Part game system and part video chat, Glow is a fascinating way for children and grandparents to connect at a distance.

Amazon Glow is a clunky Frankenstein monster, it has an important and heart-pounding job. It allowed my 5-year-old daughter to play games and see her grandparents as if they were in the same room, even though they lived more than 1,000 miles away. After several weeks of testing, every participant liked this mashup of projectors, video chat, and gaming systems. 

Amazon found a way that no other technology could connect us before the Zoom era.

Tangram puzzle is my daughter's favorite game. Glow has plastic game pieces that can interact with the projection.

Amazon Glow (not to be confused with the similarly-named Echo Glow, a kind of children's light) is refreshing to use in the endless era of Zooms and FaceTimes. For young families, reading stories with children and playing games from a distance on Glow is real and beneficial because you can always see each other's faces. Amazon has invented something special that can bring us together virtually-without stupid headphones or meta-universes.

There are some software obstacles that need to be resolved, because this is still a limited-release new product, but there is no problem that will make people lose the fun. 

In other words, the absolute size and price of this item may make parents suspect that it is given to preschoolers (suitable for 3 years old and above). Amazon Glow is a $300, 4-pound, towering 14-inch tablet, camera and projector combination. Children can use it on the table to video chat with pre-approved relatives or friends, while performing activities together-such as playing card games, solving puzzles, reading or graffiti-all of which are displayed on the projected image on the table. Relatives' faces are the only things displayed on the Glow 8-inch screen, making them feel like they are playing games or reading books in front of their children. 

Amazon Glow is not something that children carry with them.

For anyone buying, please remember that Glow is really designed for the junior age group. It's not like a tablet with an app store, the number of activities is limited (although Amazon does say that it will continue to add content), and when kids get bored with the concept, they may get old. Like all things with children, things change quickly.

Only children need real Glow, so this will not happen in everyone's home. Other family members (pre-approved by parent's invitation) connect through Glow's app, where they can see the child's selected activity and video source at the same time. It’s disappointing that it doesn’t work well on phones: other family members need a tablet for the best experience, because it’s too much for a small screen-on the iPhone, you have to choose what you want to watch (During my use of Glow, it does not support Android phones.)

In this test, my daughter was with her grandpa (my dad) and her abuela (my mother-in-law). Neither grandparents had a tablet, so Amazon also sent a borrowed Samsung tablet to each of their homes in southern Florida. (It is said that Amazon Kindle Fire tablets will be compatible in the future.) 

As you might imagine, I need to provide technical support for everyone to use a tablet, register an Amazon account for relatives, and teach everyone (including myself) how to interact with the Glow app. But my grandparents and my daughter quickly accepted it, and I soon discovered that I could leave their play time carefree. If I give her a $1,000 iPhone during a FaceTime call, I really can’t do it. No grandma was dizzy because the children rotated the camera or the grandpa was abandoned on the floor facing the ceiling. 

This setting allows my daughter and dad to be engaged for 30 minutes or more at a time.

In fact, the size and weight of Amazon Glow is an advantage when it comes to video chatting with children. Parked this old car on the table, and my daughter had a longer conversation and participated in 30 to 40 minutes of games and reading books. 

I also have a 2-year-old son. Although Glow is not designed for such a small child, he is happy to make artistic graffiti and follow his familiar short books, such as Goodnight Moon. Even though the little brother tried to provoke her to touch it while her sister was playing the game, the battle was always to control the cheap white rubber touch pad and the projection interaction area-they did not annoy the real tower.

Before I delve into what a great gift this is for long-distance families, I should warn you that it is already difficult for Amazon to buy a gift during the holidays. Amazon Glow is only available by invitation and is currently available in limited quantities. Amazon customers can request to buy one at an entry price of $250. I joined the waiting list myself because I had to return to my review unit. I waited more than a month to buy one. Amazon said that when it becomes more widely available, the price will rise to $300, but it is unclear when it will happen. 

In order to determine whether it is suitable for your family, let us dive into some small details-such as the equipment requirements and quirks I encountered. And because you don't have enough subscriptions in your life, we also have to talk about a $3 monthly fee to access Glow's library of books and games (including the first year). 

This may not be something you can count on before Christmas, but it may be a nice surprise to connect with your family in the coming year. 

