By Thomas Ridgeway · July 11, 2026 · 8 min read

tiptoi Books, Ravensburger (tiptoi Starter-Set)

tiptoi Books by Ravensburger, a pen-and-book system for screen-free travel.

For the family whose long-haul survival plan cannot involve one more screen: the screen-free entertainment that still works at 38,000 feet with the Wi-Fi off and the phone in your pocket.

Overview

Three hundred and something titles. That is the number that made us take tiptoi seriously as travel kit rather than a nursery-shelf curiosity. You buy the pen once (a chunky, soft-grip wand with a reader tip and a little speaker), and from that day forward every tiptoi book, puzzle and game in a library of several hundred works with it. The pen taps an invisible code printed into the page and answers back: a pig grunts, a farmer explains what a combine harvester does, a song starts up, a quiz asks your four-year-old to find the red tractor. No screen. No app open on your phone. Once a title is loaded, it works fully offline, with no internet at all.

The key thing to say up front, because it changes what you actually buy: a tiptoi book on its own does nothing. It is a beautiful, mute object without the pen. So the real entry point (the thing that arrives in one box and works out of it) is the Starter-Set: the current 4th-generation pen plus one book, in our case “Auf dem Bauernhof” (On the Farm). That is the version we packed, and the version a first-time family should reach for. Buy a standalone book by mistake and you have bought half a product.

Why It’s Great for Family Travel

We handed the pen to a four-year-old somewhere over the Alps, on the kind of afternoon flight where the novelty of the window has worn off and the seatbelt sign refuses to die. She spent the next forty minutes hunting animals across the farm pages, and we spent the next forty minutes doing nothing, which on a flight with a small child is the closest thing to a spa day you will get. That is the pitch, really. It is screen-free, it is quiet-hands, it is self-contained, and it does not require you to hand over your own phone and its entire camera roll to a toddler with sticky fingers.

What earns it a place in the bag over an audiobook or a tablet is that it is interactive without being connected. The child is doing something (searching, tapping, answering), not just receiving. There are different modes on most books (discover, know, tell, play), so the same farm your two-year-old pokes at randomly becomes, a year later, a quiz your five-year-old wants to beat. That is why the reviews we trust most are the ones from parents two years in who are surprised the thing is still in rotation. It grows with the child, and it grows with the trip: one pen, and every new book you add later joins the same ecosystem.

It is also, and we mean this as praise, boring in the right ways. No accounts, no updates mid-trip, no battery panic if you charged it the night before, no blue light forty minutes before a hotel bedtime you are desperately trying to defend. For the years roughly four to eight it hits a sweet spot almost nothing else does: educational enough that you feel good about it, absorbing enough that it actually buys you peace.

Real-World Use (Airport / Car / Hotel)

Before you leave the house. This is the one piece of homework, and skipping it will ruin the first day of your holiday, so we will be blunt about it. The book that comes in the Starter-Set is pre-loaded and works out of the box. But every additional title’s audio has to be downloaded once, ahead of time, using the free tiptoi Manager on a PC or Mac (there is no Linux or Chromebook support, and no phone app for this). Do it the week before, not at the departure gate. Once a book is loaded it is loaded forever, fully offline. If you loathe the computer step, the optional WLAN charging station handles downloads over your home network without a laptop, but it costs extra and it is not in the box.

Airport and plane. Once you are moving, it is close to ideal. No Wi-Fi, no screen, no phone: just pen and book, both of which fit in a jacket pocket and a seat-back pocket. We have flown ours repeatedly; the pen’s battery is the ordinary kind that airlines do not fuss over, and there is nothing to switch to flight mode. The single real caveat is volume. The pen plays aloud through its own little speaker, and at the top of its range it is loud: loud enough that in a hushed cabin you will want it turned down and also want your child not to press it to their ear. It is adjustable with a plus/minus button, which mostly solves it, but be aware it resets to a default level each time you power it on, so you re-set it every use. There is no headphone socket on the current 4th-generation pen, so you cannot simply plug in and go silent. Plan around the noise rather than expecting to mute it.

