As an added bonus, when you purchase a kids tablet, many of them come with comprehensive parental controls, allowing you to stop junior from browsing adult-oriented websites or making in-app purchases. If parental controls aren’t your cup of tea, and you want to give your child access to more of a “grown up” tablet, we have some recommendations for you as well. Read our best of CES 2023 article to see the future of tech. Without further ado, here are the best kids tablets you can buy in 2023. Oh, and don’t forget to check out our best cases for kids tablets page, too!
The best kids tablets you can buy today
The Fire HD 8 Kids tablet is super compact, making it a perfect tablet companion for kids between the ages of three and seven. You don’t have to worry The aforementioned differences aside, the hardware is similar to the Fire HD 8 Kids tablet; they even share the same price! The Kindle Paperwhite comes with a 6.8-inch, glare-free display and its battery life lasts up to 10 weeks. It also offers 8GB or 16GB of storage capacity. It’s waterproof, too, so it can withstand water immersion of up to two meters for 60 minutes. On the plus side, the Fire HD 8 has incredible battery life, lasting 13 hours and 49 minutes on our battery test, which is more than enough time to keep of you and your kids occupied throughout the day. Alexa is the Fire HD 8’s shining star, especially when you command the digital assistant to turn on Show Mode, which transforms your tablet into a smart display. If you opt for the pricier Plus model, you can prop it on the included wireless charging dock to turn your tablet into an Echo Show-like device. If you plan on teaching your kids how to cook, one awesome use case for show mode is its amazing utility in the kitchen — ask Alexa for a taco recipe, for example, and a carousel of delicious recipes from different websites will appear. Alexa will also walk you through the instructions for the selected recipe step-by-step. FE stands for “Fan Edition” or, in more practical terms, the value pick in Samsung’s beloved Galaxy series. The brand debuted with the Galaxy S20 FE smartphone, and as intended, quickly became a fan-favorite for the performance and features it brought to the sub-flagship category. The Galaxy Tab S7 FE, Samsung’s latest Android tablet, attempts to emulate that success by taking some of the Tab S7’s best qualities and offering them at a lower price. But the success of the Galaxy Tab S7 FE isn’t as guaranteed. Samsung doesn’t have the same foothold in tablets as it does with phones. This is iPad territory, and in this case, an area owned by the iPad Air. In some ways, the Tab S7 FE handles the challenge well, offering a larger (and better) screen than what you get from the iPad, longer battery life, and an included stylus in the S Pen. But the downsides are glaring. Sluggish performance from an underpowered chip only highlights the drawbacks of running Android on a tablet. However, they don’t keep the Galaxy Tab S7 FE from being one of the best kids tablets for media streaming or basic productivity. See our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE review. If you want to introduce a little one to the world of iPadOS, and you don’t mind splurging about $400 for the experience, consider snagging the iPad mini. The iPad Mini is packed with the same chip inside the iPhone 13 series, and let me tell you, the A15 Bionic chip is beastly. As such, zipping through apps and surfing the web will be fast, easy and breezy for all users. The iPad mini 6 features an 8.3-inch, 2266 x 1488-pixel display, and this may feel too cramped and small for the average adult, for kids, it’s perfect. Even with its compact size, it packs speedy performance, a bright, sharp display, and excellent battery life. According to our review, the iPad mini has a runtime of 11 hours. As a bonus, there’s a wide-angel back camera and a 12MP ultra-wide camera on the front. There’s also Touch ID for secure logins. If you want your little one to enjoy his or her tablet no matter where they are, you’ll be happy to know that the iPad mini 6 comes with 5G support in addition to Wi-Fi 6. The only downside is that you won’t be able to pair the iPad mini with Apple’s Magic Keyboard. See our full iPad mini 6 review.
How to choose the best kids tablets for you
If you need a tablet that both you and your child could use, then going with an Apple product isn’t a bad choice. The Apple iPad is the cheapest of the bunch and offers good battery life as well as support for augmented-reality apps. If you’re looking for a modest android tablet, you could always pick up the Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus, but keep in mind that it’s a little old now and running on an even older operating system.
How we test the best kids tablets
We put each tablet through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the tablet, including its performance, battery life, display and speakers. In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the tablet’s display. For performance testing, we run the tablet through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 (when applicable). Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. Typically, tablets average around 9 to 10 hours of battery life. For kids tablets, we extensively test the parental controls as well as the interface that kids would be using every day. These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the tablet’s materials to the feel of its touchscreen display.
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