which tablet for kids?

[vtmom]

We are purchasing a tablet for the kids (7 and 5) to share. I am leaning towards an Amazon tablet because we have Prime (and we don't have any Apple products so ipads are definitely out for us). Debating between a regular fire and a kids edition fire. Would love to hear about people's experiences with both tablets and their kids. Thanks!

[jse107]

I would get the $50 Amazon Fire. I have a Fire that I really like, as well as the Ipad Air. I say the Fire will be perfect--and the right price! I wouldn't even get the kids bundle.

[AngB]

We are getting our kids each the cheap Kindle Fires ($49 or $35 if we can score one of the BF deals on them) and putting Kindle Freetime unlimited on them (6.99/mo for up to 4 kids or 2.99 for one kid/tablet). My understanding of the kids tablet is that the hardware is rather crappy and I think we can do better this way. I can find decent cases for around $10 on ebay and if I really wanted a warranty, Squaretrade should be pretty cheap for a $50 tablet. Even at $85, the deal doesn't seem great to me for the kids one. I mean I guess it works out about the same or slightly better for the kids but I'd rather go with the slightly better tablet.

[vtmom]

Thanks for the feedback so far. Also, does anyone know about parental controls on the regular fire? That is one of the appealing things about the kids edition fire to me.

[megs4413]

I'm confused. I thought the kids fire is the EXACT same as a regular fire only with the added kid-tough case, free time unlimited and the 2 year replacement plan? Am i missing something?

[jerigirl]

I posted this in the Deals thread, but the kids Kindle bundle is down to $84.99 thru 11/30
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYZEQ1G/..._ods_fs_tab_fk

And according to CNET the $50 Kindle will go down to $35 on Black Friday
http://www.cnet.com/news/heres-what-...k-friday-week/

[jerigirl]

I'm confused. I thought the kids fire is the EXACT same as a regular fire only with the added kid-tough case, free time unlimited and the 2 year replacement plan? Am i missing something?

This is my understanding as well.

[JBaxter]

Are Kindle Fire gets no love

[wendibird22]

We have the kids version. The 8GB is somewhat useless. 5GB is taken up by the OS and FreeTime. I've read that if you take off the FreeTime you get some space back. DD1 received hers for her birthday in July and has gone crazy taking pics and videos which ate up space immediately, which then disables the wifi. So you have to delete content in order to get wifi back. I believe the model out now for $85 has the expandable memory with mini SD card. DD1's does not have that.

That said, she uses it often and it works great other than the memory limitation. The case is decent and I like the 2yr worry free replacement. So, even though it's not perfect by any means, we just bought DD2 (6) one for her birthday in 2 weeks. For their ages (8 and 6) I like that the set up for FreeTime means they spend most of their time reading books or playing educational games. I don't want them to just be able to freely explore the internet or youtube. I don't expect these to be the tablets they use for years and years, but for the $85 cost I think it's totally fine and will get a few years out of them.

[AngB]

We have the kids version. The 8GB is somewhat useless. 5GB is taken up by the OS and FreeTime. I've read that if you take off the FreeTime you get some space back. DD1 received hers for her birthday in July and has gone crazy taking pics and videos which ate up space immediately, which then disables the wifi.

I am hoping that this is not the case with the non-kid Kindle Fire (that the Wi-Fi isn't disabled when it's memory is full), if they are exactly the same then we will probably skip them because DS will have it full in 2 minutes.