Yoto Mini : A Review

What Is A Yoto Mini?

A Yoto is an audio player aimed at kids. There are two different versions: The Yoto and the Yoto Mini. Customers can purchase credit card sized cards which slot into the player. These cards have stories and audio recorded onto them and once inserted, they will play either through the speaker or through headphones. Customers can also purchase blank Make Your Own (MYO) cards to record their own audio onto or to save audio purchased elsewhere. It’s a great screen-free activity for kids of all ages.

Both Yoto players also have many other features, such as Yoto’s very own radio station for kids, a daily podcast and sleep radio station. More can be found out about those below.

What is the difference between a Yoto and a Yoto Mini?

The main differences between the Yoto and the the Yoto Mini are the size of the boxes, the battery life, the charging capabilities and of course the price. Other than that the Yoto and the Mini are very similar with so many really cool features to awaken your child’s curiosity, imagination and love for reading.

Yoto Mini requires a cable (which is included in the box) for charging, whereas Yoto Player can be charged wirelessly.

How does the Yoto Mini work?

The Yoto Mini is a Bluetooth speaker which plays audio taken from the Yoto app or from cards inserted into the top of the box. It can be controlled via an app on your phone or via the box itself. It requires WiFi to download the content to the box from the card on its first play, but after that, no WiFi is needed.

What Age Is The Yoto Mini For?

Yoto states that the Yoto Mini is suitable for ages 3-12+ years old. It has a lower age of 3 years due to its small parts being a choking hazard.

We got our daughter her Yoto Mini for Christmas when she was three and she’s loved it ever since. Her favourite thing has to be the MYO (Make Your Own) card which I’ve added stories read by us, her parents, and other family members onto. She can recite word-for-word some of the stories on there and uses it to fall asleep to. She also likes using Yoto Sleep Radio to fall asleep to. Just to note that we read her bedtime stories first and then she has the Yoto Mini on at bedtime so she doesn’t miss out with us reading to her in-person, it’s not a replacement for us, the Yoto Mini is an additional story-giver.

Setting Up A Yoto Mini

Once you have your Yoto Mini, download the Yoto app onto your phone and create an account.

Yoto have an easy-to-follow set of instructions on their website and app and as long as you can get onto your WiFi network, it takes hardly any time at all to set up.

Their advice (and mine!) is if you are giving the Yoto Mini as a gift, then get it set up and the cards all downloaded to the box in advance of wrapping it. Also, charge the box so when it’s unwrapped, the recipient can immediately put their cards in and listen. (One tip is that single cards can be downloaded to the box still in their packaging, if you don’t want to open the packaging before giving as a gift.

What Are The Features of A Yoto Mini?

A Yoto Mini has three buttons: on/off, volume (left button) and a right button which can have two presets set by you in the app. These presets can be Yoto Daily, Yoto Radio, a selection of timers or Yoto Sleep Radio and there is a day mode and a night mode for these so you can have a different two presets depending on what time of day it is.

What Yoto Cards Are Available?

Yoto sells cards as single cards, in mulit-packs, as cards for adding your own content to (Make Your Own cards) or as digital cards where you don’t actually get a physical card.

They have story cards, educational cards, music cards and cards which are linked to podcasts.

Yoto has a wide variety of story cards available.

Some are by really well-known authors: Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, David Walliams, C.S. Lewis, Marcus Rashford, Michael Bond.

Some are in sets: The Worst Witch, The Chronicles of Narnia, Horrible Histories, Disney Classics, The Gruffalo and Friends, Thomas and Friends.

Some are song and music cards: Songs for Little Pirates, Queen – Greatest Hits, Sleepy Sounds, Row Your Boat & Other Pre-School Songs, Robin Hood: A Musical Adventure.

Some are stories about favourite characters: Paw Patrol, Disney, Zog, Percy The Parkkeeper, Mog, Peppa, Sesame Street.

There are over 500 English language cards to choose from and more in Spanish and French.

What Are The Benefits Of A Yoto Mini?

A Yoto Mini provides screen-free entertainment for kids (and adults too!).

It is easy for kids to control by pressing the side button in and then inserting a card.

The cards are easy to insert and take out and they don’t cost a fortune. There are also a lot of cards to choose from (510 English story, information and music cards).

You get access to Yoto Radio, Yoto Daily (a daily podcast for kids), lots of radio stations, a selection of sleep sounds such as white noise and natural sounds and free seasonal content.

You can record your own audio or take audio from CDs and put them onto MYO (Make Your Own) cards which can be played in the Yoto Mini.

What Other Audio Players Are There For Kids?

Audio players are a great way for kids to listen to stories, songs and podcasts. They allow children to use their imaginations, grow their vocabulary and learn more about our world. As well as the Yoto Mini and Yoto Player, we have tried the Toniebox.

We have also heard of the Voxblock and Timio Player. All are screen-free audio players for kids.

Is the Yoto Mini Worth It?

What to compare:

Battery Life: 14 hours between charges

Cost of cards/characters: Single cards vary in price from £1.99 up to £14.99 with most £9.99 or less.

