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REVIEW:

LeapFrog, best known for childrens' educational products like the Leappad, could give traditional educational toys and mobile game platforms a run for their money with its new Leapster.

When LeapFrog asked me to take a look at its latest product, I was a little out of my depth in some respects — I have no problem critiquing tech toys for "big people," but I'm not exactly qualified to rate how effective an educational toy is. So I called in the best expert I know of in the field of educational games — my four-year-old son. I turned him loose with the Leapster for a few weeks to find out what he thought of it.

The results are in, and he gives it two thumbs up — when those thumbs aren't busy on the Leapster controls.

"Educational" and "interactive" is a label that gets slapped on just about any toy with a button that beeps when pressed. But the Leapster has gone far beyond that, creating an entertainment system that cunningly teaches children a bunch of useful stuff while they play.

The Leapster is basically a rugged, oversized portable game system. But rather than, say, a Nintendo Game Boy, picture a video game console controller with a large 2.8-inch colour screen in the middle of it.

Kids control the games with an eight-way navigational pad and a series of buttons, but the screen is also touch-sensitive. They can navigate the menus and play most games with the buttons, or by touching the screen with a finger or the built-in pen (attached to the Leapster with a sturdy string, so it can't get lost).

The Leapster is not a cheap toy, at about $100 (Cdn.), but it's actually priced reasonably considering the technology and design effort that went into it. The hardware has been beefed up to take pretty much anything a child in the four-to-eight-year-old age range can throw at it (which includes, of course, throwing it). My son proved it can take a tumble down a flight of stairs without breaking the case or the recessed screen — try that with, say, a Palm Pilot. After being at the tender mercies of a toddler for weeks on end, the Leapster continued to work fine and showed barely any signs of wear beyond some light scratches — impressive, to say the least. They should build notebooks like this.

The Leapster is quite large and a little on the heavy side, though, which may pose problems for younger children who have tiny hands. Otherwise, the design is great from all perspectives — layout, ease of use and durability.

The games come on cartridges a bit larger than a matchbook. The hardware ships with Learn with Leap, a title featuring LeapFrog characters in six different games. Each game has a user-selectable skill levels ranging from one (toddlers) to four (around age eight). The games for older children combine videogame-type action with some sort of math or reading exercises, as well as problem-solving. For younger children they feature colour- and shape-related challenges, as well as memory teasers that require the child to match identical items or pair sounds with animals and objects. There's also a more free-form activity section that lets them draw or colour-in pictures using the attached pen. As a nice touch, children can even add basic pre-set weather effects and animated characters to their pictures by touching a few icons.

There's a slew of add-on titles for the Leapster, too, which is where LeapFrog is going to make its money. At $35 (Cdn.) or so a crack, these aren't an impulse buy. My son tried two add-on titles — Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants — both based on popular cartoon franchises. These games (particularly Dora) went over well with my son and his friends due to the recognizable characters and neat activities, but my son was actually happiest with the original Learn with Leap title.

All the titles he and I looked at offered decent value for money, even considering the expense. They all made good use of fun activities to teach skills ranging from reading and writing, to math, art, music, and critical thinking. While some games are aimed more towards the four-year-old set and others more or less at older children, they all feature the same basic set of four difficulty levels found in Learn with Leap, ranging from toddler to eight-year-old. This way, children can choose higher skill levels and learn new things as they get good with a particular title. In other words, these are not games that will be good for a couple of weeks and then become boring through repetition. As the child's learning advances, the same cartridge will offer new things at higher skill levels, making it a long-term buy. I really liked this aspect of the Leapster, because too many educational games are aimed at a specific, narrow age group, and they quickly end up cluttering the basement storage room or becoming garage sale items.

The caveat is that on Learn with Leap, my son was playing the highest skill levels within a few weeks — years ahead of his age, according to Leapfrog's skill system. I naturally assume my offspring is a genius ... but I also have a suspicion that Leapfrog may have underestimated the abilities of children in some of its games. Parents should check out the titles carefully before investing, especially if their children are on the high end of the up-to-eight-year-old age range recommended for the game system.

