Kids spend a lot of time with screens, and that can have a downside, like viewing hours of videos on end. When these devices help kids learn and connect with friends and family they would not be able to due to long distances. That is what Amazon is trying to do with its newest product. My children put the device through many tests while I was working on the Amazon Glow review.
I instantly saw the potential for the product when Amazon announced the Glow. I have two boys who love to play games and spend time with their grandparents. It can be difficult to coordinate face-to-face time with family when you have busy school activities, sports, and other things. The Amazon Glow has the tools to do more than an introductory video call, but does it deliver?
During the fall event, Amazon announced the Glow. The device was only available on Amazon when it was part of the Day 1 Edition. If you were invited to buy the Amazon Glow, it was available for an introductory price.
The Glow's availability and pricing opened up to traditional retail as of March 29, 2022. The Amazon Glow is available for $300 through a number of retailers. The two bundle options are offered by Amazon. One for $330 that includes the Glow and the Tangram Bits, and another for $380 with an Amazon Glow and a Fire HD 10 tablet.
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Amazon knows what it is doing when it comes to making stuff for kids. The software is the secret sauce that makes it all worth it, as Amazon frequently has some of the best tablets for kids. The familiar kid-appropriate content that is found on the Fire Kids tablets like the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro is applied to this new form factor.
The Amazon Glow has an 8-inch screen on the front, but the star of the setup is the interactive projection. The Amazon Glow shows a 19.2 inch image that looks like a giant tablet, when it is pointed downward from the top of the device. The way kids expect familiar actions like pinch-to-zoom, rotation, and more to react is what this means.
| Specs | Amazon Glow |
|---|---|
| Device Dimensions | 5.6 x 5.4 x 14.2 inches |
| Weight | 57oz (1615g) |
| Mat Dimensions | 18.2 x 12.1 x 0.04 inches |
| Projected Display | 19.2-inch touch-sensitive projection |
| LCD Displays | 8-inch high-definition touchscreen (1280 x 800 resolution) |
| Audio | 10W speaker, 3.3 x 1.3 inches There are 4 microphones. |
| Cameras | 720p HD profile and projector cameras with built-in shutter |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 and 5 GHz) There is a new version of the wireless communication device, known as the "bluetooth 5.0." |
| Glow app compatability | Android 8.0+iOS14.0+ Fire HD 10 in 2021. |
The compatible content from my kids accounts was ready to go after I signed in to my Amazon account through the Amazon Glow app. My youngest got the first chance to try out the big paper tablets, and it was called the "big paper tablets" because you will want to use the included white rubber mat for the projection on a flat surface.
After finding his profile on the screen, my son immediately began to move his fingers around on the projected screen, and after a few touches on the mat, he was able to figure it out. He looked through a few books, a few games, and a few coloring options and chose his favorite.
The content library for the device has been expanded by Amazon. New games like Whac-A-Mole, Chip Drop, Cake Monsters, and Rocket Racers have been added to complement the thousands of books. One of my favorite new additions is the option to enjoy many of the apps on the Amazon Glow locally with my kids rather than having to get out a tablets to play games with them.
There are different themes to pick from in the coloring books that have coordinating stickers that your child can place in a scene or blank page. They pick a vacuum to clean up the mess if they want to erase something. The object scanning feature is one of the things my kids love about the art section.
Kids can place real-world items on the mat and turn them into digital objects with the Amazon Glow. My kids liked to find different toys, things they had colored, and random things around the house to put into their creations. The Amazon Glow comes with a real-world object that adds even more interactivity to play.
These shapes are used in puzzle-solving games. After choosing the Tangram Bits app on the Amazon Glow, kids will be able to pick a custom theme such as underwater, unicorns, dinosaurs, and more. They have to choose a few physical shapes that will tell them what shapes are available to complete the puzzle. The best time to play this game is when you are in a video chat with someone else.
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The Amazon Glow has a front-facing 720p camera and four microphones that can be used to connect your child with a parent. There is a shutter that covers the camera and disabling the microphones. The Glow app allows parents to connect with their children. To use the Glow app, contacts will have to use an iPad, an Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet, or both.
