Kids Electronics!

We really thought about this as well, but the decision ended up being made for us because our son were given these as gifts. One friend gave our son a VTech product. (I can't remember the name, but is was a laptop style.) The screen is too small and the games are a waste of time. It ends up being a noisy toy that he uses when he wants to 'pretend' to be like mom and dad.

Another friend bought my son a Leapster. This has greater longevity because you can buy different cartridges. (Warning - they are not cheap! Anywhere between $15-23.) But he usually gets one for his birthday. The only thing I don't like is most of the cartridges are based on TV/Disney characters.

Good luck,
K.

I would recommend the Handy Manny laptop, I think. We got our son a Thomas the Tank Engine laptop for his third Christmas and he LOVED it! It's virtually indestructible and it has about 30 games that are actually educational as well as entertaining. (He's a little beyond it now and doesn't play with it as much, but now his 3-year-old sister plays with it all the time.)It's not a major battery eater, either. I haven't seen the Handy Manny one, but I've seen several other "character" laptops similar to the Thomas one, so I'm assuming the HM one is comparable. (By the way, we've also given two of the Thomas laptops as gifts and the parents of the recipients have given us good reports as well.)

My daughter had both the v-tech and the leapster. Very spoiled by her grandparents. She likes her leapster better then the v-tech. She is 5 and still uses the leapster.

My 3 year old grandson has a handheld Leapster and he loves it. My 4 year old nephew and 6 year old niece each have one too. They are great! And very easy to use. He is only 3 and he can now find his name on the log in screen and click on it to get started. He has learned to recognize his name over the other 3 kids' names we put in there.

I got my son the L-Max system at 4...it is by Leapfrog...I highly reccommend anything they make..it is similar to the V-tech..it is hand held or can be hooked up to the tv. They have the Leapster that is just handheld that is a little less expensive. Check it out...and WELCOME to the South!

I've heard great things about the Leapster and wish we had gotten it for our son instead of the V-Tech V-smile. It's a good toy...when it works. We can't charge the battery because it doesn't fit on the charger correctly. We even bought the A/C adapter and that doesn't work either. It kept turning off. Finally, we just resorted to batteries, but they drain pretty quickly. I have 2 boys now (6 & 3) and they have not played with it near enough to have gotten our money's worth out of it. My older son wants a Nintendo DS now which we are giving him for Christmas so we're going to try to get our 3 year old back on the V-tech, but I don't know how well it will go. My niece had the Leapster and played with it for years.Good luck with whatever you decide.

Hi M.,

My son's are now 8 and 6 1/2. They got Leapsters when they were really too young to use them properly (around 2 1/2 year old), but we traveled a lot and it kept them busy. They are still playing with the Leapsters and have asked for the LeapFrog Didj for Christmas. I can't say enough good things about the Leapsters and the edu-tainment the boys have had from them. If you decide on a hand-held, the trick I learned was to have a few different games because just like you wouldn't want to watch the same movie over and over again, they like it better if they can change games (subjects) back and forth, too. The box will tell what subject (math, reading, logic, etc) it covers.

Good luck!!