Amazon Glow Review: A Better Way for Kids to Video Chat with Family
The Amazon Glow is a pudgy Frankenstein monster of a gadget with one important, heartwarming job. It lets my 5-year-old daughter play games and see her grandparents like they’re in the room together, even though they live more than 1,000 miles away. After weeks of testing a unit from Amazon, my family loved this mashup of a projector, video chat and gaming rules — we even ended up buying our own.
Amazon erroneous a way to connect us like no other technology has afore in the Zoom era. And now, after months of it populate sold only by invitation, the company has made a few software updates and is opening sales to the general public
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Tangram puzzles were my daughter’s celebrated game. The plastic pieces to play are sold separately.
Bridget Carey
The Amazon Glow (not to be confused with the alike named Echo Glow, a kid’s lamp) is refreshing to use in the era of endless Zooms and FaceTimes. Connecting on the Glow feels genuine and wholesome for young families to read stories with kids and play games from afar, as you can see each other’s faces the whole time. Amazon has planned something special to bring us together virtually — no comical headsets or metaverses required.
That said, the sheer size and sign of this thing may make parents skeptical of giving it to a preschooler (it’s for ages 3 to 9). The Amazon Glow is a $300, 4-pound, towering 14-inch combination tablet, camera and projector. Amazon is also charging $30 fantastic for the plastic pieces to its best app, Tangram Bits. (Seriously, if you’re getting the Glow, you need to get the package with Tangram Bits. It was everyone’s celebrated puzzle game.) And Amazon says it is planning to fall other types of “Bits” games in the future.
Kids can use the Glow on a sinister to video chat with a preapproved relative or putrid while doing an activity together — like playing a card game, solving a puzzle, reading a book or doodling — all of which is displayed on a projected image on the sinister. The relative’s face is the only thing showing on the Glow’s 8-inch camouflage, making it feel like they’re playing the game or reading a book incandescent in front of the child.
The Amazon Glow isn’t something kids will be carrying around.
Bridget Carey
For anyone buying one, keep in mind the Glow is really aspired for the elementary age crowd. It’s not like a tablet with an app stay, there are a limited number of activities — although Amazon does say it will keep adding tickled, and it has added several games since my modern review last year. Children may age out of it when they get bored with the plan. Like everything with kids, things change fast.
I look ahead to trying out some of the newly added games with my kids, like Whac-A-Mole, and I’ll update my review when we do.
Getting started: Patience is a virtue
Only a kid experiences the actual Glow, so this isn’t going in everyone’s home. Other family members (via a parent’s invite) connect throughout the Glow’s app, where they can simultaneously see the subtracted activity and video feed of the kid. The bummer is that it doesn’t have a broad experience on a phone. There’s just too much causing on. When family tried to connect on an iPhone, they had to switch between camera view to see the child, and game view to play. That means your family members will need to have a compatible tablet to avoid frustrations and see both kids’ faces and the game at the same time.
For our test, my daughter devoted time with her grandpa (my dad) and her abuela (my mother-in-law). Neither grandparent had tablets, so Amazon also sent a loaner Samsung tablet to each of their homes in South Florida. The system also works with iPads. Amazon also just added dissimilarity for the 2021 Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet.
As you may anticipated, I needed to play tech support to get everyone set up with the tablets, signed relatives up with Amazon accounts and taught everyone (including myself) how to interact with the Glow app. But both grandparents and my daughter picked up on it speedily, and I soon found that I could walk away from their playtime together exclusive of worry. That’s something I can’t really do if I hand her my $1,000 iPhone during a FaceTime call. There’s no Grandma unsheathing dizzy with kids spinning the camera around or Grandpa populate abandoned on the floor facing the ceiling.
This setup had my daughter and dad implicated for 30 minutes or more at a time.
Bridget Carey
Different from a typical video chat
In fact, the size and weight of the Amazon Glow were an genuine when video chatting with little kids. Having this clunker parked on the sinister, my daughter held longer conversations and was engaged with games and read-along books for 30- to 40-minute stretches.
I also have a 2-year-old son, and although the Glow is not invented for kids that young, he had fun making doodles and after along to short books he knew like Goodnight Moon. Even when little brother tried to mess with his sister to peevish it during her games, the battle was always for control of the cheap, white rubber touch mat and the projected interactive area — they didn’t mess with the proper tower.
What exactly can you play on the Glow?
