REVIEW: Nex Playground – Get Up & Game

The Nex Playground has quietly become one of the more talked about pieces of kid tech over the past year, and after spending a good stretch of time with it in the house, I get why. It’s a small motion controlled console built entirely around getting kids (and honestly, adults too) up and moving, using a camera instead of a controller.

It’s not trying to compete with the Switch 2 or a PS5, and it doesn’t need to. It’s carved out its own lane, and for the most part it handles that lane well.

Design

The console itself is genuinely tiny, about three inches on each side, roughly the size of a Rubik’s Cube, and it disappears next to a TV unit without any fuss.

It ships with a power cord that includes an attached lens cover for anyone conscious of privacy, an HDMI cable, and a small remote that matches the console’s light blue and yellow colour scheme.

The build feels sturdier than the price suggests too, with a matte finish that shrugs off fingerprints and scuffs reasonably well.

Setup is where the design really earns its keep. You plug it in, scan a QR code, and you’re playing within minutes, no account juggling or lengthy firmware updates to sit through first.

For a device aimed squarely at families, that low friction matters a lot more than it might on a traditional console.

UI & Software

The interface is deliberately locked down, and that’s very much the point. Nex runs its own closed system called Play OS, built on top of the Android Open Source Project, and there’s no browser, no app store and no third party software allowed on it. Every game is made in house, so there’s no risk of stumbling into anything inappropriate.

Navigation with the remote is simple enough that younger kids figure it out almost immediately, and the menus are clean without much clutter.

The camera itself has a wide field of view and handles motion tracking entirely on the device rather than sending anything to the cloud, which is a big part of why parents seem comfortable with it.

No video or audio is stored, and a physical camera cover is included for when the console isn’t in use. There genuinely isn’t much here for parents to worry about, since there’s no online chat and no playing with strangers built into the system.

Performance

Under the hood, this is not a powerhouse, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s running an Amlogic A311D2-NOD CPU paired with a Mali-G52 MC4 GPU and 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM, backed by 64GB of SSD storage.

Don’t expect anything close to modern console visuals here. The trade off for those specs is low poly models and fairly basic lighting, so nothing resembling ray tracing or heavy post processing.

Where it matters, though, performance holds up. Motion tracking is the whole product, and it’s genuinely impressive how consistently it reads movement, even with multiple people in frame.

Up to four bodies can be tracked at once, and the system keeps up without noticeable lag, so games feel responsive rather than laggy or delayed. Not every title in the library is polished though, and a handful of the more recent additions have had frame rate hiccups that stand out against the otherwise smooth core experience.

Play Pass Content

Out of the box you get five games included at no extra cost, Fruit Ninja, Starri, Whac-a-Mole, Go Keeper and Party Fowl, which is enough to get a decent feel for what the console can do. The real catalogue, though, sits behind the Play Pass subscription, and that’s where opinions on value tend to split.

A paid pass unlocks the wider 60+ titles in the library along with monthly additions, including licensed content like Barbie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, How to Train Your Dragon, Peppa Pig and Kung Fu Panda.

Quality across the library is genuinely mixed. The stronger titles, like the Dance Central style rhythm game Starri, hold up well and get repeat plays in our house.

Others feel thinner, more like tech demos than full games, and a few sports titles lack the depth you’d expect if you’re used to full console releases. It’s worth going in with the expectation that this is about short, active bursts of play rather than anything with real longevity per game.

Conclusion

The Nex Playground isn’t trying to be a serious games console, and once you accept that, it’s easier to appreciate what it actually is: a genuinely well built, thoughtfully designed device that gets kids moving and gives families something to do together that isn’t screen time in the traditional sense.

The subscription model for content is the biggest sticking point, and it’s fair to feel a bit annoyed that you don’t own the games outright. But taken as a whole package, tracking quality, ease of setup and the privacy focused design, it does what it sets out to do.

Nex Playground Pricing & Availability

The Nex Playground is available in Ireland with an RRP of €319.99 from Smyths. If you want access to the wider game library, Play Pass subscriptions are priced at €49 for a 3 Month Pass or €99 for a One Year Pass, on top of the console itself.