Review: Yoto Player

The thorny question of how much screen time kids should get hangs over every parent like a rain cloud. Whether the worries are overblown or not, finding alternative activities for kids feels important. There’s a world of games and gadgets designed to free your little ones from the tyranny of the touchscreen, but few deliver on that promise. Enter: the Yoto Player.

It's a wireless speaker, but what sets it apart is you can buy audiobooks on physical cards. Your child slots these cards into the top of the Yoto Player to start listening, like inserting a cartridge into old-school video game consoles. It's not only for audiobooks, but also meditations and sleep stories, child-friendly radio stations, podcasts, plus soothing sleep sounds. All of this comes without a screen in sight—there’s just a cute pixel-art display that doubles as a clock.

It's aimed at kids aged 3 to 12 years old, so I enlisted the help of my 8-year-old daughter to test the Yoto Player. She instantly fell in love.

It helps that the Yoto Player looks so cute. It’s a beige cube with a wedge on the back that makes it look like a tiny house if you place it face down. The front features a colorful pixel-art display with orange buttons at the top left and right that act as customizable shortcuts (more on them later). Power it up with the button on the bottom right corner. 

The border around the wedge shape on the back can light up in different colors to serve as a night light, which is a nice perk. There are speaker grills on either side, a slot at the top for inserting cards, and a circular indent on the bottom that magnetically connects with the included charger—it's battery operated so your kid can tote it around the house. It weighs a little more than a pound, and it's comfortable for kids to handle. The soft-touch plastic it's made of feels like it can survive sticky fingers and the odd tumble or two,

My daughter immediately fell in love with the pixel art on the front, which displays the current time by default and changes to show related pictures when you play content. That's the real draw here—the Yoto Player supports a large collection of audiobooks, and each one is connected to a physical plastic card that's about the size of a credit card.

The library is solid, with content ranging from classics like Winnie the Pooh and the works of Julia Donaldson for younger kids to Diary of Wimpy Kid, Treasure Island, and Roald Dahl for those slightly older. Prices for these cards vary from $6 to $12, which I initially thought was expensive, but it's on par with Audible's audiobook prices.

The beauty of the card system is that your kids can simply select the story they want to hear and slot the card in to listen. Each one comes in a pouch with an adhesive on the back so you can stick them on the wall. We have an audiobook collection on Audible, but if my daughter wants to listen to a story, she has to ask us. Physical cards with Yoto Player give even the youngest kids some agency.

Stories start when a card is slotted in and stop if it’s removed. These cards have near-field communication (NFC) sensors inside, and once inserted, the Yoto Player knows exactly what to play. It's the same tech used in smartphone contactless payments with Apple Pay or Google Pay, or how you can bring physical Amiibos into certain Nintendo games.    

The Yoto Player remembers your place, so it will pick up where you left off the next time that card is inserted. Unfortunately, you can't rewind or fast-forward audio, though the company says this function will be available soon. There is obviously a risk that these cards can disappear (only to be found years later), but everything in your library is mirrored with a digital copy in the parental app; even if you lose a card, you can still play the content from your phone.

Beyond books, you’ll also find cards for phonics, sing-along songs, and meditations. Most interesting of all are the Make Your Own cards, which cost $20 for a pack of 10. You can customize playlists of content in your library, or you can add in your own audio files, such as existing audiobooks you already own or music tracks you have in MP3 or AAC format. That includes audio you record yourself in the Yoto app.

I had a lot of fun writing and recording a story for my daughter, but the possibilities are endless. You can have a grandparent read a favorite book or share a story from their past. Record friends telling jokes, or let your kid create their own stories to share with the family at dinner. These cards can also be reused, so you can always add to playlists or change the content as your kids grow.

I first balked at the $100 asking price for the Yoto Player, especially since cards are sold separately, but there are lots of hidden extras that make it a decent value. 

There’s a large collection of readily accessible and free child-friendly podcasts and radio stations, including a unique Yoto Daily episode. My daughter listens to the radio while she sketches or potters around in her room. And sleep sounds like rain and white noise, plus an excellent sleep radio option that combines a random mix of lullabies, classical music, and sleep sounds, help my daughter drift off at night.

You can set the exact times when you want the Yoto Player to change from a daytime to nighttime picture, which is a useful visual aid for kids who can’t tell time well yet. If it shows the sun, then they know it’s OK to get up; if it’s the moon, they should stay in bed. When my kids were sleep training, we used the Gro-Clock, but it costs $58 and lacks other features.

Of course, there's the option of using the Yoto Player as a Bluetooth speaker. We can play the audiobooks we already have elsewhere, and my daughter can listen to Spotify Kids, too.

The speaker's audio quality is nothing to get excited about. It sounds just OK, and the volume is limited (though parents might be glad about that). Anything on our Best Bluetooth Speakers guide is going to sound better. Also, the library of content is good, but it doesn’t have the breadth of choice on Audible.

Battery life is quite variable too. It’s supposed to last up to 8 hours off the charger and offer 6 hours of continuous play, but my daughter says it dies a lot faster than that, and she tends to leave it on the charger all the time. One other thing she doesn’t like is how the time disappears when a story is playing, so she has to remove the card to check it.

The Yoto Player also needs a Wi-Fi connection to play the radio as well as for audiobooks the very first time you insert a card. However, it does have 8 gigabytes of built-in storage, so it downloads stories when cards are first inserted, enabling them for offline play later. There are no microphones or cameras, and Bluetooth connectivity is turned off by default.

I was skeptical about this little cube, largely because of its price and the fact that you can access much of its content with a cheap Bluetooth speaker. But the ability to hold media makes it feel special. That's what won me over, and, more importantly, won my daughter over. I came upstairs last night to chase her to bed, only to find her already tucked in with the Yoto Player, listening to a story.