Open the FreeTime Parent Dashboard in the Alexa mobile app and you’ll find entries for your kids (which was pre-populated in my case, given that the all-knowing Amazon already knows the name of my seven-year-old daughter), and tapping an entry lets you start tinkering with the various parental settings. Once you have the Kids Edition connected to your Wi-Fi network, it’s time to configure FreeTime’s parental controls. I had the Echo Dot Kids Edition up and running within a couple of minutes. The initial setup process for the Kids Edition is the same as for a vanilla Echo Dot: you plug the device into a power outlet, wait for the halo to glow orange, fire up the Alexa mobile app, and then use the app to “discover” the Dot and connect it to your Wi-Fi network. While the 1443243 rainbow-colored Echo Dot is the more eye-catching of the two, we chose blue because that’s my daughter’s favorite color (or at least it was on the day we picked it). Indeed, the only real physical difference between the standard Echo Dot and the Kids Edition is the color selection, and surprisingly, the Kids Edition offers only two choices: rainbow and blue. A thin, halo-shaped LED indicator lets you know when Alexa is listening, has waiting notifications, or has lost its wireless connection. Basically a 1.7-inch-thick hockey puck of a speaker, both the standard Echo Dot and the kids version come with 1.6-inch full-range speakers, a fabric-covered circumference, and a quartet of buttons on top that let you control the volume, turn off the microphone, and perform actions such as silencing alarms and setting up Wi-Fi.

If you already have a 3rd-generation Echo Dot, you’ll already know what to expect from the Echo Dot Kids Edition, at least on the hardware side of things. Finally, the Echo Dot Kids Edition comes with a two-year warranty, versus just 90 days for the standard Echo Dot. Also, keep in mind that a FreeTime subscription includes thousands of books and videos that you can access on an Amazon Fire tablet, a Kindle, or an iOS or Android device. The FreeTime bundle is a $36 value ($60 for non-Prime members), so given that the standard Echo Dot costs $50 (although it’s frequently on sale for much less), ponying up for the Kids Edition can save you some cash.

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