SweetPea3

I was looking for a music player for my kids but the thought of giving them a CD player seemed so last century. I did some research on the internet and found that many parents either give their kids an iPod with headphones or buy a kid version MP3 player with headphones. I'm not usually the type to judge the choices of other parents (OK, maybe I am) but putting headphones on your kids seems like a really bad idea, up there with putting a TV in their bedroom. Why would you encourage them to isolate themselves from those around them when they have their entire teen years to do that? Then there's the "Hey Billy watch out for the car" safety issues and you realize that headphones just don't belong on anybody under the age of 8.

When I came across the SweetPea3, I ordered one. I just received it because they just started shipping. I love it! More to the point, my kids love it! It's quite entertaining to watch your two year old dance and hop around while she carries it around. My six year old plunks it down in front of her Barbies and just lets it play. She carries it with her everywhere. I will need to buy another one just to keep the peace in the family.

The player itself is super simple. The three buttons allow you to skip to the next and previous songs and stop and start the player. Interestingly, the player has no pause feature. When you stop then start, the song starts again from the beginning. Maybe this was an effort to keep the controls as simple as possible. Pause would add another button or complicate the use with three buttons. I guess its important to know your end user.

There is no power switch. You press the middle button to turn it on (why not any button?). It turns off automatically after one minute of not playing. While it is playing, you can program it to stop after a certain amount of time or never. The volume control is tucked away in a special menu accessible only by parents (until your kid figures it out). Having parental volume control is a huge plus for me because I can only stand kids music for so long without losing my mind. The player comes with an AC adapter so you can play it in a nursery without killing your batteries. This feature is not very important to me since my kids are a little older but I can see how a parent with a newborn would use it to play white noise or whatever it takes to calm a baby.

The sound is really good for such a small speaker. Not that it really matters. I remember how much my sister loved her AM radio. It sounded horrible but it didn?t matter. It was her own. The SweetPea3 sounds way better, of course. Imagine listening to your home stereo, turning the bass down completely and then turning the treble up all the way. The small speaker loses some of the low end response and can make some songs (mostly those with female singers) sound a little harsh. But again, no child will notice.

Downloading music is just like any other MP3 player. Plug it into your USB port and click and drag songs to the folder. The SweetPea3 has three playlists and to get the songs into each playlist, you have to drop it into the correct folder: the root directory for Playlist 1, PLAY2 and PLAY3 folders for Playlist 2 and Playlist 3 respectively. While not complicated, it can be a little confusing for non-technical users so Peapod really should have some music management software to automate the whole process. Looking at the Peapod Toys website, they seem to indicate that this software might be available some time in the future.

All in all, I think this was a great execution. The player is very stylish. It doesn?t look like a toy and I guess the designers didn?t know about the rule that all kids toys have to be made using primary colors (and lots or them all at once). This player is definitely for the cool parents with the hip kids. But for all it?s child centered features, the big test is still whether your kids will love it. For this reason alone, I give this player a big thumbs up.