Leapster L-Max, Great Product with Quality Issues

Author's Rating:

Pros: my daughter loves it

Cons: ours broke.

The Bottom Line: 
My 3 year old is crazy for it.

Author's Review
I bought the Leapster L-Max (pink) for my daughter for her third birthday. Our experience with it has been wildly mixed. On the one hand she loves it. On the other, it broke in 3 months and because that put us in late December we haven't been able to replace it. In all it has been a pleasant and frustrating experience.

What it is
For the most part it is a slightly upgraded Leapster. I never like to cheap out and then later regret it so I bought my 3 year old the L-Max. Both the Leapster and the Leapster L-Max are a hand held video game system intended for children ages 4 to 10. I haven't had a handheld video game system myself since the Sega Game Gear and it actually kind of reminds me of that. On the left hand side, for use by the left thumb, there is directional pad with four arrows. Above the directional pad there are three indented and less used buttons for pause, reset, etc. On the right hand of the unit, for right thumb use, there are two buttons labeled "A" and "B". These are "fire" buttons for lack of a better word, although I doubt you do much firing in the Leapster games. Essentially you use the directional pad and "A" and "B" buttons to largely interact with the game. Above the "fire" buttons is an inset power button. The L-Max has another way to interact. Stored in the back, and connected via a cord at the bottom there is a "pen". This pen interacts with the screen for certain games. On this particular model, the color is of course pink,

What I have described is pretty much the same for both the Leapster and the Leapster L-Max but there are differences. For one, the L-Max is a bit bigger. I am not sure if that is a plus or a minus, but there it is. There are two other differences that are the real reasons I opted for the L-Max. One is that the L-Max can be connected to your TV. This seems like a pretty upgraded feature. The other is that there are some games made exclusively for the L-Max. They kind of had me worried that things would be moving that way, or that the game my daughter most wanted would be one only available for the L-Max.

Even without any additional software the L-max comes with some games built in. My daughter often plays these. You can pick a background and color it with the pen and paste in "stickers" and so on. She loves it. There is also a Scooby Doo game. I have never seen her play that one, but I bet she has and just doesn't like it that much.

Our experience
I will start with the age requirement. The product states a minimum age of four, but we opted to buy it for my daughter's 3rd birthday party. The first day I had cause to regret my decision. Just like when we start a new puzzle I had to sit and play this thing with her forever. She did not seem to be getting it at all and I was going brain dead constantly showing her how to play all these pre-kindergarden games. Also like with a new puzzle I was astounded to see the difference 30 hours or so can make. I come home from work the next day and she loves it and is using it like a pro. She puts the cartridge in and out, resets it, turns it on and off and selects and plays games on her own. Her review is, that she loves it and insists on taking it to bed.

I have some other thoughts on our experience. In three months we never once hooked it up to the TV. To use the pen, you would still have to interact with the screen on the game. Hooking it to the TV was one of the main reasons why I bought the L-Max over the Leapster so my advice would be to save your money. We have not bought any games exclusively for the L-Max. Again, you may want to go with the cheaper Leapster.

After three months our touch screen broke. My daughter misses it and has been asking for it, but Toys R Us didn't have it in stock in December, January, or so far in February. My experience with Toys R Us have been awful if you care. I have ordered it online from them twice only to have my order accepted and then canceled days later because even though the Internet says it is in stock, it isn't. I just ordered a new one from Circuit City and have to sit on my Toys R Us store credit. I hope this one lasts because my daughter loves it, but we have had several problems with our Leapfrog toys either breaking or just being finicky. I think they are great toys, but leave something to be desired in quality.

As you might imagine it goes through batteries pretty quickly. It takes four AA which seem to last us less than a week. There is a rechargeable battery system sold separately that may be in our future that I think goes for about $35. If you see a good battery sale, knock it over because you are going to need them.

Conclusion
This is a good item. I hope I just got a lemon, though I fear that is not the case. Save your receipt. My daughter really does love it and I suppose that is the ultimate verdict. I have only bought "Pre-K" cartridges so far and I have a hard time judging those since they are so simple. The idea is that your child can pay educational games all the way through the 4th grade level. Short summary; The unit is nice. My daughter loves it. Ours broke. We don't use the L-Max features. I recommend it with a caveat on quality.