Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
 Good For The Kid - Bad For The Adult January 31, 2010
Kerton (Pleasanton, US, Canada)
The Smart-e-Bear is basically a good toy, but it has some serious drawbacks. Here's a quick Pros and Cons list, with the cons first, since I see many other reviews have the Pros covered:
CONS:
- It keeps asking for money. The bear's packaging and marketing material heavily promotes the bear's ability to be customized with more songs, games, languages, etc. But if you go through the trouble of setting the software up on your computer, you'll eventually find the whole plan for this toy is to send you to the Smart-e-STORE. Yep, that's right, the toy sends you to a store where you can pay between one and two dollars for kids songs. Games? You gotta pay. The toy is the "Razor blade" business model, where Gillette gives the holder away at cost so they can make money charging big margins on the blades. Sign me up as irritated.
- Privacy: When you first try to log into their site (a required step of installing software on the PC) they ask you for address, phone numbers, child's name, etc. I didn't want to give that much information, but each piece was required. Geez, what's wrong with just a login and a password? I suppose it's so that it helps them set up your account at the smartestore.
- Languages: The box and marketing talk up the language ability of the bear a lot, but don't mention that ALL the included content is JUST ENGLISH. Therefore, if you wanted a smartebear with a respectable amount of Spanish content on it (as I do, since we are native Spanish speakers), then you will have to buy ALL of that content at $1 - $2 a pop. Figure another $50 at least to replicate the English content that was included, but not wanted. For now, our smartebear talks spanglish. Some set program phrases in Spanish, alternating with content in English.
- PC software: The PC software is a 67MB download! That's a lot. It takes 111MB in my Program Files folder. Why is this not just a web application? Logitech has similar software for customizing remote controls, and it's all done in a browser. The software doesn't lay out nicely on a laptop screen, requires scrolling in the main windows, and in sub windows. It's quite ugly. It's also confusing, busy, and a complicated User Interface. Was it designed by the target market 3-yr olds? There is no clear information architecture, there are menus in various places, sub menus, repeated menus, and a bunch of new terminology for you to learn, ex: "playdate", "stories", and "istories". It quite sucks. Once installed, the software will download updates to itself and your bear without asking you. Before I bought, requested, or downloaded any music from the program, it stored 73MB and 540 .ogg files on my computer, taking up space, and possibly not where I would want it (mixed with my "My Music"). There are tabs at the top (Current Playdate) that don't do anything, and won't go away. The content is categorized in this app like cheese is categorized in a rat maze. Hunt through the terrible design to find stuff. This is the worst part of Smart-e-bear
- UI: Having suffered through the UI of the PC software, the UI of the Bear is a relief, but also bad. It is simpler, easy to understand, and kids can handle it, but it is tedious. Smartebear asks you if you want to hear/do something, if yes, squeeze the hand, if no, squeeze the foot. It thus has all the speed of AT&T's customer service Voice Response system. Basically, you need to cycle through all the choices by squeezing the foot until you find the song/game you wanted. When you're done, repeat. Since you can put a lot of content in the smartebear, this can be a real problem: the more content you put in, the more content you have to decline with a foot squeeze before you find what you want. So don't put in much content!
- Usage Scenario: The makers obviously figured out the limitation of their hand/foot squeeze UI, so they came up with the concept of "Playdates". This idea is that you can put different content in the bear for different uses: games for car rides, lullabies for bedtime. Each of those two could be a "Playdate". Then, you just plug the bear into your PC and swap out the playdates when appropriate. Well, I don't know about you, but I have just about zero interest in opening up the back of my kid's toy, plugging it into my PC, running the terrible software, and swapping out the Playdates. I was hoping to put one big batch of content into the bear, and maybe updating it in a year. The scenario of parents happily swapping out content via USB is ridiculously unlikely.
- Workload: So basically, the parent has a job. Learning, choosing purchasing, managing, sorting, downloading, and uploading the content for the bear. Yay. This isn't the gift that keeps on giving, this is the gift that keeps on taking.
PROS:
Fluffy, soft, good battery life, my kid likes it, it says her name, good speaker loudness, it is interactive.
CONCLUSION:
The toy is not as good as I hoped it would be for my child, and is a pain in the bearriere for me. I will select the content one more time, delete the PC software, and run the bear as a standalone toy.
Thought it would be a favorite but... January 30, 2010
Kelly Ketchum
I was excited to get this for my little girl but she has not looked at it twice after having it a year! The songs that are already on the bear are terrible. I hated to listen to them. Just wasnt all that great of a toy for her.
 My nephew loves it. September 16, 2009
Ginny W (California)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I wasn't sure how much my nephew would like this gift. It being a stuffed animal and all and he likes dinosaurs, cars etc. But its become his best friend. Everytime we visit with him, he has the bear. He has renamed it Podge. It says his name which is what surprised me that they actually HAD his name there. The songs are good and wholesome and his mom says she has downloaded new songs and stories and it was very easy. One post said they didn't like the voice but I think its really cute and friendly. This is the modern babysitter and long car drive companion. He can put headphones in so not to annoy his older sister.
Cute and fun but the voice is really annoying. September 2, 2009
S. Burt (Sacramento, CA United States)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
My son really enjoys Smart e-Bear. He cracked up when it said his name. He doesn't play with it all the time but he's still young yet and I expect it'll be used more often in the coming months.
My problem is its voice. We find the bear's voice to be reallly annoying.
Luckily most of the content is from outside sources and there's a volume control or I think we'd have chucked the bear within a month of buying it. If you wike to tawk widdo baybee tawk to yo chidwen you might wike it, but that kind of thing just makes our teeth hurt.
So yeah.. it's okay overall, I just wish the programming options included some alternate voice choices!
great toy August 17, 2009
Aristides Santiago
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
its awsome teaches and sings all types of educational things your kids would love it
Showing reviews 1-5 of 31
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