This past week, we received a LeapFrog Tag Reading System to test and review. As always, we were excited to check out a new product from LeapFrog. I mean, these guys have a great reputation and we’ve always been really satisfied with their products. So first off, what is the Tag Reading System. If nothing else, it is quite simply an amazing piece of technology that fits in the palm of your child’s hand. The “system” consists of a pen-shaped “reader” and specially encoded books. By touching various icons on the pages of the book with the tip of the “reader”, the device will either read the page aloud to your child or play an interactive game based on the current page in the book. In addition to that, everything on the page is touchable by the “reader” which provides great voices, sound effects, and music that go along with the picture that was touched. Your kids can even touch on an individual word on the page and hear it read back to them. You can drag the reader like a pen across the words on the page and it will read them slowly so your kids can hear each word individually if they want to. The 16MB system retails for $39.99, with a just-released 32 MB system retailing for $49.99. The books for the system retail for $13.99 each.

Technobabble

I’m a total tech geek so I want to spend just a brief moment to tell you how this works (and I’ll try not to bore you too much!). LeapFrog has packed this small handheld device with so much amazing technology, including a tiny sophisticated infrared camera that “reads” the letters, words and symbols on the pages, a 32-bit RISC processor, and a DSP driven stereo audio system. OK, that might have been boring, but what it means is that you get super fast response times from the reader when you swipe it across the page or touch a picture.  And you get surprisingly great sound from a tiny speaker.  The infrared camera part…just too cool. The books themselves are designed using what’s called “dotted media”. The infrared camera reads these incredibly tiny dots on the pages and translates them into words, sound effects and music that are played through the “reader”. The coolest thing is that by using some special optical patterns and image processing techniques, the Tag reader always knows exactly which book it’s reading from, what page it is on, and where on the page it is! That means you can skip around from page to page, or even from book to book without having to change anything! It’s all seamless. OK, enough of my technobabble. On to the good, the bad, and the bottom line. This is a review after all right?

What We Tested

The 16MB Tag Reading System with the following titles:

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Ages 5 to 7)
• Ben 10 Alien Force: Fugitive from Outer Space (Ages 5 to 7)
• Fly High, Fly Guy (Ages 4 to 6)
• Scooby-Doo! Shiny Spooky Knights (Ages 5 to 7)
• Ozzie and Mack (Ages 4 to 6)

The Good

As with so many other LeapFrog products, this one is thoughtfully designed and well-executed. And, as usual, it makes learning (and especially reading) fun and enjoyable. We tested it with both our 3- and 6-year old boys and they immediately gravitated toward it. They both grew up using LeapPads so the interaction was pretty much natural for them. They quickly understood how to move through the book and get it to “do things“. Our 3-year old was interested in hearing the story, but far more interested in what he could touch on the page that would talk to him or make noises. He was a bit on the young side for this system but really enjoyed the Fly High, Fly Guy book as well as Ozzie & Mack (which comes with the 16 MB system). Our 6-year old was definitely interested in hearing the stories read to him as well, but loved the interactive games throughout the books. His favorite book by far was Star Wars: The Clone Wars followed closely by Ben 10 Alien Force: Fugitive from Outer Space (what can I say, he takes after his geek dad’s love of space stuff!).

Both of our boys really enjoyed earning “rewards” throughout the book. As they progressed through the the books, or succeeded at certain games, they earned rewards that they can print out using LeapFrog’s Connect software. The rewards are simple: doorknob hangers or certificates, or mazes. As simple as they seem, the rewards are a great incentive for increasing attention spans and improving listening comprehension. The kids quickly realized that they need to focus on the details to play the games and win their rewards. The rewards are issued when you connect your Tag reader to your computer and synchronize it with the Leapfrog Connect software. Then you can view and print the rewards for your budding readers.

The books themselves are really well designed and interactive. Along with the “reader” providing great quality sound effects, character voices, and music, these books are anything but boring. It also seems that the audio cues have a positive impact on comprehension as well. As entertaining as this system is, it looks like it will come in handy on long car rides or flights with our little guys.

