Tell me about your Kids Kindle Fire

[aristocatz]

I'm close to purchasing this for my daughter for Christmas, but I have a few questions...

1) What are your overall thoughts? Good kids tablet?
2) Can it play Netflix?
3) Can it play Youtube Kids


Thanks!

 

[Jimmy Mouse]

I took my 7 year olds Kindle Fire, back when she was 5 and threw it in the trash. Really. I then bought her an iPad. Both girls (4 and 7) have iPads. For us, they work so much better.

 

[Meriweather]

We love Kindles.
DGD (5) has one that stays here at my house. She is over a lot of loves it.
You can access NetFlix and YouTube

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

we own 3 Kindle Fire tablets, we love them! I had the Amazon kids subscription for my youngest for a few years, but she had outgrown it by the time she was 6 so I cancelled it. It was nice though because for something like $3 or $4 a month she had unlimited access to a wide variety of kids shows, apps, and ebooks. I could set the kindle to her kids profile and she couldn't switch out of it without the password, I could set time limits, etc.

I think I remember her being able to watch videos on youtube kids while on the amazon kids profile, but I'm not 100% sure. I will say that my students are always stumbling upon questionable/raunchy/profane content on youtube kids on the ipads at school, it's not completely safe or foolproof.

I am watching netflix on one of our Kindle Fire tablets right now, but I don't know whether it is available on the amazon kids subscription. I only remember my daughter watching the Amazon kids shows.

 

[Tribalmom]

My daughter has had a kindle fire for going on 5 years now. I wouldn't part with it, but I know I'm likely in the minority. She uses an iPad at grandma's, but it's a distant 2nd place for us.

I'm sure there are apps available on other devices that are comparable, but we've been very happy with Kindle free time. $5/mo, and she gets unlimited age-appropriate games, streaming video and books. I set it for daily on/off times, maximum number of hours each day (with separate weekday/weekend options), as well as a reading/learning goals that must be met before accessing other content.

Password protected, so I don't worry about her accessing the internet or apps outside of Free Time. But you can import other content to the child's profile if you want to give them access (we did that with a math app she uses for school). She doesn't get a lot of video time, but there are a couple of Amazon original shows she really loves, and the classic PBS shows are big hits in our house, too.

The free time apps can chew up memory quick, though. It's necessary to check their profile and delete some from time to time. My DD used to get a little carried away downloading games. It was a bigger problem on our first kindle (no expandable memory). It's less of a problem on the newer ones.

I use a kindle as well at home & at work. For what I need, it gets the job done as well as my co-workers more expensive tablets. There's pros & cons to it- it depends on what you are hoping to accomplish with it, of course. I just thought I would share our experience with it.

 

[dotfurio]

YDD has had a kindle fire for a while. We used to just have it on free time, then as she got older switched it to use it as a regular kindle. She used it frequently for years. We'd even download movies from Amazon for road trips. I'm pretty sure she could watch netflix or youtube on it. Since we got her a chromebook last year she pretty much just uses that, though.

 

[bcla]

I'm close to purchasing this for my daughter for Christmas, but I have a few questions...

1) What are your overall thoughts? Good kids tablet?
2) Can it play Netflix?
3) Can it play Youtube Kids


Thanks!

1) Decent for the price. We got a 16 GB Fire HD 8 last year around Christmas for $50. A 32 GB Fire/Fire TV specific SanDisk 32 GB microSD card was $10 from Amazon. It's not the latest and greatest, but it's perfectly adequate for most content that Amazon puts out and for viewing video. It's OK for games too, but within reason. It's nowhere near as powerful as an iPad Mini 4 (which I have) but it's a good machine for video.

2) The Netflix App is a choice (free) from Amazon's App Store.

3) YouTube Kids might be possible, but it will take some work to set up Google Play. The standard YouTube app is available from Amazon's app store. My kid prefers viewing YouTube videos from the Silk browser rather than the YouTube app. It's far easier to have multiple videos in different tabs on a browser. I understand there's a way to have tabs in the app, but I haven't figured it out yet.

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/get-google-play-on-fire-tablet

There are some things that might not be ideal, such as app loading times.

 

[amberpi]

We have both kindle fire hds and like version 2 iPads or whenever they went to the small charger. We allow the kids to use both. Netflix, amazon, Hulu, games, pbs are all available. We just got the kids the large memory kids version kindle fires. I’m pretty certain they’ll like them.

 

[Floridaman999]

I vote for the Fire where kids are concerned for two reasons. First, they can do almost anything a kid would want them to do. Second, the price is really good for when/if they break it and it has to be replaced.