Glow comes with a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids Plus. content, which unlocks more than 3,000 books and approximately 12 Glow basic games. But some of these puzzle games are not so simple, so that adults will be boring to play. 

The protagonist of the show is a puzzle called Tangram: The goal is to figure out how to arrange squares, diamonds and various triangles into different contour shapes. Glow comes with playable actual plastic shape fragments, which can be read by the projector and software, so the game knows where the child puts the shape. Everyone who plays the game remotely gets a virtual shape and can compete or cooperate with children to solve problems and watch lifelike pictures. 

Card games include Go Fish and Crazy Eights. Checkers and chess are played in cartoons, making them attractive to children (like a pirate-themed board). There are also some general challenges, such as a maze, finding a ball in a shuffle, or wanting to be a ping-pong ball (called Paddle Battle).

Some activities include characters from Sesame Street, Mattel, Nick and Disney. The memory matching card game features Elmo and friends. Barbie allows you to doodle some clothes for her. It is a bit like a coloring activity book with different drawing challenges.

My daughter had never played any of these games before, but she quickly mastered everything-letting grandparents talk to her through the game is the main reason it works well.

As for the books themselves, children can search for specific topics or titles, or scroll through a sea of ​​cover art to pick what they want to read. The selection is reliable and includes many new and classic bestsellers. You will find books on various topics and skill levels, but no chapter books on Glow. (Remember, this is for children.) I like all kinds of history and science books, comic books. There are even a large number of Spanish books. 

However, there are currently only a few books written specifically for Glow, with page animations-sometimes during a call, a surprise animation appears on the faces of grandparents. We are playing with "Frozen" and "Toy Story" books with this kind of interaction, which encourages children to touch the pages of the book while grandparents are reading.

Both grandparents and children can control which page to turn. This may cause some touch control confusion, but it is not much different from a child who wants to personally control a real book.

For some events, yes. You don’t always need to establish a video connection with other people to use Glow. All books can be opened and read at home. There are single player options for checkers, chess, puzzles and tangram puzzles. Unless there is a video connection, there are certain games that will prevent you from playing, such as fishing, paddle battles, word puzzles, and other two-person competition challenges.

Art graffiti can also be done alone: ​​my daughter found it calm to create art without answering the phone. This reminds me of the days when I messed with pixels on Microsoft Paint as a child, but she used her fingers instead of a mouse. The children save their artwork on the device and cannot send it anywhere, but I think relatives can take screenshots from their tablets during the call to save digital souvenirs.

Glow needs to subscribe to Amazon Kids Plus, which is free for the first year after purchase. After that, it's $3 per month-if you don't pay, the content will disappear.

An Amazon Kids Plus subscription gives you access to all these books and games, while Glow offers a one-year trial period. But after that, unless you cancel, it will start charging $3 per month. If you cancel... well, the content will disappear and Glow becomes meaningless compared to the free video chat app on your phone.

But what you pay for is not limited to Glow: Amazon Kids Plus can be accessed on other devices. So if you have a tablet, kids can use subscriptions elsewhere to access more books, apps, games, and videos.

Buying Glow is only good if your family uses a compatible tablet to connect with the kids. It is said that both iPhone and Android phones will work in the future (Android phone compatibility is not provided at the time of this review), but Amazon does not recommend smaller screen sizes. That's because it is difficult to operate certain functions on the phone, and you can't always see your child at the same time. Therefore, if you don’t have a tablet, be prepared to buy some for your family-they may also need a protective cover and a nice stand to support it. After all, holding a tablet for a long time for video chatting, gaming, or reading can be annoying. (Interestingly, this seems feasible for Amazon, which also sells all these peripheral products.)

If you keep the Glow plugged in, there is a shutter switch to cover the camera when not in use. Amazon said it does not collect voice or video recordings. Parents can log in to Amazon’s parental control panel to view the history of people calling Glow devices, but I cannot view the duration of calls or the history of activities or books visited during these sessions. 

The Glow main menu does suggest activities and books based on my daughter’s past activity history and the age I entered in her profile.