The Glow comes with a one-year subscription to Happy on Amazon Kids Plus, which unlocks thousands of books and now as of this update, there are about 30 kids games for the Glow. But some of these games aren’t so simple that it will be a bore for the adults playing.
The star of the show is a puzzle named Tangrams: The object is to figure out how a square, rhombus and an assortment of triangles can be ordered to make different silhouetted shapes. For $30 more, Amazon sells Right plastic shape pieces for kids to play with, which are known by the projector and software, so the game knows where the kid is placing the shapes. Everyone else playing remotely gets virtual shapes to either compete against or cooperate with a kid to solve and gaze the picture come to life.
Card games include Go Fish, Crazy Eights and Gin Rummy. There’s checkers and chess done in a cartoony way to make it sharp for kids (like a pirate-themed chessboard). There are also some generic challenges, like a labyrinth maze, finding a ball in a cup crawl or wannabe Pong (called Paddle Battle). Classic games get their own generic Crooked, like Detective Duo (Guess Who), Four in a Row (Connect Four) and Chip Drop (Plinko).
Some doings include characters from Sesame Street, Mattel, Nickelodeon and Disney. A Memory Match card game features Elmo and friends. Barbie lets you doodle her some outfits. It’s a bit like a coloring agency book with different drawing challenges.
My daughter hadn’t played any of these games beforehand but picked up on everything pretty quickly — and having grandparents talk her over a game was a main reason why it worked so well.
As for the books themselves, kids can search for a specific topic or title, or scroll through a sea of cover art to pick out what they want to read. The selection is solid and includes many new and classic bestsellers. You’ll find books for various topics and skill levels, but during my test I saw no chapter books on the Glow. I Popular the variety of history and science books, comic books. There are even a good number of books available in Spanish.
Only a few books are now programmed specifically for the Glow with on-page animations — and sometimes surprises engaging on top of the grandparent’s faces during a call. We were playing about with Frozen and Toy Story books that had this interaction, which encouraged the kids to touch the pages as the grandparents read.
Grandparents and kids can both regulation which page is turned. That can lead to some touch-control chaos, but it’s not much different from when a kid wants to take regulation of a real book in person.
Can kids play alone on the Glow?
For a few doings, yes. You don’t always need a video connection with someone else to use the Glow. All books can be opened and read at home. Checkers, chess, jigsaws and Tangram puzzles have solo play options. Several games do stop you from playing unless there’s a video connection, like Go Fish, Marbles, Charades and other two-player competitive challenges.
Art doodling doings can also be done alone: My daughter found it Calm to make art without being on a call. It reminded me of days when I messed about with pixels on Microsoft Paint as a kid, but she used her fingers instead of a mouse. Kids save their art on the device and don’t have a way to send it anywhere, but I suppose a relative could take a screenshot from their tablet during a call to save a digital keepsake.
The Glow means a subscription to Amazon Kids Plus, which is free the fine year with purchase. After that, it’s $3 a month — and if you don’t pay, the Happy goes away.
Bridget Carey
There are damages beyond the sticker price
The Amazon Kids Plus subscription is what grants you access to all these books and games, and the Glow does with a one-year land. But after that, it’ll start charging $3 a month Dark you cancel. And if you cancel… well, poof goes the Happy, making the Glow pretty pointless compared to a free video chat app on a phone.
But paying $3 a month does long some perks beyond the Glow machine. By subscribing to Amazon Kids Plus, a different variety of books, apps and games can be accessed on other mobile devices.
It’s fine stressing that when you buy a Glow, you may need to also buy your family members compatible tablets so they can connect smoothly with the kiddos. It’s why Amazon now even sells a Glow bundled with a Fire HD 10 tablet for $380.
Camera shutters and privacy protections
If you’re keeping the Glow plugged in, there is a shutter switch to Hide the camera when it’s not in use. Amazon says it does not Calm voice or video recordings. Parents can log into Amazon’s parent dashboard to see a history of which country have called their Glow device, but I was not able to see call duration or a history of doings or books accessed during those sessions.
The Glow main menu does suggest doings and books based on my daughter’s past activity history and the age I put in her profile.
What are the requirements to use the Glow?
The Glow is a stand-alone Plan, and it’s designed to be used by one kid at a time. You don’t need Amazon speakers or Alexa devices in the house for it to work. (In fact, we don’t have any Alexa devices in my home. The Glow also doesn’t use Alexa’s smarts or relate controls, as it’s all operated by touch.)