The system setup is easy and takes anywhere from 10-15 minutes depending on the speed of your internet connection. First you need to install the LeapFrog Connect software and if you don’t already have one, set up a LeapFrog parent account. After that, you use the Connect software to find, download, and transfer the audio component of purchased books onto your Tag reader. That’s it. Pretty easy set up and installation. In our testing, the installation went remarkably smoothly on my PC but crashed a few times on my Mac. But, this wasn’t that big of a problem. I called LeapFrog’s tech support and they quickly pointed me to their alternate installer which is easily downloaded right here http://www.leapfrog.com/en/home/support/product_pages/leapfrog_connect.html. Just look for this section on the Connect webpage and click to download the installer you need for your operating system:

The Bad

The most obvious problem with the Tag system is the storage capacity. The current 16 MB model only holds five stories at a time. The new 32MB model doubles that capacity but still it’s not much. The problem is that you to have go online and download each book’s audio component onto you desktop computer, then transfer it to your Tag. If you’re out of space on your Tag, you need to remove a book first before adding another. My biggest problem with all of this is that LeapFrog spent a lot of time putting together an otherwise great piece of technology and skipped out on memory. Memory is so cheap, why not throw a full 2GB or 4 GB deal inside so you can store every book in their collection without worry? Heck, you could even sell it pre-loaded with all the current titles and only add the new ones if you needed to later on.

Let’s face it, being the parents of 3- and 6-year old boys means we go through lots of batteries. And this little device doesn’t help the situation. In less than two days the unit cheerfully informed us “It’s time to change the batteries”. Wow! OK, so we use rechargeables, we weren’t that worried. But still, my real question is, why not make the entire unit rechargeable…you know, built in like your iPhone? Especially considering that the reader already has a USB connection for your computer to transfer the audio content to the unit…make it rechargeable through the USB cable.

If you are going to use the LeapFrog Connect software to track your child’s progress and LeapFrog Learning Path (which we will be reviewing right here in the coming weeks) you’ll quickly realize that you need more than 1 Tag system if you have more than 1 child. That’s because each Tag system can only store one profile at a time. And each profile can link to only one Learning Path. But, if your not going use Learning Path to track progress etc, no worries. You’re good to go.

One small issue we had with usability that we were a bit surprised with was that if you select the option to read the entire story at the beginning of the book, you can’t touch anything else throughout the book. If you do, the reader stops reading the story and you must start the story all the way back at the beginning again. Not a huge issue, but more of a tip if you’re using one of these for the first time.

The Bottom Line

We spent quite a bit of time watching our two boys use this and had some discussions with them about the system as well. Overall the kids really liked it. We liked it too. It’s neat, it’s well designed, it’s cool, and quite frankly, it’s fun. But the key question for us was, will this teach your kids to read? Probably not. As great as this product is, it’s more about making books enjoyable and about listening comprehension. There’s no doubt that both of these are really good things. Anything that gets a kid to pick up a physical book and spend time with it these days is a good thing. However, if you’re looking for a system to help your child learn to read, this might not be it. The way we see this working best as a learning tool is if parents actively engage with their kids while they’re using this system. When kids are unguided with the Tag, I think they’re going to default to listening and game mode, and like I said before, nothing wrong with that. But for real learning, turning off the “read it to me” feature is probably best. And keeping it off most likely requires the aid of mom or dad. With the “read to me” feature off, struggling or even advanced readers can use the reader only to help them with words they are having difficulty with. I think that goes a long way to helping kids learn to read.

And on a separate note, systems like the Tag are great for keeping kids entertained and engaged with books. But, I really believe that as parents, we need to see them and understand them as a good addition to but not a substitute for personal, snuggle-up, reading time. Well, that’s my two-cents anyway.

Golden Egg Rating

Overall we give the LeapFrog Tag Reading System 4 out of 5 Golden Eggs for great design, incredible technology and innovation, entertainment value, and sheer enjoyment. The storage capacity and battery-life both present some technical issues that could have easily been resolved in design and really hinder the overall score of this product. In addition, we’d like to have seen a bit more work done on creating incentives for the kids to read more on their own. That said, this is another rock-solid product from LeapFrog.

Tag Slideshow and LeapFrog Connect Screenshots

Check out the lightbox slideshow below for images of the Tag Reading System and LeapFrog’s Connect software. Simply click on a thumbnail to start the slideshow. Details and information for each screenshot are located at the bottom of the image in the slideshow.