The tonies Toniebox: the Simple and Fun Audio System for Young Children | A Review

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What is a Toniebox?

A Toniebox is a child-friendly audio system that changes the way children listen to stories and music. The soft, squidgy box allows young children to control the audio they listen to, with really simple and cute controls. There is no screen or any complicated controls – the soft but sturdy cube has a digital core which is intuitive and easy to use: the audio starts as soon as the “Tonie” audio character, such as The Gruffalo or Zog, are placed to the top of the Toniebox’s magnetic pad.

The Toniebox comes in all sorts of lovely colours, including bright pink which we have, as well as blue, lime green, red, grey and purple. They look great and stylish enough to sit nicely in your home.

Tonies are the cute hand-painted figures that sit on top of the Toniebox, whilst Creative Tonies are just like Tonies but with the space to fill them with 90 minutes of whatever you like. You get a Creative Tonie with your Tonies Starter Pack and then can buy individual Tonies that are filled with songs, stories or educational stuff to add to your collection.

A really sweet part of it is that you can record your own voice or even a family member’s onto your Creative Tonie so that your child can listen to their voice. Especially at this strange time where we are not allowed to see our family, it would be lovely for kids to be able to listen to their Grandma, for example, reading them a bedtime story or just leaving them a little message that they can hear as soon as they put the Tonie on the box.

You could also use it (when we’re allowed out again) to record a nighttime message from you or tell them a bedtime story for your child to listen to if you were going out for a night and someone else was looking after your children, especially if they get a bit worried or struggle to sleep without you.

This is the best feature of the Toniebox for me as you can really be creative (hence the name!) with one of the Creative Tonies and you and your kids can have so much fun with it together. This is Ava’s favourite part of it and she loves listening to me speak to her! I can imagine she would love it even more if I was on a night out and she could listen to my voice.

What is in the Toniebox Starter Set?

In a Toniebox Starter Set you’ll receive:

  • Toniebox
  • Charging Station
  • One Creative Tonie
  • British Plug
  • Setup Instructions

A Toniebox starter set is currently around £60, with the Creative Tonies at around £11.99 and individual Tonies are £15.99, which in my opinion does make it quite expensive to buy additional Tonies, especially as some of them only contain around 20 minutes of audio on them. It would possibly work out cheaper to buy audio CD’s or mp3’s yourself and then add them onto the Creative Tonie, but then your kids don’t get the cute Tonie to play with and you would likely fill it up quickly too.

Setting up the Toniebox

The Toniebox is really simple to set up and only took me a few minutes. You’ll need your WiFi password to get started and a WiFi connection to initially get it set up (or to add a new Tonie or if you’ve added new content to a Creative Tonie) but after that, you can take it wherever you want so you could use it in the car or take it away with you somewhere to keep your kids entertained.

You’ll also need to head to the Tonies website or download the app onto your phone or tablet to set everything up and after that you can start listening!

As it’s so simple to use kids from around age 3 can use it and know what to do with it very quickly and you can know that they can play it with completely safely.

Placing a Tonie on the cube starts it and taking it off stops it. You press the cute little ears to change the volume, and tapping the sides changes tracks if listening to songs, and you can also fast forward and rewind by tipping the box either left or right.

The Toniebox is made out of sustainable material and is robust and water-repellant so you don’t have to worry about children playing with it alone. It also comes with a headphone jack and once charged the battery has 7 hours of runtime.

With your Creative Tonie you can add your own content whether that is your voice or reading your child a story. You record a message or read a story using the app on your phone and it automatically starts to download onto the Tonie so your child can listen to it. You can also add files such as music as long as it is in one of these formats: MP3, M4A, M4B*, WAV, OGG or WMA files, and you just drag and drop them using your computer. You can’t do this on your phone (you can only voice record using the app) so you would need to have access to a computer.  You then don’t need WiFi to listen so you can take it anywhere with you and kids can listen for up to seven hours.

This does mean that you can’t listen to services such as Spotify – you need to actually own the content you want to add yourselves, and that you can move across to the Tonies app yourselves (such as CD’s that you put onto your computer or buy from iTunes for example).

Although Ava was very excited to get this out and have a play with it, and she does enjoy using it, I do think this would be best for younger children, particularly the Tonies with the stories and songs built-in. The Toniebox is suitable for kids aged 3 and up and I think the age range of about 3-6ish would get the most out of it.

We have the ‘Travelling Tonie‘- a cute mouse which is full of 20 ‘travelling’ songs such as The Wheels on the Bus, My Bonnie, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Summer Holiday and many more. It lasts around 50 minutes altogether and it’s very sweet. And although I do think it would be great for younger children, it is a bit young for Ava now. I think we are going to pass our Toniebox onto my young niece as I think she will absolutely love it and get so much out of it. She’s only one but I think she will work out how to use it herself very quickly which is one of the best features of the Toniebox and Tonies. She can put a Tonie on the box herself as well as play with the Tonies or Toniebox perfectly safely. I have read elsewhere that some of the Tonies are much smaller than the ones we have though, so that is worth bearing in mind for younger children who still put things in their mouths.

You can get all different types of Tonies; some with songs, others that tell you facts about a particular subject and some that tell stories, with new ones coming out all the time. So adding new ones to your collection as birthday or Christmas presents would be nice.

I do think the Toniebox and Tonies are great, and I think most young children will love it. It’s robust, looks nice and it’s really sweet to be able to let your children listen to messages, stories, or just hear their loved one’s voice and choose when to play it themselves. You could also add their favourite songs to your Creative Tonie and not worry about them listening to content that you’d rather they didn’t. I also love that it’s completely screen-free which so little is nowadays!

It can be great for helping children get to sleep, which so many struggle with. The Toniebox has great sound even at a very low volume, making it brilliant to use before bedtime to help your kids calm downn and enjoy a story before getting a night of restful sleep. It also allows parents to set a to maximum volume via the app which is useful! Once a bedtime story has finished, the Toniebox will turn itself off.

The Toniebox and Tonies give young children independent access to audio that is safe, simple to use, and lots of fun. It’s easy to add your own content to a Creative Tonie yourself using the app or computer and you can change it up as much as you want. I think young kids will love having a mix of Tonies that already have content on them as well as being able to listen to the voices of their loved ones or songs they love. I do wish that the Tonies were cheaper or that they contained more content and they would be a much better purchase for £15 then. Overall, the Toniebox is a lovely and personal audio system that I think young kids will get a lot out of.

Win a £15 Amazon Giftcard!

I’ve decided to give away a £15 Amazon gift card that you could put towards your own Toniebox or a new Tonie (or whatever you like of course!)

All you have to do to enter is complete the Rafflecopter below – good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We were sent a Toniebox Starter Set and an extra Tonie to review but all words and opinions are my own. See my full disclosure policy here.

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318 Comments

  29. How lovely! This is something I know my niece would enjoy. I do like the pink and I think she would agree!

    Reply

  100. I love the pink one as it’s my daughter’s favourite colour and she’d choose this if she could.

    Reply

  143. I really like the purple toniebox, super audio system and a fantastic blog post thank you for sharing.

    Reply

  203. my favourite colour is the blue….usually I’d go for green every time, but with their shades I prefer the blue

    Reply

  227. I love the purple as it’s my favourite colour but my boys would stay green to match their room.

    Reply

  303. I love the light blue.. I’ve been doing my research on these the last few weeks as a birthday gift for my daughters 4th birthday:)

    Reply

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