Fire HD Kids Edition Tablet

As a family who owns multiple Fires in different iterations, I was thrilled when the kids’ version was announced. All three of my children received one. From their perspective, they were thrilled and loved it. I gave them far more time than usual to break them in over a 1.5 day period just to make sure everything was fine. Sadly, it wasn’t.

First, let’s call this thing what it really is. This isn’t a Fire designed from the ground up with children in mind. It is a basic Fire 7 HD with an altered OS that is tightly integrated into the Free Time Unlimited app, something that can be added to ANY Fire currently on the market. That’s it. Yes, it comes with a snazzy case and a longer warranty, but it’s still just a slightly altered Fire 7 underneath it all.

The issues began within the first hour of use and echo what most of the negative reviews highlight.

1 – Terrible battery life and slow recharge rate
My three-year-old first generation Fires last far longer and charge faster.

2 – Case Isn’t Impressive
When I first saw the case introduced, I imagined something rubberized with a protective cover over the screen, possibly even water resistant. No. It’s simply a piece of molded foam that you press the Fire into. There is absolutely nothing to protect the screen, reminiscent of the cheap EVA foam cases you pick up on eBay. I would not have felt comfortable simply putting them in a bag without something to cover the front. Plus, they are very easy to remove.

3 – Frequent lock-ups
We were averaging at least one lock-up per hour of use. And keep in mind that I had three of these, so it couldn’t have simply been a bad device. I was hard-resetting them like crazy. And this doesn’t count the times they randomly ran slow.

4 – Freetime Unlimited is a Mess
While lots of content is great, it becomes overwhelming where there is no organization. The apps, videos, and books pages are a random collection of stuff. My kids didn’t understand that everything has to be downloaded and at a snail’s pace at that. And, being kids, they naturally want to try opening every app they saw listed. I don’t blame them for that. But that led to the next problem.

5 – Low Storage with no way to delete data
The storage on this device is abysmal. I don’t understand what they did to bloat the OS to such a degree that it takes up nearly half of the 8G available storage (only 4.5 available to the user). With 100 apps to click on in Free Time Unlimited, one child was able to fill hers inside an hour of use. The others took a little longer, but I was furiously trying to keep up with deleting things on all three before long. And this lead to one of the most disappointing oversights I discovered. You can only delete data in the profile that is currently open. But here’s the real kicker. Wifi is designed to shut off when the device is full. In almost all cases, that ended up booting my kids out of their profile. Without wifi, I couldn’t log into their profile and could only access the adult profile. Since I had nothing installed on the adult profile, there was no way to free up enough space to reenable wifi, log back into the child’s profile, and delete items. This left a factory reset as the ONLY resolution, which is completely unacceptable.

6 – Missing Features
One of the biggest features I was excited about during the pre-release was the ability to use the camera. As it turns out, this one is now marked as “coming soon”. While I’m glad to hear it is being worked on, I think missing this at launch is a major fail. Yes, you can still use the camera but only on the adult profile, which defeats the purpose. And I’ve been around the block enough times with product launches to know “coming soon” is a promise I won’t hang my hat on.

But if you want to know what the #1 deal breaker was for me. Here it is:

7 – FreeTime Unlimited Doesn’t Always Work offline
I read that the downloaded apps and books in FreeTime Unlimited are accessible when offline. After testing this theory multiple times, I found it to be false. If the kids were already in their profile when Wifi access was removed, they could stay for a while, but eventually, the constant messages about no Internet connection would boot them out sooner or later. And once out, it brought up a message about no Internet connection every time you tried to select a FreeTime profile from the list. Yes, you can still access the adult profile, which takes you to the basic Kindle. But what’s the point of that? The content is in the FreeTime app.

The majority of the places where I would like to utilize the Kindles for the kids are places that don’t have Wifi – car trips, long waiting room visits, or sitting in the lobby while someone else is at an activity. If I can’t access the majority of the content my kid’s want without Wifi then it’s worthless to me.

