Yoto Player is both a children’s audio player and an online platform of carefully curated content. If you’ve seen any of my other posts on MP3 players for children, you’ll know I’m a big fan of screen-free audio time for kids, and have tested out many of them before finally settling on our family favourite.
So when the lovely people behind Yoto asked us to take a look at their device, I was a little hesitant. Would this be more of the same? I wasn’t sure if Yoto Player would be any different from any of the many other kids’ audio devices we’d looked at. Because really, what more could it offer?
Well, it turns out the answer to that is ‘a lot!’ Read on to find out more.
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YOTO REVIEW UPDATED FOR 2024!
I first reviewed the Yoto way back in 2020. Since then, whilst most things are there same, there are a few changes so I’ve updated the review where relevant to reflect the latest version. You’ll find ‘2024 Update‘ sections within the review, wherever things have changed.
Hip to be square…
At first glance, the Yoto Player looks a lot like many of the other, rather boxy kids audio devices on the market. But the current iteration is saved from boring squareness by smooth curves that add retro charm and two round, orange control knobs that angle out like cute little ears (my daughter’s description!) on either side.
The back is also angled so that the Yoto Player’s ‘face’ (its pixel screen) can be tilted up towards them when children are playing with it, which is a really nice touch.
The whole thing is not too big or heavy, either. So it’s easy for even little children to pick up. The front face is about 11cm square, and it’s about the same cubed. There is no handle, but as the Yoto Player is best used while connected to wifi (card content will download for offline play once inserted), it’s more an ‘around the house’ device anyway.
To charge the internal battery, the Yoto Player comes with a circular magnetic charger. Hold the Yoto over it, and the charger will jump into place. There are no exposed holes (other than the tiny headphone jack) so nothing little fingers can to get into.
2024 UPDATE: Yoto chargers
The Yoto now comes with a USB-C cable instead of the magnetic doc. You can also purchase a Yoto wireless charging dock separately, that looks much like the original wired dock pictured above. A word of warning though – the separate charging dock isn’t compatible with the 1st and 2nd generation Yotos, only the latest, 3rd Generation.
Setting up Yoto Player
In order to start using the Yoto player, you first need to connect it to your wifi. This is a simple process that the app walks you through. And the pixel screen helpfully displays access codes and connection symbols to let you know when you’ve done everything right.
Within the app are various parental controls, such as that volume limiting function, and setting how long the pixel screen displays images before switching off (a battery-saving function). You can also turn on Bluetooth connectivity here.
Once switched on in the app, holding down the left ‘ear’ knob for a few seconds will enable Bluetooth pairing. This turns the Yoto Player into a wireless speaker. The sound quality is really nice too.
Yoto’s simple controls
Everything about the Yoto Player design is smooth, and tactile, and minimalist. One of the orange knobs controls volume (you can set a limit on maximum volume within the associated app). Turn and press the other one to choose and select different tracks, and also to access the free daily podcast and Yoto kids’ radio station. Other than these, there is just a discrete little on/off button at the back.
To play audio, children simply insert one of the cards into the slot at the top. This is helpfully large and smooth with angled edges to guide the card, so putting them in is extremely easy to do. It doesn’t even matter which way round the cards go – back to front, upside down, all ways work!
My child testers were ten, eight, six and three, and they were all able to confidently use the Yoto Player within minutes – the older kids in seconds – as everything is so simple and intuitively designed.
Yoto Player extra features
When you turn Yoto Player on (after the initial set-up), the device makes a wake-up sound and the pixel screen displays a smiling face. And then it quickly transforms to a digital clock with either a sun (during daytime) or moon image (at night). We absolutely LOVE this feature, which is a great little extra to have.
Bedtime Yoto…
Combined with the night light feature (I’ll get to that in a minute!), the clock display makes the Yoto Player a very useful addition to bedtime routines. You can choose the time at which the display switches from sun to moon, so you can set it to change at your child’s bedtime.
There are also ‘sounds for sleep’, sleepy mindfulness mediations and bedtime stories available to purchase among the Yoto audio cards, to help children drift off peacefully.
And you can turn Yoto Player into a nightlight! To do this, you simply tip it forward onto it’s pixel face. This way up, Yoto is the shape of a house. A narrow band of LEDs around the ‘roof’ will then automatically light up. The lights are just bright enough to give a warm glow, without being too bright for sleep. And you can even chose the colour of these LEDs within the app.
