Philips Magic Theatre review

1 July 2006 6:48 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Philips has strayed away from baby monitors and launched two new educational toys called the Magic Theatre and Magic Mirror. Pocket-lint enlisted the help of our Chief Tester Emily to see how the Magic Theatre performed.

The Magic Theatre is designed to help your baby fall asleep with reassuring sounds and soothing images. Working in a similar way as a Magic Lantern from the Victorian era, the bright yellow, green and red device allows you to project images on slides on to your bedroom or ceiling walls.

Bulbous in design and coming on a stand which allows you to perch the lantern in any direction, the device also features a motor that allows the images to rotate and therefore provide some interactivity.

Additional to the images, is the inclusion of three sounds - music, heart beat, and running water that can be played at the same time and these are designed to help your baby drift off to sleep.

In practice the Magic Theatre is very good and certainly caught the attention of Emily's gaze, even at 9-weeks-old.

Included in the box are a number of slides for varying age ranges and Philips has been clever enough to include a couple of blank slides so you can create your own. Likewise the accompanying sounds also help, especially the heart beat one and the lullaby.

However the Magic Theatre isn't without its faults. Mainly that it would have been nice to be able to have the music going without the need to have the light beaming across the room. We also found with Emily that the slides had the adverse affect and rather than send her to sleep, actually kept her awake, but we acknowledge that this may be due to her age rather than a fault with the product.

Verdict

At £30 this is an expensive accessory/toy to add to the ever-growing list of devices and gadgets that you need for your baby, however, the pretty shapes, patterns and noises certainly kept Emily interested longer than any of her other toys at the moment and more interesting than her multi-coloured play gym.

A thumbs up from Emily means this is one we can recommend.