) and grade (3rd through 8th).

If your child currently has a stack of flash cards that can be replaced by the Crammer, you’ll love the size.  It’s about the size of a thick wallet and weighs only 4.6 ounces.  As I mentioned earlier, it’s a pretty straightforward device, with just a few buttons, ports, and screen.

The LCD screen is actually a pretty old-school monochrome screen.  With as many gadgets as there are with color LCDs, it’s kind of a surprise to see a device with a screen like you would have found on older PDA from about 5 or 6 years ago.  While it’s nothing fancy, those of you who owned one of those old PDAs know that the simple screen means outstanding battery life.  The 3 AAA-sized batteries that power the Crammer can last a long time when it just has to power a monochrome screen.  The contrast is adjustable, but there is no backlight of any sort, so there is a limit to the lighting conditions under which the Crammer can be used.

As far as buttons, there are two along the top edge of the device – a “home” button to access the main screen of the device and an “enter” key to confirm selections and drill into menu items.  The slider-style power button is along the right side.  At this point, it might feel like something is missing, until you realize that the entire front panel of the Crammer is a 4-way directional pad to let you scroll up, down, left and right in menu items.

Finally, along the bottom edge of the Crammer, you’ll find a headphone jack and the mini-USB jack to connect the Crammer to your computer.  There is also a lanyard attachment point on the left edge of the device.

The Crammer has 1GB of internal memory to store the downloadable content and your music files.  This may not sound like a lot, but most flash card and quiz packs weigh-in at under 200KB.  Most of the storage space will be used up by music files.

The Crammer Content

When you first get the Crammer, you’ll want to get the LeapFrog Connect software installed since you really can’t do much on the device without it.  Once you’re up and running, it’s very intuitive to browse the download library to pick your flash card and quiz packs as well as add music.  Math packs include geometry and operations for 3rd-4th graders to algebra and probability for 5th graders to more advanced questions in these areas for 6th-8th graders.  Science packs range from beginning Earth science and life science to more advanced chemistry and physical science.  Social studies packs include geography, American history, and world history.  Language arts packs focus on the younger age groups with grammar usage and spelling.  Each flash card pack includes several subtopics as well.  For example, the 3rd-4th grade earth science pack covers: “Erosion, Weathering and Soil”, “Rocks, Minerals, and Fossils”, “Outer Space and Beyond”, and other topics.  Once you’ve selected the files to sync on to your Crammer, be patient as it can take some time to move the files, especially movie files that are a few megabytes.

In addition to downloading pre-built educational content, you can also create your own flash card sets.  This build-your-own tool also includes a Spanish translator so that you can type in an English word, press a translate button, and pick the right Spanish word to be on the other “side” of the card.  Using this language tool also includes an audio clip so that the student can hear the word as well.  Building a flash card set is extremely simple, but a bit time consuming, although it’s better than writing them all out.  You give your set a name, decide if it’s a “basic” set or a “Spanish Translator” set, then you put words on either side of the flash card.

Managing the files that are synced to your Crammer is extremely easy as well.  You can see everything that you’ve downloaded and then pick and choose the items that should be synced to the device.  A little “fuel gauge” shows how much storage space you have left on the device.

Using the Crammer

The Crammer is extremely intuitive.  The home screen has eight options: flash cards, quizzes, music, games, volume, stats, settings, and about.  Using the front plate directional pad, you navigate to the item you want to drill  into and then press the enter key on the top of the device.  Most of the items are pretty self-explanatory, and I’ll spend some more time on the flash cards, quizzes and music in a bit.  There are two games that come on the device – Domino Madness, a Tetris-like domino game; and Wheeler Dealer, where you simulate owning a scooter rental business.  Within settings, you can adjust the screen contrast, set the date and time, set the sleep time, and reset the device.  Within the “about” area, you can learn some shortcuts and you’ll also find the battery level meter.

To use flash cards, use the up and down navigation and then the enter key to drill into the selection of flash card packs installed on the Crammer.  The first side of the flash card is displayed once you enter a flash card pack.  To “flip over” the flash card, just press the enter key.  When you’re ready to move on, just press “right” on the screen.  If you only get partway through a set, the Crammer will remember where you were and allow you to pick up where you left off.   You can do this by selecting the “Resume the Flash Card Set” option that appears in the flash card pack list.

Quizzes work similarly – drill into a quiz (organized by subject, and then topic) to get started.  Questions on the quizzes are either multiple choice or true and false.  You use the up and down scrolling to pick your answer (or get a hint), and then the enter button to “select” your answer.  The Crammer will let you know if you’re right or wrong.  If you’re wrong, you’ll get a hint and can attempt the question one more time (only on multiple choice, of course).  If you miss it twice, the Crammer gives you the right answer and moves on to the next question.  At the end of the quiz, you’ll see your tally of correct answers and if you’ve completed the quiz in record time.  If you missed a lot, you can take a “Do Over Quiz” that will cover the questions that you missed the first time.

The Crammer lets you load up your favorite study tunes and connect a pair of headphones so that you can listen while you work.  If you’ve used other MP3 players, the Crammer is not too much different. You can drill into your music by artist, album, titles, etc.  There isn’t a way to set up playlist, but you can set up the Crammer to shuffle the songs as well as repeat them.  Once you’re ready to play, you get a graphical display that shows you the artist, song name, album name, play time, and then shows you which side of the directional pad to press to fast forward, rewind, and pause.  Once you start the music, it will continue playing while you do flash cards or quizzes.  The only thing that’s not entirely intuitive, from the music player area, is adjusting the volume.  You can go back to the main menu, but there is also a shortcut, where you can press the enter button for a few seconds to access the volume adjustment.

Customizing the Crammer

Our review unit came with the LeapFrog Crammer Customizer pack, which contains a silicone skin that wraps around the Crammer and three faceplate skins to customize the Crammer to your liking.  Also available are carrying cases.

Conclusion

If your child uses flash cards a lot, then the Crammer is a worthwhile investment.  There are some things about the device that could better, but the benefits certainly outweigh them.  On the negative side of things, the monochrome screen, while great for long battery life, doesn’t have a backlight and some fonts are hard to read.  Also, if you want to transfer a lot of music files, it takes a long time to transfer them to the Crammer.  A full album of MP3 files took more time thatn I wanted to wait to transfer to the Crammer.  There is a lot of free downloadable content to get you started, and the ability to create your own flash card sets rounds out the ability of the device to be your flash card deck replacement.  The added music player capability is absolutely a plus for a child.  In addition to the content that you can work through on the device, since this is a LeapFrog device, parents can check in on the progress made as the child goes through flash cards and quizzes.

4 out of 5 stars

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