62 PCWorld OCTOBER 2019REVIEWS AMAZON ECHO DOT KIDS EDITION
Alexa at, say, 8:05 p.m., Alexa will patiently
say “Sorry, I can’t play right now; try again
later.” Naturally, my daughter tends to keep
nagging Alexa for some post-bedtime fun,
but after a few fruitless attempts, she generally
gives up and puts her head down.
The Parent Dashboard lets you block the
ability to control any of your connected smart
home devices, as well as turn on an explicit
language filter for music. The language filter is
supposed to work for any connected music
services that support the feature, including
Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and (of
course) Amazon Music, while any music
services that don’t support a filter are blocked.
That’s all well and good, except for the
time my daughter was playing a Soulja Boy
shuffle (Soulja Boy being a popular music
choice at summer camp this year, along with
the ubiquitous Lil Nas X), and on one of the
tracks, someone let loose with a hearty
four-syllable invective—whoops. My kid and I
exchanged an amused look (hey, she’s heard
worse) and kept on dancing. That was the
only time I heard any bad words slip by
FreeTime’s explicit language filter, so it might
have been simply a random and rare glitch,
but it’s worth mentioning.
The Dashboard also lets you control
whether your kid can use Alexa’s messaging,
Drop In, and Announce features. For the Drop
In and Announce features, your child can only
listen in on or make announcements over
other Echo devices in your household, whilemessaging is restricted to the contacts you’ve
specified (Mommy and Daddy, in Claire’s
case). I should note that as a parent, Drop In is
one of the more delightful features of the Kids
Edition, allowing me to summon my daughter
with curt commands such as “Claire, report to
me immediately.”
Finally, you can pause your child’s Echo
Dot within the Dashboard by tapping a
button and choosing how long the Alexa
“time-out” will last. It’s an essential feature
for when your kid’s Alexa usage heads into
frenzied territory, but I wish it were easier to
access; as it stands, it takes at least four taps
to get to it.ALEXA, LET’S PLAY
Beyond its various parental controls,
Amazon’s FreeTime service offers thousandsThanks to
Amazon’s
FreeTime
service, you
can set daily
time limits for
the Echo Dot
Kids Edition.