I am very much an apple girl and I wanted to reclaim the mini iPad from my daughter, so I decided to purchase her the Amazon Fire HD 8″ HD Display for kids. We have had the tablet now for about 3-4 months and I wanted to share my thoughts on what I see as the key areas when looking to buy a tablet for your kids.
1) Durability
So for those of you with a toddler this is a key factor when buying a tablet as lets face it it will be thrown or dropped on the floor frequently. The Amazon Fire comes with a pretty heavy duty case, so you don’t need to buy a separate one, and it comes in a couple of different colours. My daughter has dropped this a number of times and it just bounces and we have had no issues with it. The case also has a stand that you can pull down so that your little one can put in on a table to watch.
The battery life on this is also great I have gone a few days before having to charge the device . It comes with a USB-C so it pretty quick charging and also 32gb of storage which I think is more than enough for what we use it for.
2) Setup
This does take a little bit of setting up as you will be applying your child’s Profile but yours will be the master profile. Before your child can get using the tablet you will need to apply the apps that you want them to have access to e.g. YouTube Kids. I actually YouTubed how to setup the tablet (there are lots of videos on this).
There are lots of apps that are already preloaded onto the tablet which are mostly educational. My daughter particularly loves the jigsaw apps and I find that she spends more time on the preloaded apps than the apps that I have loaded onto the tablet for her.
3)Parental Controls
I think that this is a great device for parental controls I really like the fact that my daughter can’t get on to this internet so there is no danger of getting onto websites or buying something by accident on prime 😂. It is also ad free so you can be safe in the knowledge that there is nothing dodgy for little eyes to come across. You can also only allow you kids to have access to the apps that you want them to as you have to download them onto your profile and from there you add them to your child’s profile.
Some of the other really good features on this tablet is that you can set a bedtime, so you can set the time that you want the tablet to shut down for the day. As well as setting the bedtime you can also set a screen time limit as well as restricting certain categories such as videos.
4) Usability
I was slightly concerned when I first purchased the Amazon Kids Fire Tablet as my daughter had been using my IPad mini, which is super easy to use but i was pleasantly surprised. It’s very easy to use and my daughter picked it up pretty much straight away. Everything is on one page and are just like apps so it was easy for her to transition. The only thing that she still struggled with a bit was turning it on as the case it pretty big and its not easy to see the on button apart from that she loves it.
Another feature that we haven’t used yet is the ability to download their favourite videos or films so you don’t need to have wi-fi or use up your mobile data. I have not used this yet, but it will be useful on long journeys in the car. They will be able to see what content is available for them to choose from; and watch away till their little hearts content.
5) Cost
So on to one of the big points that most parents will be interested in the cost. At around £140 pounds for the Amazon Kids Fire HD 8 its not cheap but its not a bad price for what you are getting. If you wait for Black Friday you are likely to pick it up cheaper. It also comes with 1 year of Amazon kids plus as well as a 2 year worry free guarantee. if you break it you can return it and Amazon will replace it for free.
My Verdict
So overall I would definitely recommend this to parents looking to buy a reasonably priced tablet for their child, especially those with toddlers. It has lots of features that allows you to keep you child safe from the internet and it has plenty of education apps. It certainly puts my mind at rest that its a safe device for my daughter to be watching/using.