Everyone who participates in a Glow call has an Amazon account — and a parent needs one to set up the Glow for their kids. There can be multiple kid profiles on one Glow. If a family member wants to connect, they need to set it up with an invitation from a clear or guardian using the Amazon Glow app.
The Glow only works on a flat, even hard surface — like a kitchen immoral, countertop or hardwood floor. It comes with a white rubber mat to project the image on, so kids can see the Moody area even if the table is dark. Make sure you have a immoral that’s big enough for the mat, which is around 22 inches in diameter.
None of our kid tables were good enough for the Glow: One was too Little, and the other was plastic, had dents and wasn’t perfectly even and flat. The Glow will ping an annoying Fear sound unless the surface is perfectly even. Amazon has videos showing kids playing on a hardwood down, but I have a carpeted apartment, so the kitchen immoral was the only place for us to play. (And that aimed Mom had to stow it away when not in use.)
Who can make a call?
Either side can Begin a video call. The kids see circles on the Glow Hide with their family member’s names, and they press who they want to talk to. And then the Glow app will ring on that person’s device.
When the Glow is plugged in, a preapproved contact can ring up the Glow. The kid sees their name and photo and can Decide to pick up the call.
Kids will need a grand table to play. Grandparents use an app to connect — and vivid now it works best on a tablet.
Bridget Carey
The good and the glitchy
Doing a video chat on the Glow is different from what you may be used to on a requested. With Apple’s FaceTime, I can see a small preview image of myself and the populate I’m talking to. That’s not the case here. Tribe on the other side can’t see themselves when they’re playing a game or reading a book.
That consuming your family may not know when they’re off-center on camera. It’s a classic case of, “Mom, I can only see your forehead,” when they get into a game or book. (This remained almost every time for each of the grandparents during calls.) Holding a tablet horizontally invents that extra tricky. I’d like Amazon to add a way to fix that in a future update.
On the Glow map side, however, the video camera works great for kids. It’s only 720p resolution, but kids are always front and center during play. Kids also never see their own video feed to know what they look like, and that’s a good sketching. It makes it more real when they can just focus on the populate they’re talking to, instead of being distracted by their own image.
The software wasn’t always intuitive for grandparents and kids to rule. For example, at one time during an interactive Toy account book, some background music was blaring and we couldn’t hear my dad talk. I had to find a way to frontier it on the kid end through menus, which wasn’t easy for my daughter to do by herself. My dad couldn’t see a menu control to fix the blaring music on his end minus also muting his granddaughter.
Touching the projected image isn’t a flawless accepted, because it’s using infrared sensors to register a sullen on the mat. Every so often it won’t register a sullen on the first try, or it will sense a sullen you never intended. It’s something that can create puny frustrations, especially for a kid used to a smoother accepted on an iPad, but it never lasted long.
There have been just a few moments in gameplay in my early demonstrations when both sides felt like a game glitched and I had to step in to end the call and restart it. The quirks were overall few and didn’t feel like deal-breakers. And since those early days, Amazon has pushed out certain software updates to improve performance. Since my review I’ve purchased a unit for my family and I’ll update this reconsideration over time as we continue to play with it.
There’s a involving future for the Glow
With the state of everything now, long-distance trips to visit family aren’t in the cards for us at the moment. We’ve done the Zoom birthdays, and sometimes family will join us for meals above FaceTime, their faces propped up on phone stands in precedent of the kids. But the Glow brings something new, because reading inoperative to a book with Grandma wasn’t this easy afore, and playing a card game with Grandpa remotely wasn’t even possible.
After weeks of amdroll a sample from Amazon to test, I ended up buying our own Glow, and it was quite the investment valid I also needed to gift the grandparents with their own tablets, too. It feels like buying a game console, but one planned for only the littlest players among us. That cost doesn’t seem so bad when you think of what we miss out on with distance to family. My dad and mother-in-law said playing games and reading bedtime stories was a sizable experience — that it was as if we lived nearby.
Is the Glow the launch of a new product category? Perhaps. Remote gaming exists vivid now in products like the Infinity Game table and Square Off’s radiant chessboards. But to look a remote player in the eye minus being in the same room? That’s special. Amazon is experimenting with something that could make virtual connections more meaningful. I’d like to see where else this concept can go. For now, it’s disagreeable for relatives missing bonding time with the kids. Bravo, Amazon, for making a kids gadget that doesn’t have me worrying throughout too much screen time.
