Amazon introduced Amazon Glow on 28.September. This new interactive device is for those families that allow children to interact with family members and loved ones who are far off over video calls. Amazon Glow uses technology to create projected and interactive space in front of the device so that a surface for virtual activities and more to give an in-person experience. The activities include games, puzzles, arts, and more.
In order to do so, Amazon Glow combines sensing technologies, immersive projection, and video into a single device. It doesn’t look like a tiny TV. It is an 8-inch display that stands up vertically. The projector creates a 19-inch touch-sensitive space in front of the display for playing virtual games and engaging in other activities with remote family members. They can participate from their tab. There is a special mat for gameplay, which comes along with the device.
Games like Chess, Checkers, Go Fish or Memory Match can be played. Thousands of children’s books can be read by the children and their remote family members together. They can also draw using digital pencils, crayons, brushes, or spray paint, among other activities. The main idea is to make the remote; digital play feels the same as being physically present.
The device can also do things that combine digital play and physical objects. It also comes with Glow Bits and these are physical objects made to work with the device. The 1st Glow Bits kit is the Tangram puzzle game, where children use the puzzle bits to solve challenges while the remote family member plays along using digital puzzle shapes on their tablet’s screen.
At launch, the device will support special activities from children’s entertainment favorites like –
- Anna and Elsa from Frozen.
- Woody and Buzz from Disney.
- Pixar’s Toy Story.
- Characters from Mattel’s Barbie and Hot Wheels.
- Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer.
- Elmo, Zoe other others from “Sesame Stree.
This device is mainly for families who want to keep in good touch with others staying at a distant place. This could be useful for families where grandparents stay far, or one family member travels a lot. It could be one of the best things in the Covid era, where people were mostly confined to their homes. The device doesn’t support children to call anyone they choose. Parents have to 1st configure the Amazon Glow by providing consent and pre-approving the contacts the child is allowed to call. This way, parents could limit the device only to family members or trusted family friends. The cameras and microphones can be disabled by parents anytime by closing the physical privacy shutter on the device.
The device collects no voice or video recordings. Location data is not tracked nor saved by it. Even the drawings that are made are not saved. This device retains things like profile preferences and activity history to suggest relevant activities and content available. There is an Amazon Kids+ subscription. The price of the device eventually will be $299.99. But is launching at a discounted price of $249.99. Amazon Glow with the Tangram Bits puzzle game, the mat, a mat case, and a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+. This is not yet broadly available.