Kid-Friendly Audio Players: Fisher-Price Kid Tough FP3 Player
Pros: Rugged case, large buttons, break-away neck-strap, volume-limiting headphones, online store, expandable with SD Cards
Cons: Proprietary music format, requires use of Fisher Price software, some skips in songs from copied CD
Ages: 3+
List Price: $70
The Player
The Fisher Price Kid Tough FP3 Player's (FP3) bright colors and big, easy-to-use buttons make it clear that this player is designed for kids. The volume and power buttons are a little harder to use than the other buttons, but this should keep them from accidentally being pushed during use. The FP3's screen displays icons to help younger kids choose their favorite songs. It may not be pocket-friendly, but the large rubber bumpers should help the FP3 survive the occasional fall. And of course, it's also available in gender-friendly pink or blue.
The player has 128MB of built-in memory and an SD card slot that can support up to 1GB of additional memory. Included in the package with the player are volume-limiting headphones, software CD, USB cable, and a break-away neck strap. Also included is a printed manual (again, thumbs up!). An optional speaker dock is available for purchase separately.
Software
The FP3 comes with it's own software to manage music and stories. The software allows you to copy music from CDs, create playlists (but not use them on the player), and purchase songs and stories from the Fisher-Price Song and Story Online Store. Think of it as "iKidTunes." Songs are $.99, stories $1.99, and complete albums $9.99.
The software also lets you assign icons to individual songs. These icons are displayed on the FP3's screen while the song plays, making it easier for younger kids to find their favorite titles without knowing how to read. A wide range of icons are included and you can create your own. This sounds great, but you're limited to one color and only four brush sizes. There's also no way to import images from outside the program.* Given enough time I'm sure it would be possible to come up with something similar to the included icons, but I don't see many people trying it.
* - The icon files appear to be ordinary BMP files, so it may be possible to work around this.
Testing
Copying the test CD to the library was quick and easy. Creating a playlist to put the songs in order was also easy, plus it allowed me to copy all the songs over to the player with one click. Unfortunately, the files created are some sort of propriety audio format, so you can forget about sharing music files between the FP3 and other players. I've already spent a lot of time creating MP3s from our CDs, so I'm not really interested in creating duplicate files in the FP3's format. Of course, I wouldn't do this for every song, but it would still take some time.
Playing the pre-installed songs and stories through the included headphones sounded fine. The FP3 headphones are designed to limit playback to a "kid-safe" volume and did not play overly loud. Unfortunately, many of my own songs suffered from audio dropouts and did not sound as good. Since the pre-installed songs didn't have this problem, it's possible my computer was is blame. However, it meets the software's requirement and I wasn't running other software while copying the CD. I haven't had any issues creating MP3 files on this computer, so maybe the conversion to the FP3 player format is less forgiving of slower computers.
The FP3 passed my daughter's stress testing with flying colors. While she's too young for the player, she had a great time clicking the buttons to change the screen icon. And while she did extensive testing of the FP3's rubber bumpers, she wasn't willing to use the headphones.
Final Thoughts
I liked the FP3 player itself. Fisher-Price knows toddlers and this MP3 player is designed to survive almost anything they can dish out. However, I don't think I could get past the proprietary file format of the song files, particularly if the quality of my test songs is the norm. It would be one thing if only songs and stories you purchased were in this format, but requiring it for songs copied from your own CDs is too much. However, if you don't already have a large collection of music on your computer, or you plan on purchasing all your songs and stories from the Fisher-Price music store, this shouldn't be an issue for you.
