One Year Review of the Mini Yoto Player
Card Collection Updated July 2024
One year ago we gifted our four kids Mini Yoto players for our big back to school breakfast. If you haven’t seen it, my Back To Homeschool 2022 blog post is one of my most visited blog posts. If you’re new to the Yoto - they are screen free audio players. Because of their child-friendly simplicity and minimal-tech vibe they are especially popular amongst us who love to share stories and good music with our children. After using four minis for almost a year now, I’m sharing my honest thoughts and experience using these little devices.
By the way, if you’re in the market, I’ve got a 10% off discount code for you by clicking THIS LINK. The code will pop up the first time you visit the site so be sure to write it down!
What We’ve Liked
Audio Books: We haven’t come across an audio book that we don’t like yet! The narrations are absolutely fantastic! I am sensitive to poor audio narrators so this has been a big win for me. We used to have an Audible subscription, but I ended up cancelling it. Mostly because it was difficult for my children to use easily. We tried Kindles and our Alexa devices and no matter what we were always having issues and I was having to spend a lot of time managing devices. So we LOVE how simple the Yoto is for accessing audio books - the kids just grab a card and stick it in the slot and they’re ready to go! It’s totally hands off for me which is another big win.
Music: I thought we’d use the players mostly for stories, but turns out all 4 of my kids also love using it for music. My kids have fallen in love and know Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Beethoven because of the My First Classical Music Collection. There is hardly a week that goes by where we don’t hear a card from this collection. They listen to it all around the house, but also while we do school work.
Yotos also have a built in kid-appropriate Yoto radio station. It can be turned off in the parental controls, but we do keep ours on. During the day, the Yoto is set to “Day Mode.” While it’s in Day Mode the songs are upbeat and catchy. There is only one song that I don’t care for - Underwear Spaghetti by Louis & Dan and the Invisible Band (also found on the Let’s Imagine Yoto Card). I’ve let it slide, but just a heads up.
The “Night Mode” radio station turns to a quiet lullaby type music and about 3 months ago my 4 & 6 year old started listening to it every night to go to sleep. Since, my twins (almost 10) will often listen to it too. You can adjust what time night and day modes start - ours are customized to switch at 7:30 PM and 8:30 AM.
Size: The mini size was a big draw fore me because it’s small enough the kids can easily carry it around with them. It fits perfect in their hands and travels from room to room very easily. I also liked that it’s not so small that kid’s will lose it easily.
Jackets: We didn’t originally buy mini jackets because they were sold out. I thought we’d try it without, but we quickly snagged them when they were back in stock. They seem to go quick and I would absolutely recommend jackets at this point. Not only does it protect the player, but it comes with the wrist band the kids can slip on their wrist and carry around the house with them. All of my kids frequently use it.
Variety of Cards: So far I have been happy with the selection of cards Yoto offers for purchase. We invested in a few larger packs and have slowly added more over the last year once I notice my kids have gone through the stories we already have at least once. Many of the cards they listen to over and over - especially the short story cards.
Make Your Own Cards: MYO cards are popular and easy to do. I waited way too long to make some cards and realized how simple it was once I did it. I have only made two cards from $1 files I bought off Downpour.com - Tom Sawyer and Pollyanna. I do know a lot of people use MYO cards for library audio books they check out. You can load files to your computer and then download them to the cards. Also, unless you want a collection of stories to always be returning to, you can easily delete the files on the MYO cards and upload new ones. So you don’t need to necessarily invest in tons of MYO cards. Many people use Libro.fm for MYO cards as well. I’ve also seen people load scriptures on them and other favorite music selections. You can even record your own MYO card while you read so your kids can hear your voice.
Read Alongs: One of the ways we’ve used the story cards is following along with stories we already have books for. My twins did this last December when they read Charolette’s Web. This is so fun to do - especially if you have young readers. My little boys will often flip through the picture books we have while they follow along. We’ve done this with our Peter Rabbit collection, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Room on the Broom.
Volume Control: You can listen to books or music via built-in speaker or headphones. Additionally one of my favorite customizations is in the parent app where you can control the volume limit for both day and night modes. This has been a lifesaver for my boys who love to turn it up the volume as high as it will go and walk around the house.
