My 3 1/2 year old loves his explorer! I researched tons on all the preschool handhelds and decided on the explorer. I bought it direct from the leapfrog.com website around Christmas time when he turned 3 and they had a bundle (handheld, 3 games and an accessory) for a pretty good discount! He has Mr Pencil, Kai Lan, Toy Story 3 and I bought him Wolverine separately-he loves superheros-and my accessory was the storage bag! I ended up getting a free camera with the bundle (the website made a mistake with my order so they sent that as an "I'm sorry"), but my son's explorer is so full with his Leapfrog movies that he has no memory left for pictures, which is fine because he adores the 30 minute movies (you have to purchase the leaplet download cards to download the movies, e-books and other games). He has 2 games, 3 e-books and 4 movies and that takes up most of the internal memory...so I just occasionally change out the movies and the e-books. My suggestion...I would purchase 4-6 leaplet cards (2-3 packs) to start with to download the movies/books/games and go from there. Total, I have purchased 10 leaplet cards so far over the past year. His favorite downloadable game is the brushing teeth game!
It is something he takes in the car with us, plays while daddy plays xbox and he takes it when we go shopping. He would play all day if I let him...but it is educational and I have seen him learning things (for example, he now can spell multiple words thanks to Wolverine, he knows all the sounds each letter makes thanks to a Leapfrog movie, he is working on colors and drawing lines thanks to Mr Pencil which now allows him to write his name pretty clearly and on and on!)
My one suggestion would be to invest in the charger station or you will go through SO many batteries! The charge lasts a long time!
The only frustration I have had is with the computer program that you have to download from the website to update your explorer, add the programs and "purchase" the items for their pet (they get points for playing games that go towards that)- it gets a little glitchy sometimes and is slllloooooowwww sometimes, but it has been okay lately so maybe they fixed it!