The LeapPad Explorer tablet has a 5-inch capacitive touch screen, a built-in rear-facing camera, 2GB of storage and an accelerometer. It’s just like a real tablet! Actually, despite its relatively large plastic frame, it feels surprisingly light in the hand – and sturdy. It’s a job requirement for a kid-friendly tablet anything, yes, but it was still impressive to see a touchscreen device that felt like it would be no big deal if it was dropped in the parking lot.
The apps I got to see focused mainly on the creative and interactive side of LeapFrog’s learning-based mission. It has the obligatory Photo Booth clone with touch controls and a storybook app that lets kids stick their photos into ready-made pages and put them in any ridiculous order they see fit. But the really clever stuff is the profile-based dynamic content system. It completely retools stories for different reading levels, and offers more challenging tasks across all of its apps once a user “levels up” in an area. It just seems like something that will get a lot of replay value.
LeapPad will come with four apps when it’s released on August 15. There will about 80 more available at launch through an iTunesy marketplace, accessible through a Mac and PC client. The company plans to offer about 100 total, but the LeapPad also takes cartridges from the older Leapster models (backwards compatibility!).
LeapFrog also crammed some social media features into its platform, but those are mostly for parents. The desktop client allows parents to save and share (through email and Facebook) more or less anything their kid does on the tablet, so you have clusters of that clogging your feeds to look forward to.
The controls aren’t the snappiest, and moving from app to app seemed a little sluggish. Touch-control especially didn’t seem very responsive in the menu system. The platform isn’t going to be teeming with apps either, since all of them are conceptualised internally before being commissioned. But at $US100, it’s almost worth its price as kid-insurance on your main tablet, before even considering that it’s a pretty cool educational gadget. [LeapFrog]
Chris
Friday, July 1, 2011 at 10:53 AMI hear Leapfrog have acquired Apple and this is the new Ipad, pure progress.
Lauren
Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 3:06 PMDo you know if I purchase one of these and an app card from US if it will work in Australia?
Steve
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 12:06 PMI was advised by Leap Frog (US) that they work anywhere in the world
Jen
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:35 AMCan you load movies onto them?
annoyed
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 6:43 PMWARNING. There is no support for a broken units in Australia. My son stepped on his one month after it was bought and managed to crack the screen. I have been told in an email from Funtastic, the Australian ‘support’ people, that there is nowhere to get the unit repaired and it therefore cannot be fixed in Australia.
Coz
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 8:50 AM@ annoyed
Call Funtastic back. My daughter managed to crack her screen with the stylus pen. I called them and they asked me to send it back for testing. When I first called they suggested I try an Iphone repairer. I had no luck with this as there are no replacement screens available. Try again and keep trying until you get somewhere.
bryan
Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 6:39 PMThats right dont buy it if you want problems hard to get any service at all from leapfrog fail unit dont waste you money on this product
Kris
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 10:59 AMI ordered mine through Amazon at USD99 and a USD13 shipping charge. It arrived in 10 days as promised. Careful – it only backwards compatible with Explorer cartridges – a friend gave me a stack of Leapster cartridges and they are too large. If you look very carefully on the Leapfrog website you can find it noted in the small print.