VTech and Fisher-Price are two toy producing companies that frequently do a good job in delivering excellent toys for your little kids. The latest and most engaging competition between them is the battle for animated e-book systems. Fisher Price show off with their "super cool" iXL Learning System, and VTech replies gracefully with the delightful V Reader.

Fisher Price's iXL is a fresh electronic gadget made preschoolers. Open it up like a book, and you'll see about an 1 and by 3 inched touchscreen that is the key to the many different things that little ones can do. Plug it in to a laptop and personalize it, and then you can listen to music, store your photos, read stories, interact with animated characters and play games in a variety of ways. The software is appropriate for kids, it's got a great sound system, and it has a head to head phone jack that you use to connect it to your computer and add more stuff. You can download the software for running on MAC, or you can use the included software for PC. It has a nice user interface and it's easy to load all kinds of stuff on to it when a kid is going to take it along and play.

The guys at VTech declare that the V Reader is the very first animated e-book system for preschoolers. The touchscreen is larger than iXL's touchscreen, but half of it is taken by a QWERTY keyboard. It is just for reading stories and playing reading games, so we could say that it has a higher educational value than the Fisher-Price iXL Learning System. However, the V Reader can't play music, and can not store photos. Pressing various words on the screen makes the V Reader read the words out loud, and tapping the animated characters makes them react and interact with you.

Both of these products are great, and making a choice between the Fisher Price iXL and the VTech V Reader is just a matter of knowing what you want for your child.