Car. This is where German parents seem to reach for it first, and we agree: on a long motorway stretch it is the thing that goes in the bag before anything else. Road noise actually helps here: the aloud-only audio that feels intrusive in a quiet cabin is perfectly judged over the hum of a motorway. Hotel and restaurant. The same volume note applies in a shared room, so keep it low after lights-out and it becomes a calm, screen-free wind-down rather than a wall-shaking event. In a restaurant it bought us a starter and a main in relative peace, which is its own kind of small victory.

Specs That Actually Matter

• What’s in the box: 4th-generation tiptoi pen (article 00110) + “Auf dem Bauernhof” hardboard book + charging cable (Starter-Set 00114).
• Age: 4–7 for this Starter-Set; the wider tiptoi library spans roughly 2 to 10 depending on the title.
• Power: integrated rechargeable battery, arrives pre-charged, recharged via the included cable (an optional charging station is sold separately). No user-replaceable AAA cells on this generation.
• Pen: ergonomic soft-grip wand, roughly 16 cm long, moulded plastic with an optical reader tip and built-in speaker.
• Book: thick hardboard picture book, around A4, with the invisible OID code layer printed into the pages.
• Audio: adjustable volume via a plus/minus button; plays aloud (no headphone jack on the 4th-gen pen); volume resets to default at each power-on.
• Connectivity: content downloaded once per title via the free tiptoi Manager (PC/Mac); fully offline thereafter.
• Warranty: the standard EU two-year manufacturer cover; the electronics are integrated and non-repairable (Ravensburger replaces rather than fixes).
• Safety: CE-marked; rated 4+, with small-parts guidance (detachable tip/sleeve), not for under-threes. No recall on record as of mid-2026.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Truly screen-free and truly offline once loaded: no Wi-Fi, no phone, no app open in transit.
• Interactive rather than passive: the child searches, taps and answers, and the modes grow with them.
• One pen unlocks a library of several hundred titles. It scales across years and siblings.
• Pocketable, robust hardboard books and a sturdy 4th-gen pen with clearly improved audio over older versions.
• Responsive warranty service: families who had a pen fail were sent replacements without a fight.

Cons

• The books do nothing without the pen. Buy the Starter-Set, not a lone book.
• Every new title must be downloaded once on a PC or Mac before you travel (no Linux/Chromebook, no phone app).
• Plays aloud and gets genuinely loud; no headphone jack on this generation, and the volume resets each power-on.
• A minority of pens fail early (speaker, reader tip, or dirt in the tip gap). Most last for years, but it happens.
• Cost creep: one pen, but add-on books run roughly €18–€25 each and add up over an engaged few years.

FFH Gear Score

Scored as we’d judge any piece of kit that has to earn its space in a family’s bag: what it does, how well it’s built, how painless it is, how it behaves on a real trip, and whether the money makes sense over the years you’ll actually use it.

• Functionality: 8.7 / 10
• Build Quality & Durability: 7.6 / 10
• Ease of Use: 7.5 / 10
• Family Practicality: 8.5 / 10
• Pricing: $$ of $$$$$
• FFH Gear Score: 8.1 / 10

Final Verdict

If your idea of a good flight is one where nobody had to hand over a phone, tiptoi belongs in the bag. Buy the Starter-Set so the pen actually comes with a book; do the one-time download homework at home, not at the gate; make your peace with audio that plays out loud and needs turning down in quiet spaces. In exchange you get the rare thing that is educational without feeling like homework, absorbing without a screen, and self-contained enough to survive a delayed connection, a five-hour motorway slog and a restaurant that was never designed for children. It is not flawless (the no-headphone-jack decision is a step backwards for travel, a few pens fail early, and the books quietly multiply on your invoice), but for the years roughly four to eight it is one of the smartest screen-free purchases a travelling family can make: one pen, a growing shelf of books, and forty minutes of peace over the Alps, and we’d pack it again tomorrow.

Gallery