By Ali at www.champagneandcoffeestains.com
If my daughter had it her way, we’d have We Don’t Talk About Bruno on repeat in our house. While I love the Encanto soundtrack, I can only handle listening to it so many times in a day. So when I found out there was a kid’s music player that was kid friendly and connected to my Spotify account, I was intrigued!
Jooki sent us one of their music players to test out I have to say, we are both loving it! The player is super easy to set up and use. In this post I’ll share with you our experience with Jooki, how to use it (and some tips I wish I knew before setting it up) and my honest review.
WHAT IS JOOKI?
First off – what is Jooki? Jooki is a music player that’s designed for kids. It uses special tokens that fit into the player to stream different playlists. The player comes with a few preset tokens, and then you can pair the others with your own Spotify Playlists, MP3 files or even audio books. As a parent, this is awesome because you can create different tokens for different moods, activities or even times of day. For example, I have a token for each Disney soundtrack my daughter likes, another for her quiet time, and another set for her to practice her dance class routine.
The player itself is super durable (which is important when kids are involved!) and has a 8 hour battery life. The tokens also come in a few different options – different colored squares or fun figurines. My daughters favorite is the cute little Fox!
SETTING IT UP
When our Jooki arrived I was really excited to get it set up and showed my daughter. Looking back, this was my mistake because the Jooki does take some time to get set up the first time you use it.
The first thing you need to do is charge the battery – our Jooki arrived pretty drained, so this took about 30 minutes to do. Once the battery was charged, I turned on the Jooki to start the initial set up process.
The next thing you need to do is connect your Jooki to your WiFi network which was really easy to do. Once it was connected to the WiFi, it started downloading updates. I think this was the part that took the longest and I’d recommend if you’re giving this as a gift or to kids in general, get it set up ahead of time before telling them about it.
Once the updates were downloaded, I was able to create an account and then start adding in different Spotify playlists. This part took a little bit of time to do but thankfully there’s a helpful video that walks you through how to do it. The trick is don’t have any of your tokens linked before opening Spotify. When you’re ready to link, connect to Jooki, play the playlist and then put the token onto the Jooki. The app will let you select the token and then it’ll associate that token to that playlist. Don’t worry about remembering which token is linked to which playlist – the app keeps track of that for you in the main screen.
While the Jooki advertises that it connects to Spotify, don’t worry if you don’t have a Spotify. You can also load MP3s onto it, audiobooks, and stream from any streaming service. The benefit of having Spotify with the Jooki is that playlists can be connected to a token but it’s not necessary to have to use the Jooki.
Once that was set up I was able to link it to the different color tokens and my daughter was ready to use!
JOOKI REVIEW
I’ll be honest – I’m pretty jealous of the technology kids have nowadays and wish I had something this cool when I was a kid. I remember back when I was younger the closest thing I had was one of those little HitClips that would play 60 seconds of a song (remember those? I have no idea looking back how my mom didn’t go crazy hearing the same 60 seconds of ‘Nsync’s Bye Bye Bye). Now my daughter has entire soundtracks in the palm of her hand!
We’ve had the Jooki for a few weeks and it’s held up amazingly well with how rough my daughter can be. The battery life is as long as promised, and the connection to Spotify is really seamless. The only downside is that since we use it to connect to Spotify it can’t be used unless we have WiFi connection, but we keep it at home so that’s not really a huge deal. If you’re planning to travel with it ( it does have a headphone jack) just keep that in mind. You can also set it up to MP3s or an audio books that can be played offline so that is a solution, we just haven’t done it yet.
One thing that I’m really impressed with is the range that Jooki has. My daughter is able to use her Jooki in her room while I’m downstairs with my phone and the sound is seamless! It’s also nice that while she listens to whatever she wants, I can still use my phone and hear my own audio on it. The only thing that doesn’t work at the same time is Spotify – but Youtube, Facebook, etc. still work!
I also like that since it connects to Spotify, I’m able to get my daughter’s dance class music onto it to help her practice at home. This was a really big selling point for me because it meant I didn’t have to go out and buy a separate CD or MP3 just for her dance class. She’s also excited to be able to use her own music player to practice her routine so she’s been even more motivated to practice at home!
Since I control what is on her playlist, I’m comfortable with her having it in her room. I also like that Jooki has built in noise control so she can’t make the music play crazy loud either.
Overall, I’m really happy with the Jooki and think it’s worth the price tag. It’s a great gift for music-loving kids and is something they’ll be able to use for years to come!
WHERE TO BUY
Jooki can be purchased on their website here or on Amazon.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Jooki Music player is a great gift for music-loving kids! It’s super easy to use and set up, and the battery life is incredible. It’s been one of the best toys my daughter has received and I know she’ll be using it for years to come!
