Sometimes you're tired. The kids need something to do, you need to be indoors, and you don't want everyone zoned out watching a show on the couch. But you also don't have the energy to orchestrate an activity. That's the gap the Nex Playground fills for us, and it fills it pretty well.

I think a lot about screens. There’s some guilt to it, but the thoughts are mostly driven by practicality, especially lately. How do we balance the reality that screens are part of our kids' lives with the desire to keep them active and engaged? We don't always have the luxury of being outside. Rain happens. People get sick. Business travel comes up. And, sometimes you just need something to do indoors that doesn't feel completely passive. I also like the idea that someone else, the game designers, can bring creativity and energy and activity into the living room. It’s fun to see what other people design.

I came to the Nex Playground after seeing some of the hype around the holidays. The Wall Street Journal called it the hottest toy of the year, and the story behind it is genuinely interesting: a Silicon Valley startup that started as a basketball training app, pivoted twice, and ended up making a toy that outsold Xbox during Black Friday week. It won a Core77 Design Award and a Good Design Award. So I bought one, curious whether it lived up to all the hype.

First Impressions

The thing that struck me first was how small it is. It's about the size of a Rubik's Cube. Three inches on each side. You put it on your TV stand next to a Switch or a PS5 and it looks like a toy itself. Which, I guess, is kind of the point.

The physical design of the console is genuinely good. It was designed by a studio called level, led by two mothers, and you can feel that in the details. The geometric shape seems like a nod to early Nintendo consoles and Rubik's Cubes, but it has its own personality. There's a magnetic privacy cover that snaps on when you're not playing. The colors are bright, not the flat black you'd expect from a gaming device. It feels like someone thought about how this was going to fit into your home.

The packaging is the same level of quality. There are cute illustrations in the manual, fun graphics on the console that show you're in the right spot for the camera. It feels like someone actually cared about the experience from the moment you open the box. We were up and playing in about 10 minutes.

My daughter is four, and during setup she looked at it and said, "I'm going to love this." She hadn't even played it yet. That's when I knew the design was stellar.

Does It Actually Create Active Play?

The Nex Playground bills itself as an "active play system" rather than a console. It's a bit of a positioning trick, aimed at people like me who are conscious of intentional screen time, but it does seem to be more active than other consoles or television, because it’s controlled mostly through body movement. My daughter genuinely gets active playing it. The tracking on the camera is really good for things that involve big motions, whole body poses, big sweeping arm movements. It's not going to replace being outside, but it's a meaningful step up from sitting on the couch.

The Learning Curve

Not everything is smooth sailing. Some of the game controls are really frustrating, especially for a four-year-old. We struggled with a My Little Pony coloring game and one involving riding a horse. There were moments where my daughter asked me to take over because she just couldn't get it to work. I struggled too. The frustration of watching something that should be fun turn into something hard.

My suggestion: talk to your kids in advance about trying the different games and moving on if something isn't clicking. Not every game is going to be a hit, and that's okay. It took us a little while to find our favorites, but once we did, it was worth it.

Because when you find the right game something magical happens. You find Hungry Hippos, and suddenly we’re moving our arms up and down and she’s excited to be chomping the food and in first place. You find a Bluey game involving cooking, start making chopping motions and it's like all is forgiven, by me and by her. The frustration dissolves. One big reason is that these mostly aren't random game characters. They're characters she already cares about. Seeing them in an active, physical game where she's actually moving her body to play with them, it changes the entire dynamic.

What It Actually Is (For Us)

The Nex Playground is not something my daughter asks for. She doesn't ask to play it the way she asks for a show. But if I suggest it, she willingly plays, and we end up having a great time together.

It's a family activity. It works best when we're all playing together. The kids typically play for about 30 minutes, and the four-year-old can play pretty independently. I can work on the couch if I need to. But I probably wouldn't want to be in the other room, especially if there are two of them in the mix. My younger one, almost two, doesn't quite understand the tracking and frequently messes up the game for everyone else. But it’s often still fun.

Several of the games are designed for three or four players, and those create some really great moments. It's a substitute for TV time when we're all playing together and I feel better about it than watching something passively. It's a good thing to mix in.

The Sound

Worth mentioning: the sound can be turned down low without feeling like you're missing anything. If you need some quiet while your kids play, that's an option.

Who Is This For?

Four feels like the sweet spot. My almost-two-year-old isn't ready for it. The directions are too complex, and the tracking doesn't work well with younger kids in the room. But for a four-year-old? It clicks.

We play it more than our Switch, though we don't play either one all that much. If another parent asked me whether to get a Nex Playground or a Switch, I'd say Nex, unless you yourself want to play the Switch a lot. This one feels designed for your kids, and it actually gets them moving.

The Bottom Line

It’d be easy to substitute a phone or tablet for a similar sort of indoor entertainment. There are fantastic games now like Pok Pok and no shortage of long and short form videos to watch. You could get lost watching Primitive Technology together seeing someone create and fire pottery with neolithic methods. Or, you could watch cute animal videos together.

But that isn't really the point. This is kind of like saying you can cut strawberries with a butter knife. Technically a substitute, but not really. The point in this kind of device is active entertainment. And when you find a game designed with care, potentially with characters your kids love, any frustration along the way is completely forgiven. You're just laughing, jumping, waving your arms, and playing together.

The Nex Playground is a nice to have. It's not essential, but I'd buy it again. At $249 for the console, which comes with five pre-installed games (Fruit Ninja, Go Keeper, Starri, Party Fowl, and Whac-a-Mole), plus an optional $89 Play Pass for the full game catalog, it's not cheap. I didn't try it without the Play Pass, but I think I'd want more than the base five games. So budget around $338 if you're going all in. For comparison, a Switch 2 with Mario Kart is $499.