By the way, cards will still play while Yoto is this way up, so the two functions can be combined. You don’t have to chose between nightlight and player.
2024 UPDATE: Yoto alarm and timer functions
The latest generation of Yoto now has a ‘time to wake’ function, where the lights and clock will change to let kids know that it’s okay to get out of bed. Still not quite an alarm clock, but does help with the kids who get up reeeeaaaalllly early…
A great update I can fully embrace though, is the toothbrushing timer! This is something I KNOW my kids would have loved and used. I’m a little sad our older Yoto doesn’t have it!
Yoto Player audio content
All the additional features on the Yoto Player are fun and useful. But there are two more things that really sets it apart from the crowd for me. And those things are the quality and range of audio content available, plus the ability to create your own audio cards, either of pre-recorded content or (I was so excited by this!) even podcasts and live radio streams.
The Yoto Player library of pre-recorded available content isn’t huge, though you can put anything on the blank cards. But what it does have has clearly been carefully chose to appeal to their target age ranges (three to around ten years old), and offer a number of unusual options too.
Prices range from £4.99 for shorter picture book stories, to £8.99 for longer books. If anything, this is on the cheap side for audio recordings, especially as you get a digital back-up version too.
2024 UPDATE: Yoto cards
As you would expect, there’s now a LOT more content available for the Yoto. The ever-growing library of Yoto audio cards Includes all the ones mentioned below, plus a whole load more…
Yoto Player stories
As far as stories goes, Yoto Player cards include family favourite authors such as Julia Donaldson (of the Gruffalo), Judith Kerr (author of the Mog books), Roald Dahl, and Enid Blyton (enough said). In addition, there are some excellent recordings of children’s classics, such as Tom’s Midnight Garden, Tales from Arabian Knights, and The Secret Garden. There are also young readers’ chapter books, such as the Jonny Duddle Jolley-Rogers series.
Each story starts playing as soon as you pop a card into the Yoto Player. Take it out, and the story will stop. But it will continue right from where you left off as soon as the card is put back in.
We loved that each chapter or track has its own pixel image. So children can identify where they are on a particular card by the unique picture that appears. So if you ever wondered what Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker look like as dot matrix pixels, Yoto Player can show you!
2024 Update: Yoto story cards
Lots of great stories for all ages have been added to the Yoto library since I wrote this review, including Harry Potter, David Walliams stories, How To Train Your Dragon, The Worst Witch series, and The Chronicles of Narnia series. But of course you do still have the option of creating your own cards with other stories too.
Yoto Player music
Yoto has great stereo speakers, and music sound better on this than on many of the other devices we’ve tried. It’s therefore fabulous for music (did I mention you can use it as a Bluetooth speaker?). There are several ways of listening to content via the Yoto Player.
There are, of course, pre-recorded music cards available. Nursery rhymes and classical music as usual, but also a couple of albums by a fabulous group of musicians, Mrs H and the Singalong Band. Their folksy, upbeat and irresistibly happy, ‘real’ music was a great hit with my youngest. She very quickly memorised her favourites and was singing along happily.
2024 Update: Yoto music cards
As with stories, there are now lots more music cards to choose from, including, rather randomly, The Beatles and Queen (?!!). No Foo Fighters, alas, but maybe in time…
For Disney fans, there are also new music cards for a couple of their biggest hits. Sing-a-long Encanto, anyone? You know you want to…
Yoto’s streaming radio
What I really love about Yoto’s musical offerings, though, is the Yoto Radio. Alongside a daily podcast of stories and chat, Yoto Player offers a free radio stream of family-friendly pop songs and catchy dance tunes. Some I even knew (I caught my oldest humming along to Rick Astley, for example). Helpfully, the music becomes more mellow at night, though.
The kids quickly learned that pressing the right ear once tuned into the podcast. Twice turned the Yoto Player into a radio, and they loved the mix of music on offer.
There is another way to play radio on the Yoto Player, and this is where that blank card you get with it comes in handy. You can create playlists of podcast episodes or live streaming radio stations in the Yoto app, and then link them to a blank card. Hey presto, your Yoto is a radio!
The Yoto app makes the process easy by having some radio stations (all the BBC ones, for example), already set up, ready to add to playlists. But as long as you have the live stream URL, you can add any station you like.
