Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought the Kano Computer Kit for my then 5 year old son in November 2015. I am a systems engineer by trade and have been building computers/servers for 20 years. I could have easily put together all the Raspberry Pi parts needed to do this (or even built a full computer), and loaded the Kano OS on it, for less money. However, you have to understand that this isn't what the Kano is all about. The whole idea behind Kano is for your child to be a part of the process, and feel like they can do it all. The packaging is very well laid out, and they have a great little book that tells you how to put it all together, while explaining in terms that a young child can understand, what all this stuff does. Once it's built and powered up, it doesn't just dump you into a dashboard and expect you to read and figure things out. It comes up with a Matrix inspired shell and asks you a few questions. This is how it starts. Without even knowing that they are doing it, your kids are telling the computer what to do. The apps are very well written. Lot's of helpers along the way so that your child doesn't get frustrated and lose interest. My son loved the code quest app, and is more proficient on the shell than a lot of sysadmins I know! They regularly update the apps, and there's always new stuff in Kano World. The keyboard is also something that people overlook when they talk about building their own kit rather than paying the little more for the Kano. It is very well thought out for how a kid would use it. It's small enough for the little hands, but not awkward for an adult (aside from some keys not being where you expect them to be). The integrated mouse makes it a lot easier for kids to be able to do things since moving a mouse around and clicking and holding mouse buttons can be very challenging for the little ones. You can enable "tap to click" on the trackpad as well which also enables 2 finger scrolling. Very similar to what you'd find on a macbook trackpad. We loved the Computer kit so much that I jumped at the chance to get in on the kickstarter for the Pixel, Speaker & Camera kits. While I didn't need to utilize customer service for the Computer kit, I did have a problem with the Pixel when it arrived damaged. They responded promptly, and told me they would send me a new one, and I could keep the old one which worked, but without wifi which is required to be able to program it. Overall, I highly recommend this kit to anyone looking to get their kids into coding and as an alternative to a full desktop computer. This is made with kids in mind and minimizes the distractions that a computer running Windows or OSX or even a full blown Linux distribution would have. So instead of going to the computer to play mindless video games, they are at least playing games that are teaching them skills that they can use elsewhere.