Amazon’s Echo series has been offering decent devices in terms of enhancing the lifestyle of consumers. They have made life easier for a lot of us by integrating features that manages certain aspects in our lives that were previously consuming. Multitasking has definitely been a huge aspect with Amazon Echo devices. Alexa has become a universal assistant and has been helpful to numerous consumers in various manners. Although Amazon has released different Echo devices, in this blog, I wanted to discuss the Amazon Echo Kids. It is a children-centric smart speaker that has been integrated with features to help them learn as well as be able to do certain things themselves. There is of course parental controls that can be used to monitor all the data that is being consumed by your children. I do personally think that it is a good way of helping inquisitive kids to learn more about the things they are curious about via Alexa. It will definitely generate an interest in learning new things and hopefully will integrate it into a permanent habit.
Before delving deeper, let’s take a look at the features of the Amazon Echo Kids. It is a 1.6-inch full-range speaker, with a fabric-covered circumference, and a quartet of buttons on top that let you control the volume, turn off the microphone and perform actions such as silencing alarms and setting up Wi-Fi. A thin, halo-shaped LED indicator lets you know when Alexa is listening, has waiting notifications, or has lost its wireless connection. The integration of the LED light will also make it easier for the kids to realise when Alexa is listening or when they need to repeat something. The processor is powered by Mediatek — a good fit for swift internal functions. This smart speaker is suitable for kids in terms of size. It is offered in two cool designs — painted like a tiger or a panda on its exteriors. The designs are something that I personally quite liked because they look fun and vibrant and definitely seems like a toy — making it suitable for kids in terms of design.
Once you set-up Alexa, this speaker can answer all their questions and can also play the music they want and like. This actually reminds of the viral video of the kid asking Alexa to play ‘Baby Shark’. So basically kids will be able to ask Alexa to play the content they enjoy and I think it might be a good break as well because it will mean that the kids are not using the main Alexa — allowing you or the other people in the house to use it.
I am aware that several factors do come into consideration if you think about gifting a smart speaker to your kids. I personally feel that as long as you have parental control, it is not bad product for your kids. Of course you can offer limited screen timing as well as only allowing them to use it for certain things or particular periods of time so that they don’t become dependent on it. For someone like me who gets tired of answering questions, mainly cause I don’t know the answers, this will be a good alternative because of Alexa. This smart speaker has its drawbacks too because it might encourage children to be more dependent on AI so the usage of this speaker should be only perpetuated if you as parent think it is suitable for your children. At the end of the day, it is just another product which categorically speaking cannot replace real other things like playing in the park or reading real books.
