Yoto oh no? The Beatles & Queen arrive on a child's toy
After I made the video about the Tonies children’s audio player quite a few people suggested that I should take a look at the similarly targeted Yoto system as well. I thought I should put a bit of time between the two due to the similarity. It turns out it’s a year and a half since I uploaded the Tonies review. I’m glad I waited so long as the Yoto ‘format’ has just had seen ‘new’ album releases from The Beatles and Queen - and this makes the whole thing way more interesting. This and the fact that there are new Yoto players means that now is a good time to take a good look at Yoto.
I haven’t had time to give this video the usual amount of play throughs, so hopefully there aren’t any technical problems. I was hoping on finishing this video by mid week - but since the weather has been so rotten I’ve just stayed in, done nothing else and worked on it. That just about made it possible to get it posted on Patreon before the weekend was over - but I’ve had to skip the final checks.
Now while I've put some Amazon affiliated links in the YouTube video description, if you're interested in buying any Yoto stuff for a child (or possibly yourself), you might be best off waiting until Black Friday and shopping via the official Yoto website. I suspect these Beatles cards might become collectable in time...but then again they might not. If I were you I wouldn't take financial advice from me. I've got a storage locker full of bad ideas.
Anyway, I hope you’re all OK - I’m going to take a break from all this screen work by watching TV instead. Plus ça change. Have a good week.
Updates
Re-edit 1 is linked here: https://youtu.be/2mQECKOkkqk
I) All incorrect mentions of RFID replaced with NFC.
II) Removed the mention of the Queen album being complete as it transpired the track ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ is absent from the yoto version.
Comments (57)
I am missing the community feature for this channel. That said. It is nice the got all this functionality compared to the tonies. It seems a bit more adult oriented than kid oriented , especially small children. I did upload some music to a blank tonie (deep purple concerto) and it sounds terrible on the tonie box. Perhaps because of the mono? Price seems to be a bit better than the tonie box too
Regarding access to the community area: It is still available via the web interface, but can be somewhat hidden. When you log into Patreon, you will usually be presented with a timeline consisting of the latest posts from all the creators you have subscribed to. If Techmoan is the only creator you support, you might get the impression that logging into Patreon is enough to see all of Mat's content, when in reality you need to click on his profile somewhere in the left sidebar to see everything. I'm aware that I'm probably stating something very obvious here, but I have to admit it took me a few attempts in the beginning to figure this out. However, if that doesn't work for you, maybe the direct link will help: https://www.patreon.com/techmoan/community
As a fan of visualization of music, have you seen the ferrofluid speakers? May be a good video, or the directional ultrasonic speakers?
I've seen a few videos - for some reason they don't appeal. Perhaps it's the rather chaotic/random nature of the effect.
I wonder if Fat Bottomed Girls was omitted due to there being no easy way to render a pixilated backside on a child friendly gadget?
I can think of a senior citizen in my life who might benefit from the simplicity and build quality.
If you add the BBC radio stations to a card they'd have radio one to six easily accessible.
You probably mentioned it with an earlier video, but my names is not listed on the credits anymore. I'd appreciate it if you'd take a look at it.
Sorry about this - I’ll add you back on next time.
Just a heads up that the official Beatles Facebook page have just posted about these releases, so may be a good time to make this one public? I obviously haven't linked to the unlisted video, as that's not on. We're an exclusive club here! The Beatles post has, predictably, already generated a few complaining trolls (are there any other sort?) so be warned! "If kids need a "reason" to listen to this amazing music which stands on its own merit without savvy marketing etc, then they shouldn't listen to it in the first place!" Bet he's a right laugh on a night out.
Thanks for the information. I think I’m still going to leave the video until Saturday, but thanks again.
It's so funny seeing you review something my toddler uses everyday! We don't have the 3rd gen, but it seems mostly the same. We love it.
Someone probably mentioned this on the Member Posts (of which I no longer have access to). It's a very nice article about Mat by The Scotsman: https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/tech/retrotech-hit-techmoan-proves-theres-more-to-youtube-than-dancing-cats-4417778
It hasn't been mentioned there yet. A really nice article, and it seems like the editor has researched the content of Mat's channel well.
Your edit is delightful
Very cool, really like it! Shame all the kids I know are too old for it now! Incidentally, I just looked up how much £109 (current Amazon price) would be when I was ten years old in 1980, and it was £20 which whilst a lot, wouldn't be ridiculous. Big Trak money I suppose.
That's quite impressive, Mat. Nobody could ever accuse you of not being thorough in your reviews. :-) I might see if I can grab a Black Friday one for my grandson. Thanks! :-)
BTW I noticed the Tonies player is $70 USD for Black Friday at all of the usual retailers
I had something similar to this when I was a kid. It was called a clock radio cassette player.
In the mid 80s an older colleague said both his daughters wanted those for Christmas. They weren't cheap at the time. Prices in the 1985 Argos catalogue were between £35 and £55. (£103 to £162 inflation adjusted)
Good idea, let the kids listen to some good music before they start listening to the crap on hit radio nowadays 😉
Forgot to comment that the yoto font type reminds me of the font type on the Panapic.
'Yes, hello Mr. McCartney. I've got the sales figures in for the new Blue and Red album releases. Massive increase spike in the Yoto format for some reason!'
As soon as I started this video I realised this is the the product that didn’t include Fat Bottomed Girls on Queen Greatest Hits, leading to lots of knee jerk and inaccurate outrage about the song being cancelled haha. Have to say it was the right decision to leave it off this release, there’s the obvious commenting on weight on a children’s product reason, but also I can’t imagine the pixel art!
