Australian Toniebox Review – Pickr

Kids and gadgets rarely go together, but a new gadget for kids can give them independence. What is Toniebox and is it worth checking out?

Technology for kids can be tough, especially figuring out what to do with them. What do you give them? What do you give them?

Do you hand them a toy that looks like a gadget, only to have it talk down to them and they get bored with it? Or do you hand them one of your inherited gadgets—a phone or tablet—and discover that it doesn’t fill the space they wanted it to, only to have them throw it across the room in frustration?

Toddlers will inevitably ask for things to do at the most inconvenient times, like when you sit down with a cup of tea after cleaning up the mess they made.

This journalist/parent has never been a big fan of the “just give kids an iPad” logic. There are times when it works — keeping kids calm in the car Blue makes sense – but giving them an iPad so they can simply consume content when they need to be occupied doesn’t really seem like the way to provide that Down something. You just bide your time, and to some extent yours.

It’s no wonder gadget makers are starting to try other things. Interactive things. Things that excite kids more than just turning on a screen and staring into a liquid crystal abyss of entertainment.

The Toniebox is one of those things. The gadget, which looks a bit like a soft box (almost a companion cube) with a pad on top and a speaker on the front, is a decidedly different take on kids’ tech. And depending on the age of your little ones, it might just keep them occupied, dancing and happy long enough for you to finish your cup of tea.

What is Toniebox?

As the name suggests, Toniebox Is box and a box with a speaker inside. The box is encased in soft plastic with visible stitching, giving it an almost handmade look LittleBigPlanet-ish to the touch, and also has an element of durability in that it is drop-proof. The softness is the part that stands out; you can hug the Toniebox if you want.

The device itself is powered and includes a USB charger. The battery lasts for 5-6 hours, although the company claims up to 7 hours of use.

What does it do?

Toniebox is a kind of media player that uses a combination of magnets and NFC (Near-Field Communication) to communicate with a speaker inside the device. Some of the controls look completely different.

There are two cat ears on the top, one large and one small, which indicate volume up and down. We’ll let you figure out which is which, but it shouldn’t be too hard — this is for kids, after all.

You’ll also find a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, in case your kids want to listen to music through headphones (or you want them to, that’s the parent’s prerogative and all). But the main focus of this device is the speaker, which you can see through the clear, hole-punched grille on the front.

Regardless of which output you choose, speaker or headphones, using Toniebox as a speaker involves two actions: selecting a set of sounds and controlling them. Both actions are designed for children.

To choose a sound set, simply select a plastic figure to place on top of the Toniebox. Each figure contains an NFC tag and is assigned to a sound set. You will need to configure the Toniebox to communicate with your WiFi so it can download the sounds you need, but this is also a simple process. Go through the app screens and in no time the Toniebox will be ready.

Once you’re ready, you can grab the Tony figure, place it on top, and start listening to entertainment without a screen. Useful for people who don’t want to give their kids another screen.

Does it do its job?

Place Tonie on the magnetic pad at the top and the speaker will find and play audio files from your internet connection. That’s it: a speaker connected to your network.

Kids can swap sets of songs and soundtracks, replacing one Tonie with another, and the sets will change. You can also hit the side of the Toniebox to change songs without changing the figure itself; hitting either side with a solid punch will cause the songs to move forward or backward, depending on which way you hit (and not too lightly).

This creative approach to controlling a music player means kids don’t need to have a light touch and can just really go for it. Hit left to go to the next song, hit right to go back to the previous one. Hit, hit to change the songs they’re listening to.

It may sound crazy, but this is a great way to reward young children with a bit of independence that they probably long for.

Take, for example, Mrs. 2, who loved walking around with a little puppy figurine that came in a box, and who loved nothing more than tapping the sides of the Toniebox to make it play the song “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive” over and over.

Sure, choosing songs may seem harder as time goes on, but the kids have a great time dancing and playing while showing off their independence.

What do you need?

We do have some questions though, as the TonieBox may seem like a first-generation product that is in dire need of improvement.

