Microphone or no microphone
Most parents would rather do without. Sound quality from the supplied microphones is usually poor: switch one on and you generally get a hum and a hiss along with the singing, plus echo and feedback. Children, on the other hand, love them — singing along and hearing your own voice out loud is very funny when you are four.
The picks
Top pick — Boxine Toniebox 2
The best children's music player for most families. Everything that worked on the original box is here, plus a good deal more. The shape is slightly rounder, there are four colours, and the characteristic ears that control volume are unchanged, as is the way you drive it: tap the side to skip a track, tilt the box to wind forwards or back.
New is the large dynamic LED ring on the top, which cycles through colours as it plays and does duty as a night light and a sunrise alarm. In the app you can set a sleep timer: once it starts, the ring dims, the volume drops and the box eventually switches itself off. Set the sunrise alarm instead and the ring brightens slowly at the chosen time, with a wake-up melody if you want one. If the permanent glow while playing annoys you, the ring can be turned off entirely.
The exception is the new interactive play mode, where the ring stays lit because it is part of the controls. Playing games needs a small controller, bought once, which stands on the box like an audio figure; a game disc goes on top across the ears, and after a one-off download the game starts by itself. Games are graded by age band. A three-and-a-half-year-old took to it immediately — anything that lights up or can be turned and pressed is fascinating at that age — and the controller stood up to a fair amount of enthusiastic thumping. It runs without a screen, the characters printed on the disc guide the game, and the child decides what happens next with the controller.
Another improvement over the previous model: no charging cradle is needed any more, since the box charges over a USB cable. The trade-off is the loss of the headphone jack, so headphones now connect over Bluetooth only.
Music, audio plays and audiobooks play from the Tonie figures or Book-Tonies, which stand on the box and work with every model in the family. You can also put your own content on a Creative-Tonie, or download content through the app onto the matching figure, which costs less than buying the pre-loaded figures.
The manufacturer gives an age range of one to nine years and upwards, so a box bought early has a long life ahead of it. The drawback is the one it has always had: the figures themselves are the expensive part, and every new story means another one. Buying them second-hand saves a good deal. There is also no way to connect an external streaming service.
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Touchscreen alternative — Tigermedia Tigerbox Touch Plus
A child-friendly cube with a screen, and a versatile one. Against the plain Touch it adds a good deal of equipment, though the two look identical. The large touch display lets children pick and control content themselves, and the interface is genuinely simple — the small testers enjoyed using it.
The cube, available in several colours, is very robust: being carried about and dropped on the floor does it no harm, because a silicone case protects the body. Headphones connect over Bluetooth, which avoids a tangle of cables, or through the jack socket on the back. A night light is a nice extra, controlled from the app or from the parent area on the box itself, where you can also set when and how long the tiger's head on the front should glow.
There are three ways to get content on. A paid ticket unlocks the whole of the advert-free streaming service for download and playback, but only for as long as the subscription runs. Cards with stories or music can be bought and slid into the card slot instead. And a blank card takes your own voice recordings or files.
The stereo sound is convincing — good enough for a children's party — and an LED strip pulses in time while music plays, which held the test child's attention at once. The flashing can be switched off, and the volume can be capped. From the app or the parent area you get a sleep timer and settings for how long and at which times of day the box will play. The manufacturer recommends it from five years, though younger children manage it alongside an adult, and the roughly 30,000 titles in the library mean it will not run dry.
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Voice control — Amazon Echo Dot Kids
Strictly speaking this is not a music box at all. It is a full smart speaker with extras, dressed for a child's room — currently a green owl or a purple dragon rather than plain black.
The principle alone delights a lot of children: tell the little sphere what you want to hear and a moment later the theme tune of the audio play or the favourite song fills the room. "Pause" stops it. It will also tell jokes, spell words, answer general-knowledge questions and give tomorrow's weather.
Setting it up needs the app and an account; the speaker joins the wi-fi, then you create profiles for up to four children. It can also be run as an ordinary smart speaker, so it is worth checking the settings are right. The app itself is not the clearest.
