Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

So. For young kids, it's okay. My boys are both under the age of ten, so they still have low expectations and are easily entertained by this product. The unfortunate thing is that you have to be ultra specific when using commands - and even then, the Alexa AI struggles. For example, if you say, "Read me a story", the Echo Dot will randomly open a book from Audible. And it won't select a new story until it's done reading that book. Let's say that book is something like 365 days of Alphabet Rhymes. Just imagine the torture. I watched my kids repeatedly command their Echo to "Stop! Read a different story." Guess what? The device picked where it had left off each time. This went on until I stepped in and tried to stop the never-ending alphabet rampage. Took a couple tries, but we finally found out that the key command to use is "Cancel." And after some troubleshooting, we found out that the command "Alexa, TELL me a story" has better results in that the AI will list a small selection of short stories for the young audience to choose from. The Freetime thing seemed like a good idea. The Alexa AI alluringly suggested that we could request specific character stories by saying things like, "Alexa, read Cars 2." Haha-ha...ha. Nope. If you request that, Alexa says, "Sorry, I can't find anything on Cars 2/Frozen/Toy Story/etc." So the only way my kids can get the AI to read the story they want is by asking "Alexa, tell me a story" (and even then, it'll only list a few at a time, so the boys have to repeat this process several times before finally hitting on the story they wanted. We have books that we purchased on Audible, and Alexa lists those books when we ask it "What Audible books do we have?" Unfortunately, if we ask it to read one of our Audible books, the AI acts as if it can't find the book...ya know, the one it literally JUST LISTED. And in case anyone is wondering, yes, I have opened the parental permissions and marked our Audible books as accessible for the Echo Dot Kids Edition. Permissions be damned, I guess. Alexa only reads what it wants. Don't even get me started on music. You can ask Alexa to play genres, like "Alexa, play classical music." The AI will oblige. However, if you ask for specific artists (that are available for Amazon Prime members), Alexa will somehow not find the artist. It's very similar to the "read a story" conundrum. The AI suggests that you can listen to your favorite artists, then it claims it can't find them. Pros: This makes a good, two-way intercom for announcing that it's dinner time, bath time, bedtime, etc. This Ech Dot also works great as a speaker through which you can play your music or audio books - so long as you open the Alexa app from your phone and enter the commands on the app to play the desired media on the Echo Dot device. Again, the Echo Dot itself has been playing dumb, so our attempts to directly request that the desired media play on Echo Dot have not worked. The Alexa app on my phone functions though. Upon request, this Echo Dot will amuse your child with a selection of repetitive and lame jokes. Fine for early grade school, but I imagine the novelty will wear off soon. One thing that I appreciate is the way Echo Dot Kids Edition handles sensitive questions. Since this device was going to be used by my children, I tested it by asking a wide range of awkward questions, from "What's the difference between boys and girls?" to "Who is Hitler?" to "Is there a God?" to "How are babies made?" For sensitive questions like these, the AI will gently suggest that the child speak to their parents or guardians. All in all, it's a glorified smart speaker that you can control from your phone, with very limited interactive features. And Freetime is basically useless for the most part, because requesting specific media typically ends in the statement "Sorry, I can find that." I recommend only getting this if you are looking for something to entertain a young gradeschooler while you are studying or working from home.