Nex Playground review: The first games console that feels like it was built for kids, not just sold to them
A cubic, camera-powered console designed from the ground up for children and the parents who worry about their screen time. We tested it with one question in mind: does it actually get kids moving?
Most consoles are designed for teenagers and adults, then marketed to families as an afterthought. The Nex Playground flips that. Every decision, from its toy-like looks and no-controller gameplay to its lens cover, offline play and lack of online chat, is shaped around children and the parents who share the living room with them. It’s simple enough for a five-year-old to use, safe enough to leave running without hovering, and physical enough that screen time ends with flushed cheeks rather than glazed eyes. The graphics are basic, there are no blockbuster franchises and most of the games sit behind a subscription. But as a family console built with kids in mind, it’s the most convincing we’ve tested.
Pros
- Designed for young children: toy-like hardware, simple menus and no controller to master
- Gets kids genuinely moving, with games that feel like play rather than exercise
- Parent-friendly safety: camera cover, no online multiplayer, offline play, PEGI 3 starter games
- Up to four players at once, so siblings and parents can join in
Cons
- The bulk of the library is locked behind a £90-a-year Play Pass
- Needs around 6ft x 6ft of clear floor space, which is a big ask in smaller homes
- No Bluetooth headphone support
- Older kids who crave big-name franchises will find the games simplistic
Quick specs
| Spec | Nex Playground |
|---|---|
| Price | £269 / €319 / $299 (approx., may have changed) |
| Recommended age | 5+ (starter games rated PEGI 3) |
| Processor | 8-core Arm chip with Mali-G52 GPU |
| Storage | 64GB |
| Camera | Ultra-wide-angle, AI motion tracking (18 body points) |
| Players | Up to four at once |
| Connectivity | HDMI, USB-C power, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (remote only) |
| Dimensions | Roughly 76mm cube |
| In the box | Console, remote, HDMI cable, power adapter, magnetic camera cover, five starter games |
Price and availability
The Nex Playground launched in the UK and Ireland on 22 June 2026, priced at £269 in Britain and €319 in Ireland. It’s sold through Amazon UK, Argos, Smyths Toys, TikTok Shop and Nex’s own website. Its stocking at toy retailers like Smyths tells you a lot about who it’s aimed at. In the US, where it’s been available since late 2023, it now costs $299 after a $50 increase.
The box includes five games: Fruit Ninja, Party Fowl, Whac-a-Mole, Starri and Go Keeper. The rest of the library, more than 60 titles, comes with Play Pass, which costs £90 a year or £45 a quarter (€99 or €49 in Ireland). Parents should budget for roughly £359 in year one. That’s a meaningful sum, but it’s an all-you-can-play deal with no £50 game purchases and no in-game spending to police, which will matter to any parent who’s ever found a surprise charge on their card.
Designed for little hands (and no hands at all)
Nex’s chief executive, David Lee, has been clear that the Playground is about getting children moving rather than chasing cutting-edge graphics, and you can see that priority in every part of the design.
Start with the hardware. The console is a cube barely bigger than an apple, finished in a playful green and yellow and developed with an all-female design studio. It looks less like a games machine and more like something from the toy aisle, friendly, unthreatening and right at home on a family TV stand. There are no vents, glowing logos or aggressive angles, just a small, cute box with a camera on the front.
Then there’s the biggest design choice of all: no controllers. Your body is the controller. For young children, that removes the single biggest barrier to gaming. There are no button combinations to learn and no thumbsticks to fumble, and no arguments over who gets the “good” controller. If a child can wave, jump, duck or dance, they can play. We watched how quickly the concept clicks: you stand in front of the TV, you move, and the character on screen moves with you. It’s intuitive in a way that traditional consoles simply aren’t for a five-year-old.
A small remote handles menus, and it’s deliberately basic. Once a game starts, it’s set aside. The interface it controls is bright and uncluttered, with big tiles and clear choices rather than layers of settings and storefronts. Younger children can find their favourite game without help, which is a small but meaningful win for parents.
Nex has also built in adjustable difficulty and accessibility options for players with limited mobility, so younger siblings, grandparents and children with different physical needs can all take part.
Built with parents’ worries in mind
Nex knows exactly what keeps parents up at night: screen time, inappropriate content and strangers online. The company’s international head, Tom Kang, has spoken about UK and Irish parents’ concerns over both, and the Playground’s design answers them head-on.
The camera. A console with a camera pointed at your living room could feel intrusive, so Nex includes a magnetic lens cover you can snap on whenever the console isn’t in use. The motion tracking itself is handled by an AI engine on the device.
Online safety. There’s no online multiplayer, which means no voice chat with strangers, no friend requests and no lobbies to supervise. The system is also kidSAFE+ COPPA certified in the US. All play happens locally, with the people in the room.
Content. Every game is published by Nex, and the starter titles carry PEGI 3 ratings. There’s nothing here you’d need to vet before handing over the remote.
Offline play. Once games are downloaded, they run without an internet connection. Your Wi-Fi won’t spoil a rainy afternoon, and there’s less constant connectivity to think about.
Taken together, this is the first console we’ve reviewed that we’d be comfortable leaving a young child alone with in the next room.