Glow is an independent device, it is designed to be used by a child at a time. You don't need to use Amazon speakers or Alexa devices at home to work. (In fact, we don’t have any Alexa devices in our house. Glow also doesn’t use Alexa’s smart or voice control, because it’s all operated by touch.) 

Everyone participating in a Glow call needs an Amazon account-and parents need an account to set up Glow for their children. There can be multiple children's personal data on a Glow. If family members want to establish a connection, they need to use the Amazon Glow app to set it up under the invitation of a parent or guardian.

Glow is only suitable for flat, even hard surfaces-such as kitchen tables, countertops or hardwood floors. It is equipped with a white rubber pad that can project images onto it, so even if the table is dark, children can see the touch area. Make sure you have a large enough table, about 22 inches in diameter. 

None of our children's tables are suitable for Glow: one is too small, the other is plastic, dented, and not completely flat. Unless the surface is completely flat, Glow will make an annoying error sound. Amazon has videos showing children playing on hardwood floors, but I have a carpeted apartment, so the kitchen table is the only place we can play. (This means mom must put it away when not in use.)

Any party can start a video call. Children see circles with family names on the Glow screen and press who they want to talk to. Then the Glow app will ring on the person's device. 

After the Glow is inserted, the pre-approved contacts can make the Glow sound. Children will see their names and photos, and can choose to answer the phone. 

Children need a big table to play. Grandparents use the app to connect-now it works best on a tablet.

Video chatting on Glow is different from what you might be used to on the phone. Using Apple’s FaceTime, I can see small preview images of myself and the person I’m talking to. This is not the case here. The family on the other side cannot see themselves while playing games or reading books.

This means that family members may not know when they are off-center in front of the camera. This is a classic case of "Mom, I can only see your forehead" when they enter games or books. (During a call, this happens almost every grandparent.) Holding the tablet horizontally can make this more tricky. I hope Amazon will add a way to solve this problem in a future update.

However, in terms of Glow equipment, the camera is very suitable for children. It only has 720p resolution, but children are always at the forefront and center when playing. Kids will never see their own video source to understand what they look like, which is a good thing. This becomes more real when they can focus on the person they are talking to instead of being distracted by their own image.

For grandparents and children, the software is not always intuitive. For example, once in the interactive Toy Story book, some background music was loud and we couldn't hear my dad talking. I had to find a way to lower it on the child side through the menu, which was not easy for my daughter herself. My dad can't see a menu control to fix the harsh music on his end without muting his granddaughter. 

Touching the projected image is not a perfect experience because it uses an infrared sensor to record touches on the mat. Every once in a while, it will not record a touch on the first try, or it will feel a touch you never thought of. This can cause trivial frustration, especially for children who are used to a smoother experience on the iPad, but this frustration has never lasted long.

In the game, there were several times when both parties felt that something went wrong with the game, and I had to step in to end the call and start again. When I told Amazon about this, they sent another Glow device that allegedly had the latest update. My second test unit was not perfect because I did notice that the system was stuck in the loading wheel, but it was easy to fix. There are few quirks overall, and it doesn't feel like breaking a deal. I think everything I have experienced can be eliminated by future software updates. 

With the current situation, we do not consider long-distance flights to visit relatives for the time being. We have completed the Zoom birthday, and sometimes family members will eat with us through FaceTime, their faces are raised on the phone holder in front of the children. But Glow brought something new because it was not easy to read with grandma before, and it was even impossible to play card games with grandpa remotely. 

Since I did register Glow when it went on the market, it meant that I needed to give a tablet and a stand to my relatives so that everyone could connect comfortably. Then I have to add a monthly Kids Plus subscription after the first year. A lot of investment. It feels like buying a game console, but it is only designed for the smallest players among us. When you think about what we missed due to distance, this cost doesn't seem so bad. My dad and mother-in-law said that playing games and reading bedtime stories is a great experience-as if we were living nearby.

Is Glow the beginning of a new product category? Maybe. Remote gaming now exists in products such as infinite gaming tables and Square Off's smart board. But looking at the remote player's eyes without being in the same room? That's very special. Amazon is experimenting with things that can make virtual connections more meaningful. I want to see where else this concept can go. For the time being, it is very suitable for relatives who have missed time with their children. Amazon's Bravo has created a children's gadget that allows me not to worry about too much screen time.