Tough tablet going on sale next week
Amazon will start selling the child-friendly version of its Fire tablet in the UK on 18 June.
The Amazon Fire HD Kids Edition has a specially designed operating system and comes with a shock-absorbing case to minimise damage from drops. The hardware itself is the same as Amazon’s Fire HD 6 tablet, with a quad-core processor, six-inch HD display and front and rear-facing cameras.
Bundled with the tablet is one year of Fire for Kids Unlimited, which provides unlimited access to Amazon’s library of books, videos, apps and games. It’s an all-you-can eat service with no extra costs, and all in-app payments, advertisements and social media have been removed.
Unlimited content
Fire for Kids Unlimited is effectively a version of Amazon Prime’s content service where only the kids stuff has been left in. Books, videos, educational apps, and games are bundled together and the tablet’s parental controls can be used to dictate how much of each can be viewed.
For instance, parents can limit the amount of screentime that is available each day, or choose to lock all video content until 20 minutes of reading has been done.
Once you’re past the free year, Fire for Kids Unlimited will cost £3.99 per child or £7.99 per family (up to four children). That price drops to £1.99 per child or £4.99 per family for Prime members.
Individual profiles
Each child using the tablet can be set up with their own individual profiles, so their homescreen and content library is their own and won’t be messed up by a sibling (which seems like a handy argument defuser).
Of course, buying any kind of technology for young children always comes with the headache of spending a reasonable amount of money on something that could easily get fried after a close encounter with bathtime…which brings us to perhaps our favourite feature about this new tablet.
Amazon protects you from all kinds of destruction, providing its tablet with what it describes as a “two-year worry-free guarantee”. It’s a no-questions-asked warranty that ensures you can get a replacement for the tablet at any point within two years for whatever reason should you need to return it. A nice idea indeed.
Fire HD Kids Edition is £119 with 8GB of memory and £139 with 16GB of memory, and is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.
