iHome2Go's Padded Boombox: A Great MP3 Player for the Pre-K Set, iPod Not Included

By her third birthday, it became clear to us that our daughter Z's ability to at least partially control her own music was as important for her as being able to access her own toys and clothes, aspects of her developing sense of personal independence. Her source of music in her bedroom at that point was a handed-down CD boombox with some working and some broken buttons, which she could barely operate, let alone switch CDs in, and which made us a little nervous overall. We decided that a digital music player would be a better solution for a young child than trying to manage CDs, and in researching our options we spotted the iHome2Go, a padded boombox designed to house and play music from an iPod, at our local Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Since we currently use a video iPod and have an older model (an iPod Mini) that we no longer use much, and we figured there might be other parents in the same position, we contacted iHome, which graciously agreed to send us a pink iHome2Go to test and review. The portable device is currently available in a few colors on Amazon.com.

We loaded up our old iPod with some of Z's favorite tunes, plugged it into the iHome2Go, zipped it shut and Z was ready to rock.

The iHome2Go's promotional materials show teens and adults using it at the beach and "on the go," but from the outside in we found this device to be perfectly designed for use by kids ages 3 and up.

The outer shell is firm but slightly forgiving, with a pair of small speakers that deliver a sound quality you'd expect from a device of this size - nothing fancy, but perfectly acceptable. Control buttons are a simplified version of what's on the iPod itself - you click the big, center button to play, pause, or stop the device, and an outer ring can be clicked at the four compass points to advance or go back a track and raise or lower the volume.

The iPod is accessed by unzipping two zippers that run down the curved ends of the lozenge-shaped boom box, zippers which are each connected to a nylon cord which forms a handle when they are both zipped up to the top.

When you unzip the zippers, the iHome2Go falls open like a submarine sandwich in the making.

The front half and then some is taken up by the boombox hardware, which is shielded by a layer of foam. The back half has a space large enough for any current or past model of iPod and offers about 1/2" of padding on the back wall.

The controls are easy enough for a three-year-old to master without much frustration. Z quickly learned how to turn the music on, how to advance or replay a song, how to pause the music, and how to turn the volume up as loud as it will go. We find ourselves occasionally having to ask her to turn the iHome2Go down, and our only negative observation about the product is that its volume can be set pretty loud. Considering its target audience, this is a perfectly acceptable feature, but if we were designing this from the ground up for use by children we'd probably advise a slightly lower limit.

You are the best judge of how well your child can be trained to use appropriate volumes; for us it's just a matter of paying attention to how she's using it, and correcting her as needed. If you have a recent iPod model, you can also download volume-limiting software from Apple that can be used to set an upper volume limit coming out of the iPod itself.

Turning the device off is the only task Z finds difficult (it requires the user to hold the play button down for a second or two continuously) but the iHome2Go has the smart feature of shutting itself off after a minute or so if it is left in pause mode, so she simply pauses it leaves it at that. We like this feature a lot, because even if shutting the iHome2Go off were easier, she would probably forget to do it. The auto-off feature means we don't have to check; if it isn't playing, it's either off or about to be. (A small LED light on the front of the device lights up when the iHome2Go is on, and flashes when it is plugged into the wall and charging.)

The iHome2Go has a few other features that make it a great device for a young child. We were very impressed when we discovered that the device, which uses four AA batteries, has a DC outlet to circumvent battery use when power is accessible, and that the DC current will charge the housed iPod while playing. This is a significant feature to us, we hate watching personal devices suck up batteries with no grid access, and although we use rechargeable batteries (in the iHome2Go and elsewhere) we prefer by far to use wall outlets when we can. Since iPods can charge and play at the same time, there's really no downside to this feature.

We don't use the headphone jack, as we feel headphones aren't appropriate for a young child, both for safety reasons and their isolating effect on the listener. But I should mention that while we have seen complaints elsewhere about headphone sound quality, we suspect that these opinions are uneducated ones. Amplification of sound through a headphone jack is carried by the headphones themselves, so quality is determined by the quality of headphones used. We tested the iHome2Go using our excellent but affordable Sennheiser headphones (highly recommended) and the sound quality was great; when we tried using it with some inexpensive headphones, it sounded terrible. As mentioned above, the speaker quality out of this boombox is as should be expected for its size - great for amplifying music for "on the go" use and plenty good for kids, but no match for a full home stereo.

The most obvious limitation of the iHome2Go - that it pares down some of the iPod controls, including access to the screen and menu functions - is a boon to us. We set up the music for Z - including determining a playlist to draw from if we want her to have "quiet" music only, or putting it on shuffle - and then zip it up; Z then controls that playlist through the forward and back controls.

Although this device is advertised as being for the iPod Shuffle, it works fine with our second-generation iPod Mini, and we suspect this bit of advertising is simply a way of heading off criticism of its "dumbed-down" controls. For a three- to five-year-old listener, the iHome2Go is just dumb enough, and to be honest, we think we'd like it just fine ourselves - changing the play list or play mode by opening the case is a worthwhile trade-off for the portability and durability of the product compared to other docking stereos, which are designed to stay on the shelf.

By now, Z has carried the iHome2Go around for weeks. She has dropped it from a height of a few feet, bumped it around, messed with the buttons, and listened to a lot of great music. The iHome2Go has allowed Z a measure of independence in playing music when she wants, where she wants, limited only by a few family guidelines.

If you don't already have access to an iPod or plans to buy one, the iHome2Go is an expensive proposition. But if you have one you're willing to share with your child, one you can "hand down" to them, or can get one used, it might be the best opportunity to grant your child some serious musical freedom. We think iHome should consider marketing the product to parents this holiday season!

The iHome2Go boombox can be purchased from Amazon.com or directly from iHome for $60-$70.