If you are looking for some entertainment with your kids or family, Amazon Glow can be your perfect tabletop entertainment system that projects games. However, if you are not sure about it, here is a review of Amazon Glow for you.
What you will see?
Amazon Glow
The Amazon Glow is a tabletop entertainment system that projects games and activities onto a touch-friendly mat. Kids can read stories, draw pictures, or play games with friends and relatives no matter where they are thanks to Glow’s video conferencing screen and wide, interactive mat. It makes it easier for kids to communicate with friends and family over the internet. It aims to make these often forced encounters more natural, engaging, and fun. Although it’s entertaining to use with the wide range of activities offered, the Glow demands a significant amount of free storage space as well as a membership to operate. Amazon Glow blends an interactive projector with Amazon Kids Plus’ extensive library of kid-friendly material. However, keep in mind that it is not an Alexa gadget.
Pros
- Lets kids play remotely with friends and relatives
- Two-year guarantee with free replacement if it breaks
- Comes with one year of Amazon Kids+
Cons
- Takes up a lot of table space
- Remote participants need an Amazon account
- No way to bookmark favorite games or activities
Price and Compatibility
Amazon Glow is available for $299 from Amazon, Best Buy, and other online retailers. In late 2021, it was still an Amazon Day 1 Edition product. This meant that Amazon was still working out the things and that it was only available via invitation. The Amazon Glow comes with a one-year Amazon Kids+ subscription (which costs $2.99 per month after that). The subscription includes access to thousands of kid-friendly books, movies, TV series, educational apps, and games, as well as movies and TV shows. This can be accessed not just on the Glow, but also on compatible Fire, Fire TV, Android, iOS, and Kindle devices.
The software divides content into age groups: 3 to 5, 6 to 8, and 9 to 12, which is decided when you create a profile for your child. The Glow, like the Fire Kids tablets, has a two-year worry-free warranty. This means that if it fails, Amazon will replace it for free. You’ll need an Android handset running Android 8.0 or later, or an iOS device running iOS 14.0 or newer, to utilize the Amazon Glow app. It allows you to video chat with anyone in front of the Glow. The Glow app will also work on the Fire HD 10 tablet, which will be released in 2021. The Glow can also be purchased with an Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet for $379.99.
What’s in the box?
It’s important to understand that, while being designed for children aged three and above, Amazon includes a caution on the Glow’s box noting that it is not a toy. The Glow is a massive electronic gadget, and you should be careful with it as much fun as it is for kids. Furthermore, while the setup process is similar to that of any other smart device requiring access to your Wi-Fi network, it is not child-friendly. Only three pieces are included in the box: a power wire, a rolled-up rubbery white mat with an embossed Amazon smiling logo for orientation, and the monolithic-looking Glow device.
Design
The Glow is a monolithic-like gadget made entirely of black that stands approximately inches tall and 5.5 inches wide. When viewed from the side, the Glow has an S shape. It has a protrusion at the top that contains the projector, and the bottom of the gadget juts backward to form a type of foot. An 8-inch touchscreen display is in the center of the front, with a camera directly above it. There is a speaker below the screen, a power button, and two volume controls on the right side. A physical slider covers the camera farther up; the shutter is white, so you can see whether or not the camera is covered at a look.
The Glow device features a 10W speaker in the base and an array of four microphones on top. However, the microphones don’t work with Amazon’s Alexa speech assistant. Both the front and rear cameras are 720p, and the front camera includes a physical privacy shutter that also turns off the microphones. The front display is an 8-inch touch screen with a 1,280-by-800-pixel resolution in a portrait orientation, emphasizing its use for video chat. You can tap it to activate calls and tap again to access hang-up buttons. When you’re not on a call, you can use it to see information about the device and the network it’s connected to.
Mat
The Glow comes with a white rubber mat that is 18 by 12 inches and has a sticky texture on the bottom that helps it stay in place on a coffee table or other hard surface. The Glow’s projection is 19.2 inches, leaving a one-inch “bezel” around the mat’s perimeter. The projector doesn’t have a resolution listed on Amazon. This is likely because it won’t be able to compete with modern screens. However, it isn’t as bad as some older tablets. On a sunny day or in a brilliantly lighted environment, however, even with the white mat, the brightness can be an issue.
Setting Up Amazon Glow
Firstly, scan the QR code in the device’s quick start guide to download the Amazon Glow app for Android or iOS on your phone or tablet. The Glow app asks if you want to “Set up my Amazon Glow device” or “Connect with someone who has a device” once you check in to your Amazon account. The Glow will connect to your tablet through Bluetooth. Then you input your Wi-Fi password and wait a few minutes for software updates to download and install. After the updates are installed, the Glow displays a starting sequence on the screen and begins projecting on the mat with a push of the power button. Your child’s name will appear as the principal user if they are a member of your Amazon Household on Prime.
Following this, you will receive the following message: “To view games and activities, you must have an active Kids+ subscription.” Kids+ costs $2.99 per month after the trial period has ended. You can still buy a few Glow-compatible ebooks if you don’t get Kids+, but you won’t be getting the full benefit of the product. The 6.6-feet power adaptor cord is long enough for children, pets, and people to trip over and pull the Glow to the ground. Amazon gives a two-year free replacement warranty. You can invite anyone to download the Glow app on their tablet using the Glow app, but they won’t be able to use it unless they have an Amazon account. That’s good for tech-savvy relatives, but guiding anyone else through the process of an Amazon sign-in with CAPTCHAs may be exasperating.