Ahhhh as soon as I hear that jingle I think of our Techmoan 😁
Yoto oh no… Beatles… - Now I get it. Took me a while…
I think it was perhaps a pun too far - so I’ve simplified and de-punned the title of the re-edited version.
Neat little device, but I don’t think kids would use it much as they’d rather have a kid friendly tablet.
Aside from all the privacy concerns, one aspect I like about the Yoto Player is that children are not tied to a screen in order to use it (if that's how their parents handle it). Children and young people of today will spend more than enough time in front of a screen in their lifetime.
That... looks pretty solid, actually. A modern day clock radio. Reasonably well made, multiple related functions, well thought-out. I'm impressed.
Bowlderization aside, that seems like a pretty cool product.
Love the look of these, but again those alarm bells of "will they work in a decade's time" are still ringing. I mean, I can play my 1970s cassette issues of those two Beatles albums with no issues. Also, I notice "I Am The Walrus" is omitted, possibly due to the word "knickers"!!
OK, this is bugging me more than I thought it would...Mat, what are the Yoto icons for Boho Rhapsody and Fat Bottomed Girls? Ah... looks like FBG's is not included. Probably wise. Like when they dropped the "Bet they shoot down the plane" line from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" when Sir Elton was on the Muppet Show.
Bohemian Rhapsody is the first song with the crown icon.
And what child wouldn't want to be serenaded by Freddie Mercury confessing murder to his mum or letting us know which type of girls makes the rocking world go 'round?
'Fat Bottomed Girls' was omitted.
Christmas.. A 4 Year old granddaughter, I am off to the shops. Thanks fro a great video as ever! Thanks...
Didn’t expect the theme to the original Wipeout on PS1 to turn up in this video. Absolute banger.
Oooh can’t wait to have a go with this card on my Proxmark. Got to be RFID in there right ? Now I must go off and watch the video. Bit of an update, just read through the Mozilla Privacy Not Included report for the device and whilst it's not perfect it is a bit better than I expected. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/yoto-player/
Seems well engineered. Nice seeing a well made toy
A leet demonstration of a nice little device - French lesson and all!
A very intriguing system with far more uses than I thought there would be at the start of the video, and not just for kids either. But I think I'll stay with CDs for physical media, although Grace might disagree.
Thanks Mat. Unsurprisingly, I have never heard of this, although it does appeal to my child at heart sensibilities. 100% agreed with you that the portable version gives me Fisher Price vibes. It reminds me of the aesthetic of the old FP record player music box. I wanted to learn about the company behind it and was intrigued to learn it's a UK startup that's gone global - apparently the products are either manufactured or assembled in China. It was hard to tell on their website. You indicated both items sound the same via headphones, so I assume the portable version is stereo headphone playback? [I learned from you never to assume stereo playback i.e. the Bush portable mono cassette player.] I loved the mini peel. Take care 🤍
Yes they're both stereo.
Although it's designed for kids I could see it being useful for my parents. They mostly listen to the local radio but somehow manage to get through cheap portable stereos like nothing else, and there are always FM reception issues. Scratched CDs aplenty too. One of these with a load of custom cards and I could make one or more radio cards they hopefully won't lose, with the web stream on it. I could make CD cards for favourite albums instead of having to burn recordable CDs from backups. I saw that the cassette sticker had 600MB/6HRS on it, a neat addition and I guess that's the limit to what you can put on a custom card?
Keep seeing these advertised, thought it was a step up from the toy things you used as your techmoan figure, was talking to my friend who had the toy one about it. No idea it had real music
The Yoto player looks well made and easy to use. Perfect for kids, right? The one thing that concerns me is its dependence on the cloud. Not only because it will lose lots of it functionality once the corresponding cloud services are shut down, but also because of the data this thing collects. While Yoto Limited states that they "minimised the amount of personal information", there still is a fair amount of usage data transferred to their servers, e.g. "the audio being played, when it was played and how many times it was played, system performance of the player" among other things. You probably want to have a look at Yoto's privacy policy (from which I took the quotes): https://eu.yotoplay.com/legal/privacy-policy https://us.yotoplay.com/legal/privacy-policy
I wonder how many Walkmans, Boomboxes, and Record Players have been bought by Adults trying to re-live their childhood (says the person who spent three years waiting for an Amerex AC107 Cassette Recorder to appear on eBay). That fun might be lost with cloud products. People will have to hope that in future somebody does a project like "run your own Yoto server on a Raspberry Pi 16".
Considering the Tonie and Yoto devices, it seems like kids' toys are the best way to get ahold of the coolest, most interesting and innovative audio players these days.
Great video, I bought a Yoto player for my 7 year old and she is very happy with it. She had asked for an alarm clock, this ticked that box and more.
That's really good! Love this product, but haven't got an excuse to buy one. Maybe I should get the mini, 50 of those make-your-own cards and 50 of those cassette stickers, make up some mix-cards and forget about changing all those bloody Walkman belts!
Smartphones for music are the most practical, but the least interesting. I like the physical tokens 🙂
I wonder what happens when you put a contactless credit/debit card in there?
I thought it would be fun if I could use other RFID cards I had knocking about the house (e.g. Disneyland tickets) to launch something on my daughter's Yoto player. Unfortunately it just threw up an error when I tried "loading content" to it.
bees knees gave you a love scratch?
I think we both reached for a cat toy at the same time.
I noticed that WHSmith were selling Yoto stuff at a discount a while back. I figured that it was already on your radar, so just decided to wait and see if a video about it would appear.