Setup and space
Setup is quick enough that kids won’t lose interest while you get it ready. Plug in the power, connect the HDMI cable, create an account using your phone and let the games download. We’d recommend doing this before the big reveal, especially if it’s going under the tree this Christmas, because the first download takes a while.
The real consideration is space. Nex recommends a play area of about 6ft x 6ft, and the camera needs to see players’ whole bodies. In our lounge, that meant moving the coffee table every time. With children leaping and flailing around, you’ll also want to clear away anything breakable, and keep an eye on the TV itself during the more enthusiastic sessions. It’s worth knowing too that the camera sees everyone in its view, so a younger sibling wandering into frame can sometimes confuse the tracking.
Performance and tracking
Under the hood is an 8-core Arm processor with a Mali-G52 GPU and 64GB of storage. That’s modest hardware, and the visuals show it, with simple, chunky graphics closer to the Xbox 360 era than today’s consoles. Honestly, for its target audience, that hardly matters. Young children care far more about bright colours, funny characters and instant feedback than lighting effects, and the Nex Playground delivers all three.
What does matter is tracking, and it’s very good. The camera follows 18 points on the body in real time, and it responded to jumps, kicks, lunges and swipes with very little noticeable lag. That reliability is crucial with children, whose patience evaporates the moment a game ignores them. Up to four players can join in at once, so siblings can compete or parents can team up with their kids.
The games: playground energy, not couch-potato gaming
The library borrows liberally from the Wii’s family-friendly formula. There’s tennis with a gentle story mode, bowling that rewards progress with collectables, and Go Keeper, a football goalkeeping game that had everyone diving about the living room. Fruit Ninja, Whac-a-Mole and Party Fowl round out the starter pack with games simple enough to understand in seconds.
Our standout was Starri, a rhythm game where you swipe and dance along to licensed songs. It has the arm-flapping joy of VR hit Beat Saber without asking a child to wear a headset, which, given that most VR headsets aren’t recommended for under-10s, makes the Nex a much more natural fit for younger players.
Play Pass is where the kid appeal really ramps up, with licensed titles featuring children’s favourites including Bluey, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tiny Chef. The Ninja Turtles game is a serious workout, packed with squats and jumps that left us grown-ups puffing long before any child would. A 3D spin on Pong proved oddly addictive, and the cheerfully literal Sword Slash Adventure is basic but fun and a good arm workout.
The games are short, bright and easy to grasp, ideal for young attention spans and for families taking turns. Older children used to Fortnite or Minecraft may find them too simple, and that’s the main limitation of a console this focused on younger players.
Screen time that counts
The Nex team’s guiding idea is that the type of screen time matters as much as the amount, and after weeks of testing we’re inclined to agree. A session on the Nex Playground looks nothing like a session on a tablet. Kids are on their feet, laughing, competing and genuinely tired out afterwards. For parents juggling dark winter evenings and wet weekends, it’s a way to channel restless energy indoors.
There’s a bonus for the grown-ups, too. The fitness section offers a broad range of instructor-led workouts, including Zumba, with rhythm-game scoring that rates how accurately you hit each move. We found ourselves using it for lunchtime workouts, and it’s easy to imagine parents squeezing in a session after bedtime. It turns the console into something the whole household uses rather than a children’s toy that gets shoved in a cupboard.
Audio and connectivity
Our main gripe is that you can’t pair Bluetooth headphones, since Bluetooth is used for the remote only. In a family setting, that rarely matters, but if a parent wants to work out quietly while a child sleeps or a partner works nearby, it’s annoying. We ended up running a long aux cable from the TV’s headphone socket. It worked, but it wasn’t elegant. Hopefully Nex adds support in a future update.
Verdict: should you buy the Nex Playground?
The Nex Playground succeeds because it never forgets who it’s for. Rather than shrinking a grown-up console for children, Nex has designed something around them: a controller-free, toy-like, safety-first machine that turns gaming into active play. Its approach to parents’ concerns, from the lens cover to the absence of online interactions and in-game purchases, is the most thoughtful we’ve seen on any console.
It isn’t perfect. Play Pass adds to the cost, the space requirement rules out some homes, and older kids chasing blockbuster franchises will quickly outgrow it. But as a family purchase, particularly with Christmas approaching, it’s hard to beat. It’s easy to see how it briefly outsold Xbox during Black Friday in the US, and we expect it to feature on plenty of UK wish lists this year.
Buy it if you have children aged roughly five to ten, want screen time that gets them moving, and value a console you can trust them with. Skip it if your kids are already into mainstream gaming, your living room is short on space, or you’re dead against another subscription.
For families with young children, this is the console we’d recommend first.
Also consider
Nintendo Switch 2 with Nintendo Switch Sports: The best choice if your children want motion games and Mario, Pokémon and the rest. It costs considerably more and requires more parental controls setup, and Joy-Con motion is less full-body than Nex’s camera tracking.
Meta Quest 3S: Fully immersive active gaming for older children and teens, from Beat Saber to boxing workouts. Meta recommends it for ages 10 and up, so it’s not suitable for the youngest members of the family.
Xbox Series S: A sensible pick for families moving into mainstream gaming, with Game Pass’s huge library. It just won’t get anyone off the sofa, and online features require more parental supervision.
