- The Guardian Saturday 3 August 2019
(^46) Money
Robot toys
Sphero Mini ( £50 ) (top right)
There are a lot of robot toys
available, but a long-time favourite,
Sphero, is my pick. Deceptively
simple – a ball that you can remote
control using a smartphone or tablet
- it has hidden depths with games
and educational elements available
on further inspection.
Here in its latest “mini” form, the
Sphero ball is a lot of fun to drive
around. The Sphero Play app has
games too, but if you want to foster
a bit of creative learning the Sphero
Edu app is great. Your kids or big
kids can learn to program with an
easy interface, follow examples and
activities, or get deeper and write
some code for it in JavaScript.
Higher-end versions such as the
£100 SPRK+ or £150 BOLT can take
the educational elements to the next
level too.
Tablets
Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition ( £99 )
While lending them your iPad works
well enough, if you want something
the kids can’t break then the Kids
Edition of Amazon’s Fire 7 tablet is
worth a look.
It comes with a brightly coloured
protective case, which now has a
pop-out stand. If your kids manage
to break it, Amazon will replace it for
free under its two-year guarantee.
It does all the standard Android
tablet things such as movies, games
and the web and parental controls to
lock it down, set time limits and age
fi lters. There’s an option for a web
browser that can only access kid-
safe sites and videos, but it doesn’t
have access to the Google Play store,
only Amazon’s own app store.
The Kids Edition also comes with
a one-year subscription to Amazon
Fire for Kids Unlimited (£2 to £4
a month afterwards), which is a
curated collection of kid-friendly
text and audio books, movies, TV
shows and educational apps.
There’s the larger £130 Fire HD 8
and £200 Fire HD 10 versions if you
want something bigger.Alternatives include LeapFrog’s
various educational tablets (£90),
which are fi ne for younger children,
Kurio’s Android tablets with Google
Play (£40), or hand-me-down or
refurbished iPad Minis (£300) in
robust cases, which can be locked
down with some parental controls.Fitness trackers
Garmin Vivofi t Jr 2 ( £60 )
Your child may not need a fi tness
tracker, but with childhood obesity
a serious societal issue, anything
that promotes exercise and general
activity is a good idea.
My pick is the Garmin Vivofi t Jr
2 , which strikes the right balance
between being fun, easy to manage
and spanning enough of an age range
that they will hopefully want to wear
it for more than a week.
It’s water resistant to fi ve
atmospheres (50m), so swimming is
no problem. It has a user replaceable
battery that lasts a year, so you don’t
have to charge it.
It tracks steps, activity, sleep, is
motivational rather than critical,
has mini games to play once your
kid has hit their goals and can allFive of the best
kids’ gadgets for
summer holidays
For older kids, traditional camera
manufacturers make a variety of
more rugged compact models.
Highlights include Nikon’s Coolpix
W150 (£150), Panasonic’s Lumix
FT30 (£109) and Fujifi lm’s FinePix
XP130 (£99), or perhaps an entry-
level action camera such as GoPro’s
Hero7 White (£170).Walkie talkies
Binatone Latitude 100 ( £22 )
If you don’t want your kids to have a
phone yet, but they want to keep in
touch with each other, then a two-
way radio can be great fun.
Binatone’s Latitude 100 claims a
two-mile range, but they should be
good for 500m or so in cities.
Simple enough to set up, and
robust enough to take a tumble, the
only downside is you’ll need a small
mountain of batteries as they take
four AAAs each. Push to talk with
volume control and a belt clip, ready
for adventures. Over and out.be managed from a parent’s phone
or tablet so you can keep an eye
on their data. Parents can even set
goals, competitions with their own
activity levels, core reminders and
tasks that can earn virtual coins for
them to trade for rewards with you.Cameras
Vtech Kidizoom Duo 5.0 ( £40 )
One of the best things about a
smartphone is the camera, but if
you don’t want your kids to have one
just yet, a camera might be the next
best thing.
The Vtech Kidizoom Duo 5.0
is made of rugged plastic and the
maker reckons it is suitable for three-
to nine-year-olds. It shoots 5MP
photos of reasonable quality, can
shoot out the front or the back for
selfi es, and has a 2.4in screen.
It has some fun fi lters and
eff ects, can shoot video too, and
even has an optical viewfi nder.
It eats batteries and takes four
AAs at a time, so best to buy some
rechargeables to go in it, and you’ll
need an SD card too.With many children
now on a long school
break, you might need
a bit of a hand keeping
them entertained. From
tablets and cameras to
robot toys and updated
old-school favourites,
here is a collection of
kid-aimed tech to keep
the little ones occupied
Sam’s smart buys
Samuel Gibbs
Children can
play games
with the Sphero
Mini using a
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