15 Things I Wish I Knew About the Yoto Player

ByBrooke

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I went back and forth multiple times on whether or not a yoto was worth it. We have a tonie box at home and it doesn’t get used as much by my older kids, although my 2 year old still plays with it frequently. I didn’t want it to be just another thing in the house. And I also didn’t want it to be something that they would grow out of quickly. But I am going to share with you the reasons why I went for it and what I love about it. It is a purchase I am glad I made and I’m sure I will buy another as my kids get older and have different interests when it comes to listening to books.

  1. We spend a lot of time in the car. We drive to see my mom once a week which adds to at least 2.5 hours just in that one day. I like to listen to audiobooks in the car on long drives but the kids liked to listen to their audiobooks that we got from the library on disc. Yes my car is so old that it still has a cd player installed. But if their audiobook was playing, I wasn’t able to hear or listen to mine.
  2. I want them to love learning and reading books. While audiobooks are not exactly the same as reading, it is still time that they aren’t begging for a screen to be turned on. We still read books daily, but I view any extra time on the Yoto as extra reading.
  3. I had a friend who said her youngest (4) listens, all the way to her oldest (14). I knew that this is something that would work for us in the future because we don’t intend to get our kids phones until they are much older. So a device that they could listen to books and music that we can filter and know what they are listening to was a huge selling point.
  4. My kids are learning so much. We have bought some of the brainbots and the ladybird audio cards and they have been loving them! Below I will be sharing some of the cards we have loved, some we haven’t, and some you can get for free!
By far their favorite card. My son tells me fun facts about the ocean and animals all the time. I’m learning a lot too!
I would not buy this from yoto. It is free on the internet archive. And it is read by John Krasinski!
Also free on the internet archive! Just put it on a make your own card.
We were checking these books out at our local library and my 5 year old was loving them so I bought the cards. I think I have heard card number 3 100 times in the last month.
We have two music cards. One has music that they love from the radio. On the other card we just have their church music. On Sundays we don’t watch tv or listen to music other than church music so it has been awesome for them to have their own card that they can still play what they want on Sundays.
This is not a card you can buy. Rather it is a podcast for kids that you can load onto a Make Your Own card from the Yoto Library. The downside to this is that you can only listen when you have wifi. So it doesn’t work in the car for us.

What I have learned

  • The cheapest I have ever seen the yoto go is $65 on Amazon. They do a Black Friday sale, and they go on sale for most of the Prime days. You can also get good deals at Target anytime they are running a deal on toys.
  • The cards make for great gifts if you have parents or grandparents that live far away and don’t know what to get for the kids.
  • These rings and ring stickers have worked so well for cord organization. We lose fewer when they are all together on a ring. But stick the sticker to the BACK of the card and not on the front if you are putting a cover art sticker on that side (for a MYO card if you print your own stickers). It will just peel and rip the stickers off (The cover art on cards from Yoto do not peel off). The other option that I have seen but have not tried is a library system. This works well if you plan to only have a few make your own cards and you swap the playlist that is on them every once in a while. They call this the library system. So you would get an album and you would put printed pictures into the slots and then you would put the yoto card behind the picture of the audio that is currently on that card. That way when you take off the audio to put new on, you don’t scrape off a sticker from the actual card.
  • The adventure Jacket by Yoto is so expensive. The ones on Amazon are just fine.
  • I don’t see a reason to get the big yoto. Just get the travel yoto. The big yoto can play a little louder but I think the travel yoto is plenty loud.
  • Everyday Reading has tons of info if you are looking for more recommendations and tips.
  • I think the Yoto club is totally worth it for the first year. They have three options, $40, $90, and $150. The $40 plan just gives you digital access to the Yoto library. Not all cards are in the Yoto library but there are hundreds still to choose from. $90 and $150 dollar plans give you credits to buy cards in addition to access to the Yoto library. Unless you know which cards you want, I would just pay $40 for the first year. You get access to all of the Yoto originals, which includes brainbots. I would just figure out what your kids like, and then unsubscribe the next year and buy the cards you want. Once you unsubscribe, you no longer have access to those books that were on your cards (unless you bought them beyond just paying to use them for a short time with the subscription). I chose to do the $150 a month subscription because you get 24 credits with it, which comes out to about 6.25 per credit. If you are planning to buy cards in the first year, it makes sense to do the more expensive subscriptions. They also run deals on the cards throughout the year, like buy 5 for the price of 4, or 10-20 percent off cards around Black Friday and their back to school sale in August.
  • Yotos can work for older people too. If you have podcasts you like to listen to, you can just link the RSS feed to the card. The cards update automatically to the latest 25 podcasts. But once again, you do need wifi to listen to podcasts.
  • I think the MYO cards are where it is at. But the stickers that yoto gives are pretty lame. So I buy these vinyl stickers and print using this canva template. I just paste the pictures I want in the template and print onto the special sticker paper. Then I cut them out and stick them on. It works great!
  • You CAN download books from audible for your cards but it is a HASSLE and if you are not tech savvy, it is a no go. Too hard to convert into an MP3 file.
  • Librofm is a great resource for audiobooks that you can put on the cards because they are already in an MP3 file. They run deals frequently.
  • Internet archive has many free audiobooks that you can download. They are hard to find and you have to dig sometimes, but they have dr suess, curious george, frog and toad, the tale of peter rabbit, and the box car children.
  • When you sign up for a whole year at a time, you get all of your credits at one time. You can have two memberships if you are wanting more credits.
  • Reddit and Facebook are great resources if you have questions. My favorite Facebook Yoto group is called USA Yoto Player Buy-Sell-Trade and Chat.
  • You can only assign one playlist per card. So if you add a playlist to a card, it will take off the previous playlist. You cannot override cards from Yoto. Only Make Your Own cards.
  • You need to download all of your cards before you leave wifi. If you are planning to take it in the car and you haven’t done that, you won’t be able to listen to anything. To download yoto content, you need to place the cards one at a time into the yoto player with it on. A cloud will appear on the display and then it will begin playing. After the cloud disappears you are good to insert another card and repeat the process. After all of your cards have been inserted and played on the Yoto, you need to plug the yoto in to charge with NO card in the yoto. It will begin downloading when it is plugged in and nothing is playing. You can track downloads by going to the yoto app- settings-audio download status.

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