Take the plug port: it could be USB-C, like almost everything else, but it isn’t. Instead, it’s the old rectangular USB-A port that leads to a specific round port on the bottom of the box itself. It’s just a specific port that you’ll have to buy again if you lose it.

These days, All is USB-C. With this exception.

Even connecting the Toniebox charging plug is a problem. You really have to push it into the round port with a bit of pressure. It’s not just a simple plug and charge, as you might expect. Rather, expect a bit of effort, otherwise the speaker won’t charge and your children will be sad.

One issue is the plug port, but another issue is the volume.

We love the easy-to-use cat ears that allow kids to easily turn up the volume, at least in theory. But not every recording is loud, and some just aren’t. We suspect it’s related to the decibel limit, but the volume notification seems louder than the recordings being played, and that’s a problem.

As are the recordings themselves. While the nursery rhymes sung by random singers are fine, the songs in the Disney films are not sung by the original cast. Some sound similar, but others are just off.

Take the “Shiny” version from Disney Moana: that’s supposed to be Jermaine Clement. It’s not in this recording. It’s obvious it’s not. If it was Clement, he was clearly sick when he recorded it.

This is not the original soundtrack from the film; the sound is so poor that it doesn’t take much to tell it’s a bad clone, and that’s been the case with every action figure we’ve seen. Virtually no Disney recording we’ve played has sounded right.

In many cases, you get the look of the Disney character, but a completely different imitation of the recording. Remember, each Disney figure costs $30, but you don’t get the “official” soundtrack per se, which is something other people have also worked out, not just us.

Is it worth spending money on it?

It’s a combination of quirks that parents will pick up on but kids might not. The songs sound like songs and there’s a lot of fun to be had, but otherwise Toniebox is basically promoting kid-friendly independence for $200.

That may be more than you might expect from a media player and speaker, but it’s also a bit more expensive.

The Toniebox is sturdy and can withstand falls. It encourages independence as children change the music and stories by placing other Tonie figures on the box. They can even control the box by hitting it from all sides. It’s easy for children.

Kids gadgets are usually not cheap, and Toniebox is not far from that logic. Is $200 too much?

Perhaps, but it is worth noting that this is not the case Just another Bluetooth speaker. Like the Birde speaker for kids, it is designed to entertain children in the form of a small, neat toy.

If anything, our problem with the cost stems less from the Toniebox itself than from the Tonie figures: at $29.95 each in Australia, they are expensive, especially considering you don’t get the original recording. It’s like paying $30 for a soundtrack with someone else’s voice, like you’re expecting Dwayne The Rock Johnson to be Moana Maui and some random imitation where the vocals just don’t hit the mark.

Most children probably won’t care, but the observant ones will raise their eyebrows and wonder, “is this really true?” Mrs. 7 did this by listening to recordings of The Little Mermaid.

And you, as a parent, will wonder if those $30 could have been better spent on something else. Or, more accurately, if Toniebox could have negotiated a better deal with Disney or other publishers to get authentic sounds into this little toy.

At least the audiobook recordings at the end of each one sounded authentic, with the original voices — we could hear David Ogden Stiers as Jumba in Lilo and Stitch — but it’s also hard to tell whether it’s true. Once you’ve been fooled by cloned recordings, it’s hard to know whether you can trust anything in those recordings.

Yes or no?

But kids will still dig what Toniebox is, and we suspect some parents will too. Promoting independence in little ones is intriguing, to say the least.

If anything, the most creative use of the Toniebox is the one that intrigues us the most and that we haven’t gotten around to trying: personal messages and stories assigned to specific figurines. These are “Creative Tories,” $26 figurines that aren’t licensed but are set up to let you record your own tracks to include, supporting up to 90 minutes of content.

Possibilities for this could include a message from a relative or a story that only they could tell, or even a message from a parent going on a business trip that the kids could hear whenever they wanted. Yes, technically a phone or tablet could do this too.

But Toniebox does it in a physical way that your kids can listen to whenever they want. They won’t have to ask you to call them, they can just play and listen whenever they want.

And that’s definitely a positive thing, because if it promotes a little more independence, it might help you finish that cup of tea you originally sat down for. The point is to keep the little ones busy. Don’t grow up too fast, kids.