The Leapster's screen is excellent, especially considering the price of the hardware. It offers good detail and decent backlighting without sucking huge amounts of battery power. My son typically got a couple of weeks of concerted play out of a set of batteries — laudable for a device with a backlit screen. It also has simple controls so the child can adjust the screen brightness and contrast settings without adult help. My only criticism of the display is that like many LCD panels, the Leapster's screen is hard to see in direct sunlight — a particular problem on daytime drives.

The unit has a good quality speaker, which is crucial since the games features lots of music and voice instructions. There's a headphone jack, too, although no headphones ship with the player (parents going on long car trips take note...).

LeapFrog's engineers have done a fantastic job taking a pretty complex device and making it so simple that a child could figure it out. My son (and I) never once had to resort to the manual - he simply picked it up and started playing. There's a wealth of easily understood instructions given by voice and visual cues, and a hint button that lets children get pointers if they ever get stuck in a game.

There are nice ease-of-use touches, too. In games where you have to use the pen, for example, the game's "voice" will tell the child to use the pen while a light around the base of the string tethering the pen will flash to reinforce the point. The same thing goes for a light-up ring around the navigation pad.

Several children can share a single Leapster. It has logins for different names as well as a guest, saving progress in each game individually and automatically at regular intervals with no action required from the player. The game shuts itself down safely if the cartridge gets yanked out in mid-play, too. I didn't witness a single system glitch, even when several youngsters were roughhousing with the Leapster.

My son likes child-oriented video games on the Nintendo GameCube, a special treat on rainy days, and he has a number of educational PC games he can play with me or on his own. But he seemed drawn by the fact that the games were just as engrossing on the Leapster as the PC in most cases, and yet he could play the Leapster whenever and wherever he liked without help or permission from an adult to set up a computer or TV game console (and Leapster boots instantly, so there's no waiting).

I'm not saying he turned into a Leapster addict — far from it. That's not something I'd encourage, even being the gadget and game junkie that I am. But when he wasn't running around outside, reading books with one of his parents (a favourite activity), building something with his clay set or playing with his toys, he would usually pick up the Leapster and get a bit of "quiet time" with some educational games.

In fact, he often used to pester his parents to let him watch childrens' television in the evening, or on weekends if the weather was bad and he'd come to the end of his list of "fun things to do inside." But the Leapster absorbed almost all the attention he'd previously aimed towards TV — which in my view is a wonderful improvement. I'd much rather have him doing interactive things - playing word and number games, or even painting and drawing on the Leapster — than sitting idle in front of the tube when he craves an individual activity.

The big test for me was how long the Leapster could hold my son's affection. Anything new is bound to grab the attention of just about any child temporarily. The trick is whether it can retain its allure after a couple of months. The Leapster seems to have passed this test. Again, my son is not addicted to the machine, but it's definitely still among his favourite toys and I'm going to be under definite pressure to shell out for a replacement when the loaner goes back.

Overall, I was impressed with Leapster, and I'd safely say my son was too. The content of the games was excellent, and it's a great alternative to something like television when a child is in need of some "quiet time" but not in the mood to hear you read them a story or turn them loose with a building block set. But I also liked the sense of individuality and self-sufficiency it seemed to spark in my son. This was "his" game, and he could play it without asking his parents to set anything up. I'm not an advocate of using tech toys as babysitters, but the Leapster is an educational system with, as far as I can see, some beneficial qualities for children.

That said, the best may be yet to come, from a parent's point of view. The bane of most parents' existence is the long car trip — especially after several hours when you've sung all the songs you know, exhausted your repertoire of stories, and it becomes too dark for the child to see anything interesting going by outside besides headlights. The Leapster is already a great gadget for car trips, with a wealth of varied games to keep kids happy. But LeapFrog says it may soon release cartridges that have short cartoon episodes featuring the game's characters included along with the games. The child will be able to use the Leapster as both a game and a personal viewer for short shows — and they will be able to stop the cartoon any time and play a related interactive game.

While I'm not a fan of a simple TV replacement, I think this feature on limited cartridges would make the Leapster appealing to just about any parent who takes children on long car or plane trips.