The Amazon Echo Dot Kids is the same hardware as the standard Echo Dot smart speaker wrapped in a kid-friendly design. Like your other Echo devices, it connects to Wi-Fi, runs Alexa, and plays music, audiobooks, interactive games, and educational content through a 1.73-inch full-range speaker that fills a bedroom or playroom with sound. The Stardust design is compact enough for a nightstand or bookshelf, and setup takes only a few minutes via the Alexa app.
A smart speaker you can feel good about the kids using on their own
Amazon Kids+ Members get access to thousands of ad-free audiobooks by publishers such as Disney, fiction from writers like Beverly Cleary, kid-friendly music stations, interactive Alexa games, and many educational skills. You get a free year with the Echo Dot Kids, and the service works with your Fire tablet, Fire TV, Kindle, Android, or iOS device.
Alexa on the Amazon Echo Dot Kids is filtered by default for children. Responses are age-appropriate, explicit songs are automatically blocked, and the speaker answers homework questions, reads bedtime stories, sets alarms, runs timers, and plays trivia without any manual content restrictions from a parent. An Explore with Alexa feature turns questions into interactive conversations with fun facts and follow-up trivia, and Stories with Alexa lets kids collaborate with Alexa to create original tales using characters and themes they create themselves.
You can access parental controls in the Amazon Kids Parent Dashboard App, and set daily time limits for your children, view your children’s activities, limit the types of content they have access to, and create 4 separate user accounts for your kids. The Drop In option lets you use an additional Echo device or the Alexa mobile app to talk to your kids in real time, without having to yell down the hall. Kids can also use the Echo Dot to call parent-approved contacts, and the option to make emergency calls to 911 can be enabled.
A physical off button on top of the device disconnects the microphone when pressed, so there is no question about whether the speaker can hear the room. A built-in temperature sensor can trigger Alexa routines based on room conditions, and the Amazon Echo Dot Kids doubles as a Wi-Fi extender for households with an Eero mesh network, and adds up to 1,000 square feet of coverage.
The Amazon Echo Dot Kids is on sale for $38 instead of the usual $60. Between the speaker, the year of Kids+ content, and the two-year replacement warranty, this deal is hard to match for a screen-free device that keeps a kid entertained, learning, and off a tablet.