Once the profiles exist it works well. Requests for specific series — even specific episodes — were found without trouble, thanks to the enormous invisible library behind it. A year of the children's content subscription is included with the speaker. That subscription covers a huge quantity of audio plays, audiobooks, music and learning content, both from the retailer's own catalogue and from its audiobook subsidiary. After the free year it has to be paid for, and without it the speaker is a good deal less interesting: you can link a music-streaming service, or buy individual titles, which adds up over time. Used regularly, the subscription earns its place.
The child's profile and the app decide which content is allowed, through a parent dashboard that also governs any other children's devices from the same maker. The permitted age band runs from 2 to 13+, and the same setting applies across the whole children's catalogue. The dashboard also sets a total daily playing time, or a window of the day, or both — two hours of listening, say, but only between eight in the morning and six in the evening. Outside that window the speaker answers only that it cannot play right now, and it cannot yet say when it will be able to again.
One thing to weigh before buying: voice control needs reasonably clear speech, and sometimes several attempts. Fast or indistinct speech, or loud background noise, defeats it. Without voice control there is very little you can do with it — the few buttons only handle volume, muting the microphone and getting its attention. If clear speaking is still hard work, it will produce more frustration than pleasure.
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For Spotify households — Wobie Box
Built specifically around Spotify. If you already subscribe and would rather not take out another subscription or keep buying content, this is the concept: the child works the box independently while the adults keep their own phone or tablet for themselves. It needs a phone or tablet, a stable wi-fi connection and the maker's own app.
In the box you get the player, a short manual and a charging cable, in blue, beige or rose. Build quality is high. Charging happens on the underside, which is slightly fiddly because the socket is recessed; the same place holds the switch between wi-fi, Bluetooth and microSD, the headphone socket and the reset.
The player is rounded and covered in a soft fabric, with a useful loop for carrying it. The silicone-like base makes it stand very securely. At just under 670 g it is on the heavy side.
The app walks you through setup, which is straightforward. The middle of the top surface switches it on and off, and after eleven minutes of inactivity it shuts down by itself. The rainbow keys, violet through red, each play one of the stored items; arrow keys skip a track either way; the large circle turns it up and the small one down. Your own recordings can be made and played back too, but only with a microSD card fitted.
Loading content means assigning an album, an audiobook, a playlist or a podcast to each coloured key through the app, matching the colour card in the app to the key on the box. Open a whole album rather than a single track, or only that track plays, and switch off autoplay and shuffle so the episodes run in order. If the adults want to use the streaming service at the same time, the account has to be switched, or the two collide.
The sound quality is genuinely excellent, and the box is expensive — the argument for it being that the content can be changed again and again as the child's tastes, hobbies and age change, so it lasts.
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No app, no account — Galakto Musik- und Hörspielplayer
For anyone who would rather not install another app or complete another registration, this is a well-made alternative to the figure-and-card boxes, and it needs no internet connection at all.
It is small: 13.2 x 8 x 8 cm. A strong 20-hour battery, two headphone sockets so two children can listen together and two USB-C ports made a good impression, and it charges inductively — the manufacturer advises a 5 W charging pad for best results.
Instead of figures it uses small audio tokens that push into a docking well, where they sit firmly enough not to fall out if the player is turned upside down. There are a great many audio plays across the three to twelve age range, from long-running classics to newer series. The tokens are not cheap, though they cost less than the equivalents from the two big rivals.
A nylon loop makes it easy to carry, and the whole thing feels high quality and robust, with every surface rounded off. Control is very simple: just four buttons, for skipping either way and for volume up and down. There is no play or pause button — inserting a token starts playback, removing it stops playback, and putting the same token back resumes where it left off.
The sound quality impressed, even at maximum volume, which is not what you expect from a box this size.
The advertised night light disappoints. It only lights when a token is loaded, so there is no night light without audio, and it is really a discreet LED ring on the top of the sort other players here simply describe as a lighting effect. Its brightness is dimmed or raised with a screwdriver on the underside.
The highlight is the Twist'n'Go system: the player splits in two, and the upper part unscrews and travels with the child, with playback then only through headphones. It is an unusually practical piece of design.