Performance
In many aspects, the Glow resembles a large-screen version of the Amazon Fire Kids tablet, except instead of a touchscreen, it projects the screen onto a large mat. The projection itself is 16.7 x 9.4 inches, so there’s a border all the way around the mat. Your kids can pick up on how to operate the Glow rather quickly. However, there are a few challenges you would run into that you don’t face with tablets. Multitouch gestures are supported on the screen, so you can sketch with more than one finger at once. However, if your kid rests their arm on the side of the mat while sketching, Glow will display an error message and stop responding to their taps. In addition, Glow is somewhat less responsive to touch than a typical tablet, resulting in a tiny lag.
Your kids, however, might not be used to waiting and would continually jab at an icon, which would cause problems in and of itself. Your kids can communicate with your relatives or their friends using the Glow app on an Android tablet. Both the parties can each choose something to read or play with, and the Glow reacts swiftly when both of them draw on the same surface.
Projector Play
When you press the power button on the side, it brings the dormant Glow projector to life instantaneously from standby. After that, the real boot time is 35 seconds. The beauty of Glow is that whatever is projected on the mat is touchable, much like a huge tablet on a table in front of the child. It’s comparable to Microsoft’s discontinued Surface coffee table from 2017. Unless you have an ultra-white table surface, the white mat is essential for visibility. It’s simple to clean. There are two basic ways to interact with the Glow. The front-facing touch screen is used to manage video chats, although youngsters will largely use the mat. Some games and activities only allow you to use one finger at a time, while others don’t have any restrictions. The objective is to ensure that the projector can distinguish between what a fingertip is and what’s not.
Read, Play, and Draw
On the mat, kids will find shelves with a variety of activities to pick from, including Featured, Games, Art, and Books. Remote video callers can read an ebook to your child while following along, or listen as the youngster reads to them. The Kids+ subscription book collection includes the “10,000 kid-friendly movies, TV episodes, and books intended for children 3 to 12 years old”. When you use the same Amazon account to read ebooks on the Kids+ app on a tablet or even a smartphone, the books will display on the Glow’s shelf. Alternatively, you can search for books using the magnifying glass and search bar on the Glow projection.
The Glow does not display the movies/shows you watch in the Kids+ app because it isn’t designed for passive viewing. Two-player classics like checkers and chess are available to play with others in the room or over the internet. They even get jigsaw puzzles, Spaceman (a less grim variant of Hangman), and other titles that children can play alone. A sketching pad and games like Connect the Dots can be found in the Art area. ABC Bubbles, Crazy Eights, Cup Shuffle, Go Fish, and other Glow games require a distant connection with a loved one. To play those games with someone else in the house, the second player must take a tablet and sit far enough away to avoid audio distortion. There are various activities at The Glow that include well-known characters and products.
Games
Disney, Mattel (Barbie and Hot Wheels), Nickelodeon (Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants), and Sesame Workshop (Elmo, Cookie Monster, and friends) all have a place on the list. The majority of these games are variations on the activities listed above, but with characters added. All of these games and apps are available through Amazon Kids+, with several of them being exclusive to Glow. Because the collection isn’t extensive, some children may become bored, but the options will hopefully grow in the future. Amazon pairs geometric playing pieces called Tangram Bits with the Glow for an additional $29.99. Tangram is a 100-year-old dissection puzzle made up of seven polygons (one square, five triangles of varied sizes, and one parallelogram) that may be combined in almost limitless ways to form various shapes.
The Glow uses them in a puzzle game in which the youngster fills in the contour of a form with Bits. The projector monitors the Bits using the dots in the corners of each piece. The game can be played jointly or competitively to see who can complete it first.
Content and Interface
The home screen (or projected image) is bright and colorful, with categories such as Featured, Games, Art, and Recommended Books. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to customize the screen with your favorite books or games. So, you’ll be stuck with branded material whether you want it or not. You can, however, conduct a search for certain titles. E-books, Glow’s interactive games, visual arts activities, and Animated Storybooks are the only Amazon Kids+ material available on the Glow. As a result, you won’t be able to view films, apps, audiobooks, or Alexa skills that you could on a Fire tablet. Amazon claims that the content selection has grown to approximately 100 games and visual arts activities as of late March 2022.
Draw Together
Draw Together is a fun little sketchpad that allows you to collaborate on a drawing. You can choose from a variety of brush styles and colors, as well as add stickers. You can use a clever feature that allows you to scan objects that are placed in front of it. It basically takes a picture of whatever you put on the mat and then allows you to edit that picture by resizing and dragging it about the screen. You can also use it to make virtual jigsaw puzzles. It’s entertaining, although the scanning motion is a little deceiving. When you press the scan button, a series of purple laser-like lines sweep across the thing you want to scan. The display then turns white, giving the impression that the process is over. However, the object must be scanned for an additional second or two.
Glow Bits, a small triangular piece of plastic with small magnets in each corner, is another creative game. A kid can snap them together on the Glow’s mat, which the Glow will then scan and turn into a virtual model that a parent can alter on their tablet. Recommended Books has a good collection, albeit it appears to be a mashup of recommendations from a lot of the branded content categories. There are two types of books. One is standard books with only page flipping. Whereas the other is animated storybooks with interactive components on each page.
Conclusion
With the interactive games and books, your kid might not get enough of it. Even though, Glow’s price tag, combined with the necessity for membership (as well as a phone or tablet), seems a little high. The interactive play experience is innovative, and it’s lovely to be able to see the person with whom you’re playing. It blends an interactive projector with Amazon Kids Plus’ extensive library of kid-friendly material. However, keep in mind that it is not an Alexa gadget. Nonetheless, it would be great if Amazon continues to expand Glow’s list of activities and makes the app available for smartphones. Thus, making it more versatile and worth the asking price. Unlike Amazon’s Fire Kids tablets, this is more substantial and less mobile. The Glow, on the other hand, provides an engaging experience not found on Amazon’s tablets or anyplace else.
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