Parent App & Listening On My Phone: The parent app is a great tool and definitely something we frequently use. All of the cards can be controlled on the app. If your child loses their place in a story, you can easily navigate back to where they were via the app. This is kind of similar to loosing your place in a book. Also once you purchase a card, the files instantly appear on the parent app. This is handy because we can also listen to any of our music or stories in the car (or on other Bluetooth speakers around the house) without carrying our devices around.
What We’ve Disliked
Price: I feel like at $70, the price point for a Yoto mini is still pretty high. I felt like it was worth it or we wouldn’t have bought them, but I can see how this may hold some people back. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see a price drops on these anytime soon. Yoto has random sales here and there, but there isn’t a particular pattern to them. In addition to the player, you also do have to buy each card or set - so it can definitely add up. If budget is a concern, you may want to utilize more of the MYO cards. We got our Yoto’s and all the cards reimbursed through our homeschool funding program. Either way, make sure to use my discount code link to save a little bit off your first purchase.
Audible Files Don’t Transfer Easily: I wish it was easy to transfer over our Audible Files to MYO cards. It can be done, but it does take some finagling because their files are .aax and Yoto uses mp3s. My friend has used OpenAudible.org to convert files with success, but I haevn’t done it yet.
Clicking Sound: Just in the last month one of our Yotos, while playing the radio, sounds like it gets stuck and starts making a clicking sound repeatedly. We just click the main knob off and back on and it’ll work fine so it hasn’t been a big deal (yet). It’s only been one of our four devices so maybe it’s just a fluke. Other than that they’ve all held up great - and they’ve definitely been dropped a number of times.
Loosing Cards: I feel like we have a pretty good set up (see below for storage options), but we do still manage to lose cards here and there. We have always found them and I’ve worked hard with my kids to make sure they remember to get their cards back in our case - which we try to keep in a central location. But, it can be a bit of a pain when we can’t find the card we’re looking for. Since the audio file is always available on your phone - you can download it onto a MYO card if you do lose a card and never find it. So at least there is a good back up.
Our Card Collection & Wish List
I get asked all the time what are the best cards to start with. In my first purchase I bought My First Classic Stories Collection, My First Classical Music Collection, Vroom Vroom Beep Beep, A is for Alphabet, and The Gruffalo and Friends Collection. I felt like this gave each of my 4 kids something to look forward to (ages 9, 5, & 3 at the time). All of these cards have been well loved and well used. Here is a list of our current collection and a few on my wish list.
* indicates our very favorites
A is for Alphabet: This set is so fun to use to mix up learning letter names and sounds! We use this with some of our alphabet manipulatives - like our ABC puzzle and moveable alphabet.
The Gruffalo and Friends Collection: Room on the Broom is one of those cards my kids have listened to at least 100 times. It is a favorite all year long.*
Ladybird Volume 2: The Human Body, The Frozen World, On the Farm, Rainforests, Creepy Crawlies
My First Classics Music: This is one of the best package deals and includes My First Classical Album, My First Orchestra Album, My First Christmas Album, My First Violin Album, My First Beethoven Album, My First Mozart Album, My First Tchaikovsky Album, My First Lullaby Album, My First Ballet Album, My First Piano Album.*
My First Classic Stories: This includes Heidi, The Wind and the Willows, The Secret Garden, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, and The Snow Queen and Other Stories.*
Vroom Vroom Beep Beep: This has been a constant favorite of my 4 year olds all year. His favorite card is Traffic Jams. Every member in our family probably has it memorized because he listens to it so much, haha!*
Young Folk: For some reasons my twins love these folk songs and have become super attached to this card. The song Butterfly and Eat Your Vegetables have become family favorites for all of us.*
Yoto Starter Pack: I probably wouldn’t recommend this pack. My kids don’t really enjoy listening to anything except Robin Hood which you can just purchase as a single card.
Our Wish List:
Ladybird Collections: There are 5 different volumes of these - we have volume 2
Headphones, Accessories & Setting Up a Charging Station
Adventure Jacket Carriers for Yoto Minis: In my opinion, these are a must-have.
If you wanted to look into another option - these hands-free homemade cute crossbody carrying cases are cute! I love the pouches for the cards!