Size of box: 7cm x 7cm x 4cm

Ease of set up: It didn’t take too long to set it up using our home WiFi but we did run into an issue while trying to use the WiFi at our holiday caravan which uses a public WiFi system. I have now managed to get it to work every now and again on the WiFi but it takes a number of tries connecting to the network for it to work. If you already have all your cards downloaded then it is no issue as they will still play without the WiFi.

Educational value: There are 61 learning and education cards, 40 history and biography cards and 9 mindfulness and movement cards in the English language. There are 354 English language story cards with varying lengths of cards. One, I looked at was 10 minutes, another was over 6 hours. (Numbers of cards found by me using Yoto’s filters Oct ’23)

How Can I Customise My Yoto Mini?

When we bought our Yoto Mini, we bought an adventure jacket at the same time. Adventure jackets are the name for the official Yoto protective casing that can be purchased separately. It is made from silicone and comes with a handy wrist strap for listening on the move.

I asked in an online group whether the adventure jackets were a necessary purchase or not and the overwhelming response was that there had been too many stories of Yoto Minis getting damaged when they didn’t have the adventure jackets on so they were a very good idea.

Our adventure jacket is a light pink colour called Think Pink.

The seven colours are:

• Think Pink
• Sweetcorn (Yellow)
• Bluebird
• Frog Soup (Light Green)
• Fruit Punch (orange)
• Silver Lining (Light Grey)
• Rain Cloud (Dark Grey)

Our daughter has headphones for her Yoto Mini. Admittedly, she very rarely uses them, but she enjoyed picking them. She has unicorn ones from Amazon though they also have princess ones, monster trucks, space and many more patterns and colours that kids will love. Headphones would be great for kids who take the Yoto Mini out of the house and listen in public.

What We Love About Our Yoto Mini

• When it was our now 4-year-old’s birthday in early 2023, Yoto did birthday shout outs – they’ve since changed this and don’t do personal ones anymore. I was so excited about it for her. I’d put my daughter’s name down ages in advance and then after dinner on her birthday, we listened to Yoto daily and she was on there! She was so excited and really happy about it as we’d kept it a secret from her as didn’t want to get her hopes up in case her name wasn’t mentioned. The look on her face was priceless.
• We love that you can create your own audio and transfer it to a card. We have a Make Your Own (MYO) card filled with family reading stories to my daughter. It’s so lovely and we will treasure it.
• The box is not too big; It doesn’t take up much space on the shelf and the cards are easy to store too. It’s great for taking on holiday to our caravan too as it just goes in a pencil case with its charger and cards and it barely takes up any space when packing the car.
• Yoto Sleep Radio is great! It is so relaxing and non-intrusive and can easily send me or my husband to sleep too!
• Yoto Daily – the fact that it feels so personal with Jake, the presenter, coming on every day to chat to us and play silly games, teach us fun facts, quiz us or tell us jokes.
• Yoto Radio – it is songs specially picked for kids with no ads and no inane chat about nothing. Just fun music.
• The large number of kids podcasts with so many stories to listen to. I counted over 50 podcasts through some are in Spanish or French.
• Yoto’s Christmas Advent Calendar – last year in December, Yoto released a new piece of audio every day and as far as I’m aware that’s happening this year too.

Have We Had Any Issues With Our Yoto Mini?

We have had a couple of issues but they aren’t major.

The first issue was that we regularly visit a caravan park where there is public WiFi. I have tried in the past numerous times to connect the Yoto to the WiFi to no avail. Recently, I found that if I create a Hotspot on my phone, start the process of connecting to WiFi, getting a 6 letter access code and putting that in, but then disconnecting from the Hotspot, carrying on with the set-up process until it’s necessary to turn the Hotspot on again so that it can be found in the nearby WiFi connections list. Going through that process a few times miraculously allowed our Yoto to connect to the WiFi so we had access to Yoto Daily and Sleep Radio back on the Mini for bedtime.

In the morning, it would have been disconnected from the Hotspot though as it turns off after a while so it was necessary to go through the whole set-up again but it became second nature and some days it did actually remember the WiFi.

This is definitely not a major issue though as if we hadn’t have had the WiFi connection, our little one could still have listened to her cards while on holiday.

Our second issue is the battery life. Yoto Mini’s battery life is meant to be 14 hours. This seems fine until we tried to set the alarm for the morning. Every single night, the Yoto Mini has either run out of battery by the time it’s alarm time or it’s turned itself off. I went into settings and specifically set it so that it didn’t turn off but it made no difference. So, unfortunately we’ve not been able to use the alarm feature.

To circumnavigate this issue, I creep into my little one’s bedroom in the morning, switch her Yoto Mini back on and then tip-toe out and control the Mini from my phone and out Yoto Daily or Yoto Radio on for her to wake up to.

In my opinion the pros outweigh the cons with the Yoto Mini so these are not deal breakers for us.

My Verdict

I love our Yoto Mini. It’s small, the cards don’t cost too much, there’s loads of free content on the Yoto app, and the MYO cards are easy to program and use. I think it’s great that our 4-year-old daughter can recite stories off-by-heart from having listened to them on her Yoto Mini and her 2-year-old sister is showing an interest in it too now. Our 4-year-old loves it too and we use it every single day.