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Also tested
HMC Hörbert — a wooden box that looks like a portable radio and went down very well on looks alone, with eleven coloured buttons on the front, two for control and nine for playlists, and a metal rotary knob for power and volume. Optionally available with a USB socket and charging circuit for AA rechargeables, or run from four ordinary AA cells. It works with no display, app or streaming service: everything sits on the supplied SD card, and your own card can be used if you follow the formatting rules exactly. Filling the playlists is almost unrestricted, from your own music through audio plays to web radio stations. Enabling Bluetooth or the recording microphone, and managing content, means connecting a wi-fi device through a browser, which proved awkward and did not always run smoothly. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Eichhorn Lilumi — an interactive audiobook in wooden book form that opens out, with wooden figures inside that are placed on colour-matched spots; the figures, places and objects chosen appear in the story. There are 108 different audiobooks, each a maximum of four minutes long. It charges over USB and starts straight away with no internet, storage medium, account or streaming service; there is an on/off switch, two volume buttons and one Bluetooth button, and nothing else. The three-and-a-half-year-old enjoyed the toy-and-audiobook combination, though sound quality could be better. Robust, easy to take along, with a headphone jack as well as Bluetooth. The fixed content may pall eventually, and four minutes is short. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Tigermedia Tigerbox mini — recommended by its maker from three years, and the outright winner on looks with the test child. Five silicone animal cases are available, which also cushion knocks. A setting wheel and the touch display drive it, and the test child managed both intuitively with no explanation. Content downloads through the app and a subscription is unavoidable, though an existing account covers several boxes; a card can be bought instead and used offline. In the app parents can pick age-appropriate titles for the display, cap the volume and set listening times. Robust, with a carrying handle, so it travels well — but older children will eventually want more content and more complex functions. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Boxine Toniebox — the original, which looks more like a soft toy than a music player. No sharp edges, no knobs or wheels: it is padded, and two ears serve as the volume control, pressing the big one to turn it up and pinching the small one to turn it down. Squeezing an ear switches it on, and the LED turns green. Figures replace discs — one story per figure — and Creative-Tonies can be filled with your own audio through the cloud or recorded in the app, in MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG and WMA, up to 90 minutes per figure. A tap on the side skips a chapter and tilting winds either way. The battery runs about seven hours and recharges on the supplied cradle within three. Sound was among the best here for a box this size. Streaming playlists cannot be loaded onto a figure, because downloaded streaming files are encrypted; a household can be managed in the cloud, including whether other people's figures may play; and a live function reads messages recorded on a phone through a Creative-Tonie, so a parent away from home can still tell a bedtime story. Android users can share existing audio files straight into the app, which iOS does not permit. Downloadable episodes for selected series arrived later, and there is some free content in the library. The figures remain the expensive part. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Kekz Starterset — headphones rather than a box, in red or blue, with audio tokens attached magnetically to the right earcup; the set includes the headphones and one token. No cable, no screen, no wi-fi or Bluetooth transfer. The control key sits on the left cup: hold it a second to switch on, one press for the next title, two presses to go back, and its colour reports charge state — white for on, green for fully charged, red for low. Battery life runs to a maximum of 15 hours, charged over the supplied USB-C cable. A three-step volume switch sits on top of the left cup, but it is tucked away, so the headphones have to come off to change it; playback stops automatically when they are taken off and restarts by itself. The padded, adjustable headband sits softly, and sound quality is very good for children's headphones. The illustrated instructions are clear and the bundled token plays a short audio guide to the controls. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
KidzAudio Music Box — plays from a USB stick or over Bluetooth, in a square design reminiscent of the figure boxes, and largely made of bamboo. Very well built, with no sharp corners, and a silicone carrying handle in black or three colours. At nearly 1.3 kg it is comparatively heavy, but robust enough to shrug off a fall, and supplied rubber feet improve grip on smooth surfaces. The rechargeable battery runs over eight hours. The buttons are colourful and clear, the volume control doubles as the power switch, there is a volume cap on the back, and a sleep function reduces the volume over 30 minutes. The USB slot is the problem: it hides in a compartment on the back that has to be unscrewed with a coin or screwdriver, and the stick must not be too long or too wide to fit the narrow recess. Sound quality is very good and does not turn tinny when loud, and recordings play back well. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Ikea Vappeby — only a Bluetooth speaker, but designed for children, in pale rose or pastel green and shaped somewhat like a goose. Rounded, light, with a carrying strap. Two buttons — one for the lamp, one for the speaker — and the "beak" handles volume, pause and play. The disco setting pulses the light in colours while music plays; the night-light setting glows a pleasant warm tone. Sound quality convinced, and a volume cap can be set from the phone. Because it plays over Bluetooth it suits older children. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
