I need some advice, and the amount of marketing spam had made sorting the wheat from the chaff annoyingly difficult. Hopefully you can help.
I’ve a young daughter, who uses an old tablet of mine to watch netflix etc. unfortunately, it was old in the tooth when she was born, and it’s now become extremely annoying to use.
She currently has a Samsung Galaxy Tab A (2016). The size (10") works well, but it’s gotten slow as sin, and only has 16Gb of internal memory.
Preferences wise:
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10" screen (±2")
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64Gb+ storage.
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Long expected lifespan (inc security updates).
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Headphone socket (adapters are asking to get broken, Bluetooth go flat)
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Decent WiFi (more than just 2.4Ghz).
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USB C charging preferred.
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Wireless charging would be very helpful but not required.
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Lower budget preferred (£200 range).
What would people recommend?
Fire Tabs are pretty good spec and their kid focused ones are well built. Really young Fire tab kids "7 HD kids pro if their pre-teen
Huge disagree on the Fire tablets, especially the 7”. The one we have is unusable with how laggy and slow it is.
I got a Fire Kids tablet for my kid to use occasionally, but the interface is so horrible and the parental controls are abysmally bad, it’s been trash from the get-go. I wish I could figure out how to get stock Android on it.
Agreed. Fire tablets are garbage. Super slow, outdated tech designed to shovel ads at your kids.
The uncomfortable truth is the best tablet for kids is a new iPad Air. It’ll be up to date for its lifespan of years and the parental controls, ecosystem and screentime functionality make it great for kids.
You can hate Apple but as a parent the iPad is great for kids.
Both my kids (4 and 7) use fire tablets and we have the subscription with it to get them access to lots of free apps.
I put memory cards in both, as what they come with is insufficient. The older versions we had were a little janky, but we haven’t really had any issues with the current ones.
The parental controls could be better but work okay. In the kids version of the interface you don’t really see ads, just app recommendations. Some of the apps still have gated content, but it hasn’t really been an issue.
Google Pixel Tablet with GrapheneOS.
AOSP may completely suck for Tablet UI, but afaik it has DRM support and GrapheneOS is simply the only Android I can really recommend.
The rest is just spying, on Kids, which is sick as fuck.
Budget android is a crapshoot.
While you can get a fire tablet with Netflix, or an Old Samsung. The OS and software feels so slow that its hard to use compared to an iPad.
I have an old Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e and a current gen Amazon fire tablet. Out of the two I’d recommend getting an old Samsung tablet.
My advice would be a model or two newer than the Tab S5e though double check for headphone jacks as Samsung has a tendency to drop those on their “premium” tablets.
Another option is to see if you can install LineageOS as most of the lag comes from the bloat from Samsung and Amazon. Like Kindle Book recommendations and Samsung Game mode.
Now if I was to buy a tablet for my kid. It would be a 5/6th gen iPad, or a 3rd gen air. The 5th gen just stopped getting the newest iPadOS but is still supported while the 6th gen and air is on the latest OS. They all have a headphone jack, and if they are anything like my first gen mini, will have better performance than any cheap tablet you’ll get from Amazon.
I’m familiar with android and it’s ecosystem, as is my daughter. I’ve a personal dislike of apple, so would rather not have to deal with their systems.
As for her current tablet, it’s still working remarkably well. Unfortunately, 16Gb of storage is extremely limiting, when it comes to installing modern apps. I don’t think LineageOS will help much with a lack of physical memory, and modern software bloat.
I am in the same boat for Apple, don’t like their practices and the inability to install what I want like a web browser outside of Safari. But last year I got myself an iPad Pro for myself and it’s been the best tablet experience I’ve had in terms of app, and support for a large screen device. If you are reading books, and streaming paid subscription services I’ve not seen an Android tablet which can compete.
Now with that said the locked in ecosystem, proprietary hardware, lack of headphone jack on newer tablets which totally has the space for one, does drive me up a wall, and I usually use my Android Phone (Poco X3 Pro with LineageOS installed) for everything else.
Now here is my goto for finding new phones/tablets. GSM Arena has a wonderful database which an easily searchable option, that helps me narrow down option based on specs. Won’t tell me if it’s any good but it’s a nice starting point especially if you know what specs it needs to have.
From my experience, you want to buy a Flagship, or flagship spec deceive, hence the iPad suggestion. LTT Did a roundup a few years ago going over this very issue with their conclusion that an older flagship will still outperform a new device, and be cheaper to buy.
For my two cents based on the devices I have, and Mr.Mobile’s many reviews on Android Smart Watches, Google OS’s love to have more RAM and perform better with it. I’d suggest a min amount of RAM should be 4GB though I’d recommend 6GB if you want a good time. I can see a few Tablets with the specs you want, but I can’t speak for their quality myself.
steam deck
I have a steam deck, along with a steam controller, and a steam link.
The steam is definitely not a good replacement tablet for a young child.
why not? Also, to answer your question on Android specifically. The only 2 companies that don’t abandon their hardware in a year or two are Google and Samsung. And I wouldn’t recommend giving a Samsung device to a child. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/samsung-galaxy-tablets/
I am not condoning data collection in any way, especially not on kids devices but, direct quote:
Oh, and parents, if you have a child please don’t create a Samsung account for them.
There, all this if you create a Samsung account for them. So just… don’t? Not saying its right to collect all this, but the workaround is not to register with Samsung, you can still use the device, just not Samsung services.
My daughter is currently 4, the steam deck is far too advanced for her to use reliably, and far too easy to damage. As it stands her current tablet is in a thick foam case, that makes it almost indestructible to normal damage. It’s also old enough that I wouldn’t be too upset if she decided to try and colour in on it, using Sharpies or snapped it in 2.
I’m also limiting to android because that’s what I’m most familiar with, and so is she. I’ve no interest in learning the apple ecosystem, with it’s lock in effect.
She is currently learning to read, so I need to stay ahead of her regarding cyber security and information access. Unfortunately the current tablet is so restricted on memory that I can’t install any parental control apps. I had to strip the cache from most of the less used apps, just to free up enough space to install a battery health monitoring app (accubattery).
My hope is the next tablet will do until she’s old enough to have a phone herself. At the same time, I’d rather not throw huge amounts of money at it. It’s still a tablet for a preteen, and so could get broken very easily.
Honestly, I bought my kid a used Chromebook. No regrets. Lots of benefits.
