leapster explorer / v-tech v-smile motion console - pleeeeease help!

[sparkle1977]

I am looking at the Leapster Explorer and also the V-tech V-smile motion console as a joint pressie for my DCs potentially.

Does anyone have experience of either and are they any good or just not worth it ??

Marking my place because I'm looking at these too

We have bought a leapster explorer for DD (4) for christmas and I had it out to check that it works etc and I have tried on on display in a shop too which is what prompted me to buy it DD.

The games are quite expensive, around the same price as a DS game. You can get the cartridges on ebay though for much less and they are fine (I've bought lots of clickstart games on ebay, all fine). It doesn't recharge or come with a plug, so it is going to cost in batteries. A charger is due out next year. You can download games too, but you need to buy leaplet cards to do that and they cost £10 for 2 ( and some games/ebooks are 2 leaplets each!)so even that could be quite expensive. When you switch it on to register a player it runs an advert with all the download games, so I have set it up for DD in advance so that she then doesn't start asking for all the downloads "tell your parents to link up and download!" . When you buy it it comes with a pet game, which is where you can create and play with your own pet and 1 leaplet card to download something with.

Despite all that, I think DD will love it, when I had a go it was quite intuitive. It is similar to a DS but most of the games for younger on the DS have too much text or fiddly bits that they get frustrated with. You can also set the level of it to match with their school year, so the maths/writing/reading etc is at the right level and they are not going to get too frustrated with it. It seemed quite durable and you can get screen protectors on ebay. The stylus attaches with a string and you can adapt it to left or right handed. A camera will be available to attach to it before christmas too.

If you are going to buy one the cheapest place atm is the elc if you buy a muller little stars pack you get a 20% off voucher which makes it about £48 instore. That is what I did.

how old are your children? just thinking if they will grow out of it quickly.....

Sorry, my DS's are 2.5 and 4.

oh that should be fine for them then. The 2.5yr old will get longer use I would have thought as they will find the games more of a challenge.

I have a 7 and 3 yr old. The 3yr old has the Clickstart computer which he does quite competently. The 7 yr old has a DS and has just got a Wii. (The clickstart was his when he was 4yrs)

We are looking at getting a DS for ds2 for Christmas and getting him easy games like peppa pig, dora etc. The reason for this as oppose to getting the leapster is simply a cost issue. I was going to get the leapster but my hubby pointed out that a second hand one is the same price as a leapster and we have SO many games already that the boys can share.

If we didn't already have an older son then I wouldn't have even considered getting a DS.

What I am trying to say (badly) is think long term, look at cost for games, will you need an extra telly to play it on?? and think that the 4 year old will start to be influenced by friends and what they have.