What Is The Best Kid Tablet To Buy
The best tablets for kids are durable, affordable and versatile. Finding the right one for your needs can be tricky because every kid is different, but in general, we look for decent screen quality, excellent battery life, good parental controls, and solid durability (accidents happen!) at a reasonable price.
what is the best kid tablet to buy
To help you decide which tablet is right for you, we tested all of the top devices in our lab and in the real world. In general, we've found that Amazon tablets are great for kids and anyone on a tight budget.
If you can afford to pay a bit more, iPads are excellent tablets for students and creative kids. In fact, we have a best iPads for kids guide that will help you choose between them. And if your kid wants an Android tablet, there are some great options from Samsung that compete effectively with iPads yet cost significantly less.
The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro (2021) is the best tablet for kids overall. It's effectively the same, hardware-wise, as the Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet: it has the same octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and vivacious 1,900 x 1,200 display. The big difference is that it's designed specifically for use by older kids ages 6-12, so it comes with a one-year Amazon Kids+ subscription, a colorful kickstand case, and a comprehensive, no-questions-asked 2-year warranty that covers accidental damage.
Sure, the lack of Google Play Store apps limits what you can do with this tablet, but that's hardly a problem if you're planning to give it to your 5-year-old so they can have something on which to watch videos. If you want a durable, affordable tablet tailored to young children, the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids is a great choice.
If you're looking for a great sub-$100 slate you can give to a child, the $50 Amazon Fire 7 tablet is a great choice. It delivers pretty good performance thanks to its snappy quad-core 1.3 GHz processor, which helps a child navigate apps and browse the web faster than you'd expect from a tablet this cheap.
Kids typically prefer lighter tablets, and we can't blame them. The regular iPad may have a great simplicity about itself, but the 0.7-pound iPad mini 6 is so much easier to hold than its heavier siblings. Plus, if you get the 2nd Gen Apple Pencil with it, that stylus will be easier to keep track of since it magnetically snaps onto the side (the 1st Gen Pencil tends to just roll away). The iPad mini 6 is also better for reading, since its size is more comparable to books and comics.
Apple's iPad Air (2020) borrows a lot of what we like from the iPad Pro, at a more affordable price, and it's a great tablet to give an older kid if you're willing to pay the $599+ asking price. It's smaller and lighter than the base iPad with super-thin bezels you'll recognize from the iPad Pro, as well as support for the $300 Magic Keyboard, which (if you're willing to pay the extra cost) makes the Air a decent device for writing papers. On top of that, Apple's blazing-fast A14 Bionic chip helps future-proof this tablet with enough speed for demanding apps and multitasking. Oh, and they managed to put Touch ID in the lock button.
If you want to give a kid an Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab A7 is a great choice because it's a decent iPad competitor that costs nearly $100 less. It's a great tablet to give an older kid, and it's also great to share among a family because Android lets you set up multiple profiles and set parental controls on a per-profile basis, ensuring you can filter and control what kids of content your kid(s) can access.
The Amazon Fire HD 8 is a solid Amazon tablet that, with an MSRP of $90, sits between the Fire HD 7 and Fire HD 10 Kids in terms of price and potential. If you can afford to spend more than the $50 price tag of the HD 7 on a kids tablet but want to keep your spending below $100, the HD 8 is a good choice: its bright screen and epic 13+ hours of battery life make it great for consuming content, and its reversible USB-C port is a feature we wish was in the cheaper Fire 7 tablet.
Of course, it has all the same weaknesses as Amazon's other tablets: you have to pay extra to remove ads, and you can't easily access the full Google Play Store. But if you just want a good tablet for kids that's primarily intended for consuming content in Amazon's ecosystem, the Fire HD 8 is a great value. Just be aware you won't get the kid-friendly add-ons that come with the Fire HD 10 Kids tablets, including the free year of Amazon Kids+ and the 2-year no-questions-asked warranty.
Screen size: Tablets come in a variety of screen sizes ranging from 7 to 10 inches. If you expect your kid to be watching a lot of videos, they'll want the biggest, nicest screen possible, so consider the Fire HD 10, the iPad, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7. But if you just want a tablet a kid can use to browse the web and read ebooks, a smaller display, like those on the Fire 7 or Fire HD 8, will be more than enough for your needs.