So you can set up a blank card to have a playlist of different radio stations. Once the card is in the Yoto Player, you can flick easily between them. So while the kids were out, I got to listen to my personal favourite radio station, BBC Radio Six, via the Yoto Player too. Of course, as soon as the kids were home, my new radio card was swiftly ejected. But it was nice while it lasted!
Yoto podcasts
As well as streaming radio, Yoto will also stream podcasts. A free podcast called Yoto Daily is available by pressing the right button. This is a short daily posting of jokes, riddles and factoids for children. It’s very much like listening to a between-programme kids TV presenter (think Phillip Schofield in the BBC broom cupboard, minus the annoying gopher…). There are even birthday call-outs. It’s a fun little extra that gives the Yoto Player a bit more personality.
Yoto podcast cards
You can also buy cards that will automatically tune in to the latest episodes of a couple of children’s podcasts. There is ‘The Story Shed‘ – original stories for children, designed to encourage discussion. This is narrated by Jake Harris, who also narrates the Yoto daily podcast. After each story is a chat about the story with Jake’s ‘Little Helpers’, to inspire further discussion at home.
There is also ‘The Week Junior Show‘ – a fabulous kids’ news podcast. In this one, the team from the This Week Junior children’s current affairs magazine discuss stories from the latest issue. We’re big fans of The Week Junior anyway, so the podcast was a great discovery. The magazine is perfect for helping children access and understand the news of the day in a child-friendly way, and the podcast compliments it perfectly.
You can obviously listen to both podcasts for free on any mobile device or computer, so you don’t need to buy a card. However the cards are only £1.99 each, and make it really easy for kids to tune in. They’ll also update with the latest episode as they appear.
Alternatively, just as with radio streams, you can create your own playlist of podcast episodes and link it to a blank card. The downside of that, though, is that you can only link to individual episodes. So to keep your home-made card up to date, you will need to add each new podcast episode after it has been published.
2024 UPDATE: Yoto Podcast cards
Two new podcast cards are now available, in addition to The Story Shed, The Week Junior Show, and Yoto Daily. There is now also the French-language podcast Kidico – a weekly encyclopedia show, and Story Quest, which is a weekly story podcast for kids.
Yoto’s Make your own cards
Blank Yoto cards are available in sets of five or ten (you get one with your Yoto Player). They hold up to 500mb and work out at under £2 each, which we felt was a pretty reasonable price. You can use these to create cards for any audio you like. So you can add favourite stories to your collection, record your own audio, or set up a podcasts and live radio playlists.
A digital copy of any pre-recorded cards you buy (a ‘virtual card’) will appear instantly in your Yoto App library. This means you can play the audio before you’ve even received the card. It also means you can play it via other mobile devices too (in your car, for example). And should you ever lose a card (inevitable in our house!), you can make a copy by linking the digital content to a new blank card.
2024 Update: make your own Yoto card
A set of 5 Make Your Own Cards now costs £12.99, or (roughly) £2.60 each. Quite a big increase over the last four years, but still relatively affordable.
Yoto Learning cards
As well as stories, music, and make your own blank cards, Yoto has two other kinds of audio available. There are a few educational cards for younger children on things like phonics and times tables. And there is even one that contains recordings of NASA astronauts.
There is only a very small selection of activity cards available at the moment. But I thought they were a great idea with lots of education and entertainment potential. I can’t think of another children’s audio device that offers anything like this, so hopefully more activities, across more age ranges and subjects, will be released soon.
2024 Update: Yoto Learning cards
Still a bit of an under-utilised area, but there are definitely more learning cards available now. These include the excellent BBC Earth Collection, which includes The Blue Planet II, The Green Planet, and the Frozen Planet. These are beautifully-done readings of the BBC Earth books inspired by the David Attenborough series. And slightly less elevated, but just as entertainingly factual, there’s also a Horrible Histories collection of cards.
Yoto Sound Effects
The last type of card are the sound effects. We love, love love these! There are cards with animal sounds and vehicle sounds. There is a card with soothing sounds to help kids sleep (including the hum of a distant vacuum cleaner!). And there are nature sounds with the sounds of storms, rainforests, birdsong, and footsteps in the snow. Our favourite, however, is the crackling fire.
The nature, sleep, and fire cards have images and lighting effects to accompany the audio, too. This turns the Yoto Player into a great imaginative play accessory, and it’s really good fun!
