A kid friendly MP3 player - highly recommended!

What do your kids use to play their music and audiobooks? I thought I'd tell you about Petunia's new MP3 player because a couple people have asked about it and in my estimation it's the perfect thing for any older (say 8+) child who's into that sort of thing.

For Christmas we wanted to get Petunia Girl a CD player so she could listen music and audiobooks in her room. But then I got to thinking ... pretty much everything is digital. I never buy CDs anymore, and if we borrow audiobooks from the library it's almost always a digital download from the elibrary. I would have to buy CDs to put everything back on. Hmm... Seems backwards, so we decided on an MP3 player. Course, unless you're made of money finding one that works well and is easy to use is a tricky process. We've already had a couple dirt cheap MP3 players around and they were awful, but I don't want to pay for an iPod for an 8 year old either.

The first one we tried was a touch screen job that never did what you wanted it to, if it did anything at all so we traded it in for this sweet pink Sony Walkman - and because this one came during boxing week sales we got it on sale. It does everything she needs it to and more. I had one of those. It was red and had three buttons; play, rewind and stop. One of these things is not like the other ...

It's similar in size to an iPod Nano and also comes in a variety of colours. The one we bought came with a speaker dock that has has decent sound. Headphones are included as well of course. The screen is bright and the resolution very clear. You can load on photos if you like, but it doesn't take any. I've put a few music videos on it, and you can also add video or audio podcasts. It has lots of memory (8 gb).

The navigation makes sense and she can create lists of her favorite songs, etc, besides the playlists I've created for her. I found it was easiest for her if I organized her music and audiobooks in playlists but you can look it all up by album, author, song title, the usual stuff. You do need to be able to read well because although there are icons on the screen, all the songs are listed as text so it would be difficult for Ironman to use as yet.

So if you are wanting something for your kid(s) so you can have your stereo or iPod back, this is what I would heartily recommend.

By the way, I asked my Petunia Girl what her favourite thing about it was and she said the voice recorder. Go figure.