At the end of the day, I had all three packed up for a return within 36 hours. I had high hopes for this product but was deeply disappointed with the end result. There is no way this product was adequately tested on the target market. I’ve come to expect so much more from Amazon. Perhaps they’ll be able to salvage it through OS and FreeTime updates in the future. I’m not waiting around to see if that happens.

In the meantime, I have decided to purchase standard Kindles for the kids and will not be adding FreeTime Unlimited. The parental controls that come with the standard OS are actually quite good. I’ll simply add those and throw on a few apps and books that we already own. Read more ›

Update:

Took off one star. Storage is atrocious (less than 5 gb available, and it fills up in no time), and Amazon makes it incredibly hard to delete content stored in a FreeTime profile. The easiest and most efficient way to delete content is to do a factory reset, but be warned, the tablet will be out of storage again in 24 hours. At this point, I do not recommend this tablet at all. Go for a regular Kindle instead and get 16gb of storage.

Original review:

The problem is not the tablet; it's Kindle FreeTime Unlimited. The tablet is sturdy and the case, although bulky, is perfect for kids. The tablet just arrived yesterday so I can not comment on how well it performs over the long term, but this will be our family's 6th (7th? 8th?) Kindle and I expect it to be as durable as the other Kindles we've had.

So on to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited... the idea behind this service is great (it's pretty much a library of age-appropriate apps and books), but the execution of it is terrible.

So what's wrong with it?

1) In a regular Kindle, only the books that I've downloaded appear on my device. With Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, ALL of the books and apps available with Kindle FreeTime appear on the child's Kindle. So what's the problem with this? For one, it's just plain difficult to navigate because there's way too much content on the screen and there's no way to sort it. Two, there are certain books and apps that Amazon might deem as age appropriate but I do not want my child playing with and there is no way to filter them out. So if I want him to read Curious George but skip the SpongeBob books, I'm out of luck.

2) My child is able to read books I've downloaded from our local library using the Overdrive and Blio apps. The problem is that if I set parental controls to allow unlimited reading and to not allow apps during weekdays, he can not access his library books. The alternative would be to allow unlimited app access, but that means that he also has unlimited access to countless other apps available via FreeTime that I do not want him to access at the moment. (Edit: books that require Blio can not be accessed at all from within FreeTime, as Blio has to be sideloaded and sideloaded apps are not available in FreeTime. However, if your library gives you the option of downloading books in Kindle format from the Amazon site, then those books WILL appear in FreeTime.)

3)Documents are not available with Kindle FreeTime. That means that all of the books that I've downloaded via gutenberg.org, for example, are not available. He can read them if I exit his FreeTime profile but then I lose control over what he can access. There might be some app that allows a work around and permit him to access docs, but I don't want to waste time trying to figure out a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

4) Apps and content that I've bought can be added to my child's profile, but the process is very burdensome and time consuming. Ideally, I would be able to purchase online (or on my own Kindle) and deliver the content to my child's Kindle (which is the way it works when you're not using a profile), but the content is not available in my child's FreeTime profile until I specifically add it to his account. In order to do this, I need to enter my password, enter the section that allows me to manage his content, and manually add the title. Unfortunately, Amazon organizes titles alphabetically only, so if I buy, for example, a book titled "Zebras" I would have to scroll past literally hundreds of titles that are in my account in order to add that one book to my child's account. If you haven't purchased a lot of content via Amazon, the process would be more bearable, but for those of us who've been buying Kindle books for many years already, the process is tedious.

Conclusion: the tablet is great, but Kindle FreeTime Unlimited needs plenty of work. If you're not satisfied with FreeTime Unlimited's (lack of) parental controls, you might be better off with the regular, $99 Kindle Fire, a sturdy case and a 2 year protection plan.

Edit: At the moment (as of 11/30/14), it makes no sense to buy this tablet given the discounts on the Kindle Fire 7. It's currently priced at $109, and if you have an Amazon card and apply code HDL30ARC, you get an additional $30 off. The grand total before taxes is $84.21- that's less than half the price of the 7in kid tablet. Get the tablet, a sturdy case and a 2 year protection plan. Suscribe to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited when it's ready for prime time.