Yoto Player Review – buy or not?
When we got our Yoto Player, I have to admit we had low expectations. Many children’s audio devices seem a little gimmicky and often favour novelty over function. Or, they are just to complicated and fiddly to use. We thought the Yoto Player would be in the first camp, with maybe a foot in the second.
I am so happy to say we were completely wrong. Every single one of us was seduced by the Yoto Player and are now fully smitten with its charms. The Yoto Player is not only a fun and beautiful bit of design, it’s also extremely versatile and a breeze to use.
The ability to stream podcast and radio (and bluetooth connectivity) make it just as appealing and useful for us grown-ups. And then having content options like sound effects and activities alongside stories and music is just genius. With the fabulous pixel screen and night light, and all the free content besides, the Yoto Player is a difficult option to beat.
As for pricing, I think this is very reasonable. The device itself is only £79.99, while content is very competitively priced (rare is the cheap audio these days!). And you can always use it to play your own content or stream free audio. The companion app is also stylish, easy to use and full of helpful info.
In fact, I can’t think of one negative to say about the Yoto Player! So if you are looking for an audio device for your family, this should definitely be top of your list.
2024 Yoto review update: still gold (Ponyboy)?
Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely yes! The Yoto is still great – and the additional features added since we first reviewed it have only made it better. There are also a load of funky accessories available now, such as the silicone adventure jacket for the Yoto, that features a handy handle (see what I did there), a very practical Yoto storage case for all those cards, and both wired Yoto headphones and wireless Yoto headphones too.
The Yoto has, like everything, gone up in price since my first review, and starter packs are now from £89.99 (you pay slightly more for a Disney-content starter pack). I still think this is a reasonable price for a device that has so much practical and fun functionality, and with such beautifully designed simplicity.
I don’t feel like the accessories are overpriced either. Wireless headphones are currently £34.99 while the wired version are only £24.99. The Adventure Jacket and the card case are both £24.99 as well.
Yoto Mini – mini review
I couldn’t’ update this review without talking about the pygmy elephant in the Room – the new(ish) Yoto Mini.
The main criticism (if you can call it that) that I had of the Yoto originally was that the Yoto isn’t very portable. The Yoto Adventure Jackets help address that (non)issue by giving the Yoto a handle. But there is now also another option with the introduction of a baby-sized Yoto – the Yoto Mini. This miniature, striped back version has less features than its big brother, but makes up for it by making the listening experience incredibly portable.
The downside of downsizing is that the Mini has mono speakers, not stereo like the Yoto itself. It also doesn’t have the nightlight or room thermometer, and doesn’t support wireless charging. And it has a lot less battery life (14 hours, compared to 24 for the Yoto) – which is a bit bizarre for a version that you carry around with you.
But on the plus size, it is so cute!! It has a mini version of the pixel screen, the same 32gb capacity as the Yoto, and the same app and preloaded content. And the whole point of this version is to carry it around, so the missing functions (other than battery) aren’t a deal breaker for me.
Yoto Mini accessories
If you do decide to go the Yoto Mini route, consider picking up the accessories available to go with it. I think these are very thoughtfully designed to compliment the functionality of the Yoto Mini as a device to use ‘on the go’. There is the Yoto Mini version of the Adventure Jacket, to help protect it while out and about, and a fantastically useful travel case that will keep the Yoto Mini, cards and headphones safely contained.
The mini adventure jacket is currently £19.99 and the case £29.99, so not eye-wateringly expensive.
Sponsored post
Yoto sent us a Yoto Player and set of audio cards for this review. However, we were under no obligation to give it a good one… So everything in this Yoto Player review is our honest, unvarnished opinion. We really do think it’s that great!
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Children’s Audio Player Reviews
We’re big fans of audio here at Rhubarb and Wren, and so we’ve looked at dozens of different options for children-friendly audio players. Check out our list of the best children’s audio players we found – and see how high we put the Yoto Player!
I completely agree with your review! It’s one of the best purchases we have ever made for our kids. We don’t like letting them watch TV, so had been after a way for them to play music or story tapes where they could be completely in control of what they play and when. This has been PERFECT! They will happily spend hours (literally) curled up listening to it.
I loved reading your review of the Yoto Player! It seems like such a fun and engaging way to introduce kids to audio storytelling. I’ll definitely consider getting one for my little one. Thanks for the insights!