Review on LeapFrog LeapStart Green - Achieve Preschool Success by Christopher Hicks

A great way to get kids excited about learning. We originally got this for a 5 year old to work on a fun educational activity, then a 2 year old quickly took an interest in it too. When you receive the product for the first time and if you purchase additional books, you will need to connect your device to your computer to download the accompanying audio via the Leapfrog app. I highly recommend you take care of the prep work before the kids see this because the wait for the installation to complete was a nightmare for a kid who really wanted to try it. First thoughts on the product. I seriously thought it was broken. I downloaded the app, connected the device to my computer and installed the books. I turned it off and gave the five year old a try but there is no sound at all. I skipped the setup step and didn't see the Extract button in the top left corner of the app. After successfully removing and turning off the device, the sound is ready to use. If you don't eject the device properly, the audio won't work, just plug it back in and press the eject button to sync the audio. The application itself is easy to use, it just takes a long time to load. Computer. Just find the books you have, click the button under the book to install the audio, and extract when you're done installing all the books. Remember that you must do this for any additional books you purchase. It looks like the device has 199 MB of memory. If you browse through the different books available, they range from around 7MB to 18MB of accompanying audio files per book. The stylus itself has a short cord that feels a bit uncomfortable at times. It's large and easy to grasp, but sometimes it's difficult for a 5-year-old to see the tip of a pen and the page of a book at the same time while tracing an object. The pen also leaves dents and stains on book pages. Luckily that's not a problem yet. Headphones can be a good option as the volume isn't loud enough to be heard in slightly noisy environments. And it's not uncommon for it to be loud here and two very active children running around. Be prepared to invest big bucks in books. There are many great book options to use with this device if you can find them. There are several books that we are interested in that are currently either not available or are beyond our budget. All in all, we really like this device. In fact, it arouses our child "I don't want to study at home" for learning.