Once the family member or friend has finished setting up their Glow profile, your child can initiate video calls via the 8-inch screen by tapping on the person they want to call or from the contact connecting with the Glow. The contact will see what the child is seeing projected on the screen, and the person on the other end will have a video feed.
My kids could play checkers with their grandpa who lives a couple of hours away. It was fun to hear them laugh, play and think that they might beat grandpa at checkers. My kids picked the pirate theme for the checker games, which have different themes and animations to make them even more fun.
The Amazon Glow did a great job of connecting family in a moment that otherwise wouldn't have happened. My kids were playing games on a big screen. When the chance to play and talk with someone who can't just pop by for a visit enters the equation, that fun expanded even more.
As this is a first-generation product, there are bound to be some problems, but there were no significant ones that deterred my kids from using it. The product is for children ages three and up, and most younger kids are more patient than I know. Projection errors were the only thing that frustrated my boys.
If the Amazon Glow is on a surface that is not completely flat, it will give you an error telling you to move the device to fix the problem. The error would pop up on a table with a clean projection mat. My kids would be upset if I got this error in the middle of a game or creating a work of art. Sometimes it can be solved by shifting the device or making sure the projection lens is clean. Sometimes it took a re-boot.
Young kids are patient and will generally put up with slow performance, but when errors begin interrupting a game or art, it becomes a problem.
Accidental touches come up from time to time. If my kids wore a long-sleeved shirt, this would happen a lot. The end of the Amazon Glow's sleeve was sometimes thought to be meant to be read as a touch, and this would cause false input on the screen. Pulling the sleeve up could be used to solve this.
The Amazon Glow takes up a lot of table space because it is projecting a 19.2 inch image. I don't know many people with an area large enough to be dedicated to leaving the device. If you leave the Amazon Glow out all the time, it will be messed with by a young child, and it's not something you want to do.
The object scanning accuracy was a feature that works sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't work, but I don't mean that. Some objects would end up looking like blobs rather than what my kids were trying to see. For the best results, use lighter colored objects, since darker items would be more likely to fail.
The Glow app is not available on the Amazon Fire App Store, which makes sense. There is an exception to that rule and it is only available on the Fire HD 10. I said yes because I have a couple of Fire tablets. I found it odd that Amazon doesn't offer the companion app for the Glow on all of its tablets, because iPads are extremely popular and there are some excellent Android tablets.
The companion app compatibility has been expanded by Amazon. The Glow app is only available on the Amazon Fire HD 10 tablets, but it can be used on the phone. The availability to connect with family members is greatly improved by the inclusion of more devices. The inability to use the app on all Amazon Fire tablets is puzzling.
There aren't really any other options for a device with a large interactive display, two-way video chat, and great parental controls. The Amazon Glow is trying to create a new category. There is at least one option that is viable, and it is from an unlikely source: Facebook.
If you haven't heard of it, the Facebook Portal devices offer easy to use video calling in a variety of form factors. These products don't offer the same library of content, parental controls, or interactivity, but they have excellent video callingFunctionality that incorporates some apps to connect kids and loved ones.
The Story Time app brings books to life with fun animations, augmented reality, and music. Kids can watch movies, videos, and shows in real-time with others while on video calls with Watch Together. The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Curtain Call experience has been added to the portal. The Facebook portal can be had for less money and without an invitation, but the Amazon Glow has a lot more to offer.
The Amazon Glow is a product aimed at connecting kids to friends and family from afar by allowing them to video call with each other and interact in fun ways. It can bring kids closer to people they don't get to see often. Kids love and parents trust the content in the library. Some users can't use the Amazon Glow due to the limited compatibility, as well as the space needed to set it up.
The Amazon Glow is an excellent device for trying to define a new category. There are some quirks to using an interactive projected screen. As a first-generation product trying to do so many different things, it largely succeeds and shows a lot of potential.
I expect software quirks to be smoothed out as more people use the Amazon Glow. I hope that all of Amazon's tablets have the Glow app. The chance to let my kids interact with family members, whom they don't get to see in person that often, while my wife and I cook dinner or help our oldest son with homework is a wonderful thing. Many families in similar situations can be helped by the Amazon Glow, but for a hefty price.
The review was published in December of 2021. The following changes were made in March 2022.
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