Edit: Disregard the above as it no longer applies. I won't delete it for the sake of transparency. Read more ›

I bought this for my five year old son so that he would stop playing on my phone. This device has tons of books, apps and videos. I have spent time looking at the settings and how things works. This device is great! There are a lot of reviews about how it is hard to use and does not have enough books, apps, etc. That is just not true. Take some time to go through and learn how it works. There are settings that limit whether you can download content. It is important to test these features before saying things are not available. Each thing must be downloaded. You will see a pick with an "X", touch it, then be patient while it downloads. Once it does it will show a check mark. You can touch and hold your finger on it to either remove it from the device, this does not remove the icon, just the loaded info...and it can be downloaded again later. The sound and the picture are wonderful . I am so pleased with this purchase and encourage others to calm down, be patient and learn how to use the device. It is not designed to be a ipad...if you want it to work like one...go buy one of those. It is designed to be a kid friendly place to play and learn. It should be judged as such. Good luck and happy playing.

This tablet is really amazing. It creates joy and happiness for my kid while creating tears and suffering for Daddy.

I was so excited when I heard the news about this tablet. It is the first item I've EVER pre-ordered, from ANYONE. Well, now I remember why I always wait for version 2.0 of any product, sigh.

For now, I've gotten used to the issues, and my kid REALLY loves it, so I'll bump it up to 3 stars and keep it. It also helps that since purchasing this, I've seen 3 people I know have their tablets completely DESTROYED by their kids, which is really making me appreciate the 2 year replacement warranty...

Also, my solution to the space issue is to just go into the settings and manage the storage every night. I go to the applications, select 'all', and then delete. All the programs are in the cloud, so I'm not 'losing' anything by deleting them off the tablet. That way she gets at least a full day of use before it runs out of space again. I'll consider this a fair tradeoff for all the other headaches that I avoid by having this tablet.

So now, it's a 3 star tablet, not 2 star, but Amazon still needs to fix a lot of things with it, 8^)

----- The original review is below and outlines my initial issues ----------

First off, I'm bumping the rating 'up' to 2 stars (instead of 1) because my kid is REALLY happy with this tablet, when she actually gets to use it.

I thought I knew all the issues and could deal with them. For instance, not having a working camera app at release time. Even the crappy battery life was something we could deal with (on a good day, we get 2 hours of use from a charge).

However, this morning I finally ran into the Catch 22 Hell that everyone has complained about. The device storage filled up, which disabled USB and WiFi. This of course means you can't access the Freetime/Device configurations (which require cloud access), so you can't actually free up any of the space on the device.

Of course, all of the space being used was in the kid's profile, which even though I have admin privs, I could not access in order to free up space. So I had to wait until her account reached it's turn on point for the day, so that I could use the kid's profile, to delete items. Really?

After finally freeing up items, I realized she had managed to download a bunch of apps to the device. Turns out that if you go into the apps, videos, and other options at top of the kid's interface, you go to the curated content offered by Freetime. ALL of this can be downloaded to the device by your kid. I was not able to find any option for turning this download feature off. I also was unable to even delete or hide any of the icons from those screens to prevent her from downloading apps with 'cute' icons (she's just clicking them because of the pictures, not realizing that she is downloading them). So I guess my new nightly routine will be cleaning up the tablet and removing the random downloads from that day, ugh.

I'm just surprised at how frustrating this tablet has been. The only redeeming feature is that she loves it.

Plus, if somehow while I'm having another fun filled 'troubleshooting and maintenance' session with it, it should accidentally slip out my hand, and slam against the wall several times in a row, then I have the comfort of knowing that the replacement will be covered.

I really wanted to love this thing. However, it's just not ready for Prime time (blank stare).

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Sooooooo yet again the kid managed to click on all the icons, and fill the tablet up with apps from the curated library again.
I still haven't found a way to turn this function off. On the plus side, I've gotten pretty good and deleting the same apps from the tablet over, and over, and over, and over again every few days.

She's 4, so the concepts of 'this is on the tablet', and 'this is in the cloud', just isn't something she understands.
I really want to return the thing, but it's her favorite toy in the whole house, so luckily for Amazon, it's not an option. Read more ›