Reading to Ruth › Advice for families

A well-made thing, looked at kindly

Voxblock for grandparents: an honest look

On the arm of my grandmother's chair, on a tartan blanket, there's an iPad that does one job: it reads to her. Ruth is 101 and almost completely blind, and I've spent a lot of time looking at the other players out there. The one I like best as an object is Voxblock. So is it right for your mum or your grandad? Here's what I found.

By Tara Button, Ruth's granddaughter and the founder of Reading to Ruth · Updated 20 October 2026

What a Voxblock is

Voxblock is a small audiobook player with no screen, no wi-fi and no app. Each book comes on its own block, a cartridge with the whole recording stored inside it. You turn the player on, pop the block in and press the big play button. Take the block out and put it back next week, and it carries on from the exact spot where it stopped.

As well as the play button, there are arrows to jump a chapter forwards or back, and plus and minus for the volume. There's a built-in speaker, a headphone socket and a bedtime mode that plays for 20 minutes and then goes quiet. A full charge gives about 14 hours of listening, and it charges from a wall socket with a USB-C cable.

At the time of writing (October 2026), the player is £49.99 on Voxblock's own site, or £59.99 with a coloured bumper in orange, green, red or blue. It comes with a 100-day money-back guarantee, and the books are bought separately.

I've spent years at Buy Me Once championing things that do one job and keep doing it, and this has that feel. Voxblock says the player is built with as few parts as possible so that it lives "a long and happy life", and it doesn't need an update, a password or a router to get there. (Plenty of printers could learn from it.)

What's on it for grown-ups

Most of Voxblock's shelf is for children. When I counted in October 2026, its site listed 315 single titles, and 30 of them are in its section for older listeners. They're all classics, and they're all £15.99 each.

• Jane Austen, five times over: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park.
• Nineteenth-century favourites: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Bleak House, Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Little Women and Three Men in a Boat.
• Adventure: Moby-Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo and Around the World in Eighty Days.
• The Russians: War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and The Master and Margarita.
• Something different: Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and a life of Mozart with his music.
• Plays, and some later books: Romeo and Juliet and Pygmalion as performed plays, plus The Great Gatsby (marked "back in stock soon" when I looked), Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Name of the Rose.

It's a good shelf. Two of Ruth's favourites, Bleak House and Little Women, are on it. Add five books to the player and you've spent £129.94, and a family that wants ten new books a year is looking at about £160 a year in blocks.

Why it works for an older person

• There's nothing to learn. No screen, no menus, no sign-in. Book in, press play.
• It doesn't lose the place. Each block picks up where it was left, even after it's been taken out and put back.
• No wi-fi means no wi-fi problems. If the care home's internet is patchy, or there isn't any, it doesn't matter.
• It feels like a book. You choose a story by picking up a thing, which may feel more natural to someone who grew up with books than tapping a picture on a screen.

Where it falls short for a very old or blind listener

I'm not knocking the design. Voxblock was made for children first (its own FAQ says so, and adds that many older listeners love it too). But a seven-year-old and a 95-year-old with failing eyes need different things, and you'll want to know where the gaps are.

• Choosing a book needs sight or memory. Each book is a separate block. If your dad can't see the label, telling Emma from Persuasion is down to remembering or asking someone. I couldn't find anything on Voxblock's site saying the player reads out the title.
• The arrows jump whole chapters. If he dozes off, going back means the start of the chapter, and in Bleak House that can be a long way.
• Someone has to keep it charged. The warning that the battery's low is a light that turns red, which isn't much use to someone who can't see it.
• It may be too quiet. Voxblock itself says that, because the player is designed for calm listening, someone who is hard of hearing may need an extra speaker or headphones.
• The range is small, and fixed. Thirty classics is a lovely start, but if your mum fancies a new crime novel, or the book everyone's talking about on the radio, you can't get it on a block.
• There are no family voices. The blocks come ready-recorded, and I couldn't find any way to put your own recordings or messages on one. For a grandparent in a care home, hearing the family can matter as much as the book.
• Every new book is a parcel. It has to arrive, and someone has to be in the room to put it in.

Who a Voxblock suits best

It's a lovely present for a grandparent who still has some sight and steady hands, loves the classics, and has family close by who'll charge it and pop in a new block now and then. It's a good answer if they don't own a tablet and don't want one, or if the wi-fi where they live is hopeless. And because most of the range is for children, a grandparent and a grandchild could share one player, each with their own blocks, each keeping their own place.

If they can't see at all, are very frail, or live a long way from anyone who can swap the books, I'd look at the options below first.

Reading to Ruth is not connected with Voxblock. Voxblock is a trade mark of its owner, and its prices, titles and features may have changed since this was written; check Voxblock's own site.

Other ways to do it

• RNIB Talking Books is free for anyone who struggles to read because of their sight, with more than 54,000 books. They can be streamed through an Alexa speaker, or sent by post on USB stick or CD if you ring the RNIB Helpline on 0303 123 9999. There's more in our guide to talking books in the UK.
• Your public library lends audiobooks free through an app. See free audiobooks in the UK.
• A Yoto with Make Your Own cards, which some families use for an older relative. See is there a Yoto for adults?
• A simple CD, MP3 or radio player. See what actually works.

What I built for Ruth

Ruth didn't get on with the RNIB devices, and she needed something she could work herself, with nothing to find or swap. So I built Reading to Ruth. It turns a tablet, phone or laptop she already had into one big Play button. It keeps the place in every book, says each title aloud, and we slowed the narration down because normal speed was too quick for her.

Reading to Ruth is not connected with Voxblock. Voxblock is a trade mark of its owner, and its prices and features may have changed since this was written; check Voxblock's own site.

Try the real player on the home page