Budget: You can spend anywhere between $50-$800 on a tablet for kids, or more if you splurge on extras like a stylus or keyboard cover. If you can afford the higher end of that spectrum, the $599 iPad Air or the $350 Galaxy Tab S6 Lite are great tablets for older kids and families because they have great specs and offer the full range of iOS/Android apps. Younger kids might be better served by the $200 Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids or HD 10 Kids Pro tablets, since they come with kid-friendly extras like durable cases and 2-year warranties. If your budget is in the $50-$100 range, the $50 Fire HD 7 or the $100 Fire HD 8 are good, no-frills Amazon Fire tablets that offer decent performance and Amazon's in-depth parental controls.
Age: How old is the person you're buying this tablet for? Obviously if it's for you and your family, buy whatever you like, but if you're getting a tablet for a specific child, there are a variety of kid-friendly options depending on their age. For those ages 3-7, the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids offers decent performance, great parental controls, and a colorful drop-resistant case. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro offers effectively the same benefits for the same price, but it's aimed at older kids in the 6-12 range. And if the person you're buying for is older than that, they should be well-served by the standard Amazon Fire HD 10, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7, or the basic iPad.
Kids want tablets. But tablets are fragile, expensive gadgets with potentially unlimited access to the internet, both issues that challenge parents. A good kid tablet is different from a good adult tablet: While you want a grown-up tablet to be slim, light, and fast, you want a tablet for kids to be cheap, rugged, and protected.
Our picks here are some of our favorite tablets for children, chosen for a balance of affordability, durability, and age-appropriate features. Whichever tablet you get, be sure to buy a case and some kid-friendly headphones. These small investments pay for themselves.
The best tablet for school is probably a base model iPad. The iPad's dominant role in the tablet landscape means most schools support them, many teachers have them, and tech support should be easy. Other tablets may not be able to run the third-party apps that schools demand or even fill out the right web forms. The worst offenders here are Amazon's Fire tablets, which are inexpensive and popular, but aren't designed for productivity.
If an iPad won't do for your school, you're probably going to want something with Chrome OS, such as the Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook. Head over to our roundup of the best Chromebooks for kids for more recommendations.
Don't assume a tablet for a kid should be a piece of junk. Sufficient hardware specs can help you find a tablet that works well enough to avoid frustrating meltdowns. Let's start with screen size and resolution. An 8-inch, 1,280-by-800-pixel display is good for reading comics and watching videos, so use that as your baseline.
Amazon's inexpensive Fire tablets have been the best family option for years. They are inexpensive and have a Kids Edition that comes with a rubber case, a no-questions-asked two-year guarantee, and Amazon's parental controls service. The 8-inch Kids model (based on the standard Fire HD 8) is quite affordable.
Amazon's tablets have a simplified interface, strong parental controls, and Kids+, which is basically a giant bucket of content for kids. A Parent Dashboard lets you keep track of what your children are doing and restrict their screen time. You can put multiple user profiles on the tablets, as well.
If you primarily use Google cloud services and Android apps, an Android tablet can get you what you need for a little less money than an iPad, and it's not locked down to Amazon services the way a Fire tablet is.
In terms of parental controls, Android has restricted user profiles that can also prevent accidental purchases and filter Google Play apps. But if you intend to let your kids use one of these tablets out of your sight, you should really consider installing some parental control software.
Companies such as Fuhu, Kurio, and Leapfrog made their names with highly restricted tablets that come with kid-friendly software and, by default, don't offer access to the open internet. By and large, though, these tablets haven't been updated for years and are running old, insecure versions of Android that we no longer recommend.
While you're shopping for your kid, check out our lab-tested picks for the best kids' phones and the best kids' laptops. For a broader selection of tablets for older kids and adults, take a look at the best tablets we've tested overall.
Many of the kids' tablets on our list come preloaded with kid-friendly content and educational apps to facilitate learning alongside the fun entertainment apps. These easy-to-use kids' tablets can also access quality educational content like apps, games, shows and more from trusted and effective edutainment experts, like PBS Kids. Interactive programming (like that offered from Sideshow Kids, PBS Kids and CodaKid, for instance) can be used in tandem with different educational app options on your child's device, letting them get the hands-on learning experience your little one needs to have the best head start in the world. 041b061a72