Card Case: We originally started with a trading card size one off Amazon that could hold 400 cards. We already had it on hand, but after about 6 months of our cards always falling out, I finally invested in one of Yoto’s card case. Unfortunately, the price is pretty steep compared to knock off ones on Amazon used for trading cards or credit cards - but the cards fit nice and snug. I LOVE how thin the Yoto brand one is, but the downside is it only holds 64 cards. I liked it well enough that I ended up buying two more. (The light gray one I have pictured isn’t available anymore) but we also have the blue bird and pink colored ones. One thing I do really like about the cases though is that they travel well and are easy to carry around the house. They also fit nicely on our shelf!
Headphones: We do like that the Yotos have a headphone jack because I would dislike having to keep track of charging 4 sets of headphones as well. We have two brands of pretty basic headphones for our kids.
Pollini: We’ve had these foldable headphones for years and they’ve held up great. We have them in black and pink. I like that these come in hard cases which we use for storage and traveling.
Kid’s Headphones: These work best for toddlers and young children. (Blue pictured below.)
We also have Bose noise cancelling headphones which I absolutely love and occasionally let the kids borrow, but, obviously too expensive to use for a child’s everyday headphones.
Travel Cases: I have two different brands of travel cases. We have 4 Yotos and used to take all 4 with us traveling, but learned we do not need so many as the kids are usually rotating activities in the car so we settled on two travel cases and that’s been perfect.
Yoto Brand: I don’t love the color or shape of this one - but it holds all our gear great and we love the hole for headphone wires off the side of the case. Both of the headphones we have fit in here.
Knock Off: This one I came across on Amazon and prefer the color and shape. It fits much better in our activity bag when we travel. Both of our headphones also fit in this. There is no hole on the side for headphone wires.
Since the Pollini headphones also come with hard storage cases, we’ve also just packed up the earphones and card cases and carried the Yoto in the same bag and it works just as well.
Charging Station & Organization: For a while I used to keep our Yotos in the bottom shelf of one of the bookshelves in our school room. But, they weren’t very well seen and the kids weren’t using them much so a few months ago I moved them to an open shelf in our living room and made a little “home” for them. Since being here - the kids use them every day. It’s also right off our kitchen so we can listen to music or books over meals. I tell ya, where you keep things can make a huge difference!
Since we have four Yotos - I bought this USB cord organizer and keep the charging cords easily accessible on our shelf so the kids always know where to charge them. It’s cheap and basic and keeps things organized. Etsy has so many great organizers. I can’t justify the cost of four of these, but if you’re getting one or two minis here are some really cute docking stations:
I had an old picture ledge frame that I will keep one or two cards in as an invitation for the kids to pick up and listen (it’s what the Winnie the Pooh card is in pictured below.) Here is something similar if you like to see your cards displayed upright.
FAQs
What ages are these best for? I think these are good for babies as white noise or lullaby players up through about age 14ish. I’ve heard some parents using these for their teens as a screen free option for music and you could totally do that. If you use it with an older child, I feel like most of the audio book cards are geared for younger children so you probably want to use more MYO cards and utilize the library or other audio book sites. I’d say prime time for these devices are ages 3-12.
Why the mini over the larger size? We knew we wanted to travel with these so it just made sense to start with the small ones. They have the exact same speaker quality and other than size there is not much difference. The larger Yoto does have an alarm clock built into it, but we didn’t need that.
Do we need one for every child? Of course not. However, we started with 2 and ended buying 2 more so each child would have their own. We use all of them and it isn’t unusual for the kids to copy one another and all be listening at the same time. You can easily rotate this as one of the items your child uses and shares though. My advice would be either just to have one everyone shares or individualize it and invest in one for each child. It does reduce fighting and it’s a good item to give as a gift for birthdays, holidays, and special events - like a back to homeschool gift!
How often are they used? When we had them stored down low on our bookshelf, we only used them maybe once a week. Now that they’re stored central to our living space and easily seen - we use them everyday.
What are your thoughts on the Yoto Club? I polled my IG Stories on this and it was pretty split 50/50. If you like subscriptions, enjoy receiving new cards each month, and are looking to build up your collection quickly - then I don’t think you can go wrong with it. Ultimately, we didn’t feel like it was worth the cost though. I get new cards every few months and enjoy shopping and selecting current favorites. Over the last year we used cards as stocking stuffers, birthday gifts, and easter basket fillers.
If you have any other questions, be sure to let me know and I am happy to help!
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