![]() The cost of FreeTime Unlimited after that first included year is, in our opinion, reasonable-but it should definitely be budgeted for, since without FreeTime Unlimited, the Fire HD Kids Edition falls back to just being a sub-par Android tablet. The Family plan is $70/year for Prime members or $100/yr without Prime, and it covers up to four children. If you have more than two kids who will be using Freetime Unlimited, go with a Family plan. After the first year, you can renew for $3/month/tablet if you're an Amazon Prime member or $5/month/tablet without Prime. The Kids Edition versions of the Fire HD Tablets come with a one-year subscription to FreeTime Unlimited. If you really want your children to learn from any kind of focused use, you're better off spending time with your children and helping them navigate content than relying on any automatic controls. In our own house, we disabled the Web browsing entirely-and we didn't find the controls for "educational" versus "fun" content very useful, either, and eventually disabled that as well. Parents can set bedtimes at which the tablets automatically lock, as well as more granular access controls tailored around dividing up kids' time between "just for fun" and "educational" content, filtered Web-browsing access (if desired), and more. In addition to the content itself, FreeTime Unlimited offers basic scheduling and access controls for the tablet. Although the platform offers content up to "tween" ages, our own three wanted grown-up tablets-which in our house, means Android with Google Family Link-well before age 10. Our kids were absolutely fascinated with FreeTime up to around age five and placated by it up to seven or eight. With that said, none of this content is particularly deep. It's chock-full of well-known licensed characters (from National Geographic, PBS Kids, Nickelodeon, Disney, etc.) and shows that kids recognize and respond to, and there's fresh content constantly rotating through for kids to explore, install, and play with. The selection is truly enormous, well age-gated, and in my five years' experience with the platform, safe as kittens for kids to browse. Amazon FreeTime UnlimitedįreeTime Unlimited is Amazon's all-you-can-consume buffet of games, videos, and kids' ebooks. One of my boys ignored all of Dad's lectures about gently plugging and unplugging cables, and he destroyed his tablet's charging port about a year and a half in-and Amazon replaced it under warranty without a peep of complaint. Little kids and USB Micro B ports are not a good mix, however, and that's not something a case can fix. We fought constant, moderately successful battles with one of our three children about that.Īside from that, the bumper case is well-designed and was sufficient to keep any of my kids from breaking a tablet due to dropping or casual tossing. On the minus side, your kids may decide it's "cooler" without the case and learn to peel it loose themselves. The case is easily removable, which is both feature and bug-on the plus side, it's very quick and easy to strip the case off of the tablet and thoroughly wash it after a three-year old gets it extra sticky and grimy. ![]() The Kids Edition costs a few bucks more but includes a big, rubbery bumper case, an unlimited two-year warranty, and a year's subscription to Freetime Unlimited. Under the hood, there's no actual difference between a standard Fire HD tablet and the equivalent Fire HD Kids Edition device. The device is cheap and makes a perfectly good vehicle for reading Amazon books-but you will get frustrated quickly if you expect to use it the same way, with the same apps, as you would an Android phone. ![]() Although many of the same apps are present in both stores, the selection is considerably more limited in Amazon's store, and the prices for the same apps-when you can find them-are frequently noticeably higher.įor this reason, we don't recommend a Fire HD as a full-featured tablet for an adult user. You won't be finding and installing apps from Google's Play store on a Fire HD tablet instead, you'd browse Amazon's own app store. Although the operating system itself is a fork of Android, the ecosystem is something else entirely. In the technical sense, Amazon's Fire HD tablets-including the Kids Edition line-are without a doubt Android.īut from the average user or parent's perspective, that probably doesn't matter much. There are only two major tablet operating systems right now: Google's Android and Apple's iOS. ![]() Fire HD-sort of an Android device, but not really But for new(er) parents who haven't figured out what electronics to get for their little ones yet, let's go over some features-and advice-from a father of three who's been there and done that. If you're already a Fire Kids Edition user, that might be all you need to know. ![]()
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