The best ukuleles for kids

Why the ukulele is the instrument we recommend most for children

Four nylon strings under low tension, a body a six-year-old can get an arm around, and three chords that produce a recognizable song in a week. Nothing else in the beginner instrument world has that combination. A guitar needs more finger pressure than most small hands can manage; a violin needs an adult to tune it daily; a keyboard needs mains power and a stand. A ukulele needs a child.

The flip side is that the ukulele market has more junk in it than any other, because the low price makes it a gift item. The difference between a $30 novelty and a $100 instrument is not tone wood philosophy. It is whether the thing holds its tuning.

Geared tuners, and why they decide everything

A cheap ukulele usually has friction pegs: a tapered peg held in the headstock by pressure alone. They slip. The instrument goes out of tune inside a single song, a child concludes they are bad at it, and the ukulele goes under the bed.

A geared tuner uses a worm gear, so the string tension cannot turn it. It is the single best predictor of whether a budget ukulele is worth owning, it is visible in the listing photographs, and three of the four picks here have them. Check that first and the wood second.

What survives a child

Wood is a hygroscopic material: it takes on and gives up moisture with the air around it, and it moves as it does. In a house with dry winter heating and a damp summer, a cheap laminate ukulele can develop a high action, a buzzing fret or a lifted bridge, and none of those is worth repairing on a $70 instrument.

One pick here is carbon fiber composite rather than wood, and it simply does not care. If the instrument is going to live in a car, travel to a grandparent’s house, go to summer camp or sit in a school locker, that is worth more than tonewood romance. It costs about $35 more than the mahogany soprano and it is the one we would choose for a child who is hard on things.

What to buy alongside it

A clip-on tuner, if the bundle does not include one. This is not optional with a child: an adult can tune by ear, a seven-year-old cannot, and an out-of-tune ukulele is the single commonest reason a child stops.

A bag. Children lean instruments against furniture and furniture falls over. A padded soprano bag costs about $12 and doubles as somewhere to keep the tuner so it is not lost.

A strap, sometimes. A ukulele is held against the body with the forearm, which is harder for a small child than it looks and leads to a cramped right-hand position. A no-drill strap that hooks over the soundhole costs under $10 and fixes it. Our ukulele starter kit page covers all three and what each is actually for.

A method book written for children. Physical books are cheap, and a book designed for a child paces differently from an adult one. The ukulele method book page covers which editions assume a reader and which assume a teacher.

When to size up

Unlike a violin, a ukulele does not need to be resized every year. A soprano is a legitimate instrument for an adult — plenty of professionals play them — so a child who starts on one is not obliged to replace it at twelve. The time to move up is when the child complains that their fingers are crowding each other on a chord, not when they reach a particular birthday. The size guide has the measurements, and the wider beginner roundup covers the adult-sized options.

Every price on this page is read from the live listing by our daily price check, and the date it was read is printed under each buy button. Prices move, and a page that quotes a number without saying when it was true is not worth reading — so if a pick has drifted over the cap since the last check, the button will tell you before you click it.