TinyGeeks Audio Tunes — good and inexpensive, reasonable sounding, easy for children to work and free of sharp edges. It plays CDs or a USB stick, has a radio and an AUX socket for a phone, and runs from the mains or on batteries. The white and pale blue casing is plain, but owl stickers are supplied to personalise it. The buttons are clear and easy, so even the youngest manage. Both side speakers light up in colours whenever music plays. Sound is good for the size, slipping a little at high volume. No microphone. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Cyberlux CL-940 — another conventional CD player, rounded, in four designs including dinosaur, fish, construction vehicle and princess. Sound comes off slightly worse than the TinyGeeks, particularly loud. The control surface is manageable and easy for children to follow, but the buttons are hard to press: use one hand and the player slides backwards on a smooth surface, so it has to be held with the other. The volume buttons could be larger. It has CD and USB playback, AUX and headphone sockets, and runs from the mains or batteries, which are not included. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Karcher RR 5026 — a portable CD player with USB, radio and a supplied microphone for singing along, in a bright red, yellow and blue design. Mains or battery powered, batteries not included, with a headphone socket. An LC display sits on the front with volume buttons beneath and eight further buttons alongside; four are labelled at the side, four carry small symbols that are hard to make out against the blue. A USB socket on the front plays MP3 files, the CD compartment on top opens at the press of a button, and the back holds the mains, headphone and microphone sockets plus the telescopic radio aerial. The buttons have a good action, the main transport controls are intuitive for children, the blue-backlit display is clearly legible, sound is good and there are 30 radio presets. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
TechniSat Technifant — works much like the figure boxes, except that a "hat" is placed on the blue elephant's head to play content, and a night light is included. The starter pack contains one hat with relaxation and sleep songs, six more are sold individually, and the hats can be filled with your own audio; Bluetooth playback also works, and did so faultlessly. An LED strip runs around the body as a night light in various colours and brightnesses. The five front buttons all carry several functions — the power button also starts and pauses, the volume-up button also raises brightness and activates Bluetooth — which is confusing at first and not especially intuitive. The mode switch underneath has positions 0, 1 and 2 for off, on and charging, and on with the night light, so switching off means lifting the elephant off its station; a notch helps seat the hat correctly, and playback will not start if it is the wrong way round. Sound is good, through the speaker or headphones, and the battery lasts a maximum of eight hours off the station. The packaging is paper and card with no plastic. The skip buttons feel rattly. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
X4-Tech Bobby Joey — supplied with two microphones, so a child can sing along with a friend, and stickers to personalise it. Portable, handy and easy to use, with buttons marked by geometric shapes that make operation easier for children, and among the better sounding children's boxes here. Inexpensive too. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Muse M-29KB — a light blue CD player with an underwater motif, with a pink owl version also available. A battery compartment and a handle allow use away from a socket, and the distinguishing feature is a karaoke microphone that stows in a small compartment below the battery compartment and works during normal playback. That is where the good news stops: the microphone's build is acceptable but its sound is muffled and too loud, and the speakers are no better; the plastic feels cheap, the buttons are stiff and clack loudly, and the display is unlit. MP3 files from a USB stick always played back with a noticeable delay. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Metronic 477144 — best avoided. The jungle motif is passable, and that is all. Build quality is cheap, and the test unit's CD lid was already flaking at the edge. Every control — volume, the USB, SD-card and radio mode selector, the headphone socket — sits on the back and is awkward to reach. Battery operation is possible. The tinny sound is dreadful, and neither the auto-off nor the large child-friendly buttons rescue it. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Lenco SCD-24 — inexpensive and convincing on sound quality, but not one for small children: the styling holds little appeal for them and it is fairly heavy, while older children will have limited use for either CDs or radio. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Timio TM03-03 — works with its own discs, five of which are included: one of audio plays, two of music and two of vocabulary. That last is the point of it, because the player switches between eight languages at the press of a button, so the same content can be heard in Mandarin, French or Spanish as well. The content suits very young children, roughly one to two years. The audio plays are not especially engaging, amounting to a few sentences rather than a proper story. Further disc sets can be bought later. For what you get, it is priced too highly. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Silvercrest SpeakerBuddy — a cheaper take on the figure-box idea from a supermarket own brand, using "coins" that are laid on the box. The stories are not on the coins: they have to be downloaded first, which needs a phone on wi-fi, the app and an account, and takes a while — after which playback runs smoothly and at adequate quality. The app sets maximum playing time and maximum volume, including for the separately sold headphones. Four buttons handle louder, quieter, forwards and back. There is no pause button: lifting the coin stops the story, and the box remembers the position for the last two coins, which means removing the coin every time the child is called away, and there is currently no storage solution for coins that go astray in the toy box. The bundled recordable coin was the real disappointment, since it takes only a recording made through the phone's microphone in the app rather than external MP3 or WAV files. The catalogue currently runs to 40 coins. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
Kidywolf Kidymusic — a compact speaker at just 8.4 x 8.4 x 9.1 cm, in three designs. A soft silicone shell, rounded with no sharp corners, a torso of recycled plastic and rubber feet that stop it sliding; a carrying loop is missed. Three buttons on the back are easy to press but on the small side, with the top one for volume up and skip forward, the middle for power and pause, and the bottom for volume down and skip back. Because each button does different things depending on how long it is held, operation is more complicated than it should be, and adjusting volume or skipping tracks during playback proved unintuitive even for adults, so it suits older children. There is a USB-C socket, an AUX socket and a microSD slot, though a card holding a valid audio format would not play at all. A charging cable and AUX cable are included, and it switches itself off after ten minutes. It is fundamentally a Bluetooth speaker and will even take phone calls. Well built and fairly priced, but other players offer far more. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
VTech Mein erster Musik-Player — aimed at two- to five-year-olds, with 40 songs, about an hour of music, preinstalled and ten memory slots holding up to 30 minutes of your own recordings. Bluetooth pairs it with a phone or tablet. At 17.5 cm wide and 15 cm high it is compact and light, with a handle, and it is well built with no unpleasant sharp corners. It arrives in demo mode, and the side power switch has to be pressed twice for play mode; the volume control is there too. The short manual does not explain the functions, but operation is intuitive enough for the youngest to grasp: a rotary control switches between modes — learning songs, classics, dancing songs, relaxation music and your own recordings — a play/pause button sits in the middle, and number keys above the control choose tracks. Blinking LEDs accompany playback. Sound quality is acceptable for the size, the recording mode works well, and the preinstalled songs are unremarkable and a little dated. Search Amazon UK · Search Amazon US
How they were assessed
Thirty-nine children's music players were tested. Each was used by small children between 15 months and nearly five years old over a period of one to two weeks, played repeatedly, carried about, switched on and off, with lids opened and closed.
The assessment covered how robust the players are, how well children cope with them and how they sound. It also looked at what content is available, which storage media are used and how friendly the whole thing is to operate, with extras such as apps, Bluetooth connections and microphone sockets counting towards the result.
The short answers
Which is the best children's music player? The Toniebox 2. The intuitive, child-friendly operation and the ability to record your own content onto the figures make it the pick, and it is robust enough for daily life. Several alternatives are worth having too.
What is a children's music player? Most are designed specifically for small hands, which shows in child-friendly styling, bright colours, large controls, rounded edges, a degree of robustness and, in many cases, splash resistance.
Are they expensive? Not necessarily — there are cheap ones. But build and sound quality on the cheapest models often leave a lot to be desired, and most of those play through radio, CD and cassette.
How does music get onto one? It depends on the model. Some let parents load their own content onto a microSD card using the maker's software. Others deliver audiobooks and music through small figures or cards: stand a figure on the box and its content starts. Downloading and setting up new digital content usually needs wi-fi. Content can also reach the player from a phone over Bluetooth from a streaming service, and some models take a USB stick. If you prefer things uncomplicated, buy a CD player; some players also receive radio. Models with a cassette deck are out of date.
Does a music player need a microphone? For parents they can quickly become irritating, thanks to poor quality, feedback, echo, hiss and hum. Children, however, find them enormous fun, because hearing your own voice out loud is funny and singing along to a favourite song is the whole point. Good children's headphones are worth looking at as well, for the sake of everyone else in the house.
