My Family Reviews… uDraw GameTablet

I wasn’t sure whether this blog did reviews….. until somebody asked. As it turned out, it does.

The uDraw GameTablet appealed because I have children who love to draw.  I thought they’d get a kick out of drawing on the TV screen via the Wii so jumped at the chance to  ‘try before you buy.’

Plus, the Wii in our house is such a boys’ zone. I was interested to see whether Ms5 would like to use it to draw.  If she did then there’d be more kids fighting over the Wii – the joy!

Ms5 and I did some stamping and drawing together.

So What Is It?

Well, it looks like that.  The uDraw Game Tablet is a device which connects wirelessly to your Wii (and is available for other devices too) when the Wii remote is plugged into it.

The stylus drawing on the tablet creates images on the screen – that simple.

Is It That Simple?

I must admit that it took me a while to get it set up and become comfortable with using it.  Note to self, learn to use a new device once kids are safely asleep NOT when twins plus several neighbours are desperate for a turn.

How Exactly Do You Use It?

At this stage, the tablet comes with a Wii game called uDraw Studio.  This has a set of tutorials – thank goodness- which shows you how to use the tablet to draw, paint, colour in, stamp and then add all sorts of effects.  There many types of backgrounds to create masterpieces on eg concrete, blackboard, pavement, and there are zillions of colours to use.  You can draw using crayon, paint, felt tips and all sorts.  PLENTY of things to keep kids busy.

A five year old girl finds her inner artist with the stamps.

My five year old son did some colouring in, in his own unique style.

Are There Other Wii Games Available?

You can play Pictionary using the uDraw Game Tablet.  I didn’t expect my twins to be into this, and in fact they needed a lot of help and played very haphazardly, but they really enjoyed plying.

My 11 year old son played the other game currently available Dood’s Big Adventure. He actually got very sidetracked with the freehand drawing, creating his own masterpiece.

It was refreshing to see him play a game without a weapon involved and despite himself, he really enjoyed it.

Able’s magnum opus

Great Points

  • Very versatile
  • Huge range of drawing/painting/colouring options
  • you can review how you drew something, kids loved that
  • You can save your pictures to a SD card (slot in Wii)
  • More games for the uDraw are coming

Tricky Bits

  • Takes quite a while to get used to the stylus and screen
  • My five year olds couldn’t use it alone but over time they’d learn
  • Pen and paper don’t run out of batteries!

Family collaborative effort!

The Big Question: Would We Buy It?

Well, I’d be more than happy to add it to the Christmas list for the twins.  They are only five, so a bit too young for it really, but they would grow into it and get lots of use out of it over the years.

For our family, this certainly wouldn’t replace pens, paint, ink, glue, stamps, paper, pencils, textas etc etc   But we’re not at all averse to some digital fun and it’s another way to play together on the Wii.

A jellyfish with long hair and long eyelashes- clearly.

Do you think your children would enjoy these drawing games?