Decent tablet for 7 year old....

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Originally Posted By: itguy08
That is a dilemma....

Low end Android tablets are cheap and pretty much universally suck big you know what. Poor screens, 0 support, poor battery, underpowered CPU, and forget any type of upgrades.

That leaves a mid-upper range Android tablet at which point you'd be better off getting an iPad Air or Mini due to the fact they will have more accessories, more apps, and better support (i.e.: upgrades).

But $399+ for a 7 year old to throw around seems like a lot to me unless they are extremely responsible.

I'd search out a used or factory refurb iPad - they should be reasonable and nowhere near expensive as new.


What? The Nexus 7 is in the $200 range, and is extremely fast and a fantastic tablet overall. It even has a Quad Core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM.

My brother got one for his birthday, and honestly it's definitely the best tablet out there for the money.
 
Any Android 4.x tablet from a name you've heard of should be great. (Samsung, Nexus, LG, Acer). I wouldn't go for an ultra low price one, the Gorilla Glass on our Acer has been worth the premium with my 4 and 6 year olds.

If price is super important go to bensbargains or slickdeals and see what they have. I saw a 7" LG 4.1 tablet for 80 bucks on Amazon a week or two ago.
 
Originally Posted By: apwillard1986
Kindle all the way. The new HDX was on sale earlier this week for $179.00. I am not sure what it costs currently but that sure seems like a good value to me.


where was the HDX for 179? seems incorrect?
 
Originally Posted By: renegade_987
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7"

At $159 its hard to do much better. After this I would consider an iPad Mini. My moms got a Kindle Fire and its OK, but for $20 more I'd get the Galaxy


+1, Get the Samsung 7 Inch tablet. I picked up 4 of these last year for Xmas for myself, the wife and my two kids. The kids live on those things. The Samsung uses the Google Play appstore and there are a ton of free or low priced apps. Plus with the Samsung you have expansion with the Micro SD slot.

Regards, JC.
 
Originally Posted By: JC1
Originally Posted By: renegade_987
Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7"

At $159 its hard to do much better. After this I would consider an iPad Mini. My moms got a Kindle Fire and its OK, but for $20 more I'd get the Galaxy


+1, Get the Samsung 7 Inch tablet. I picked up 4 of these last year for Xmas for myself, the wife and my two kids. The kids live on those things. The Samsung uses the Google Play appstore and there are a ton of free or low priced apps. Plus with the Samsung you have expansion with the Micro SD slot.

Regards, JC.


The SD slot is a good benefit I hadn't remembered. Our tablet also has an HDMI out which has come in handy a time or two. Personally I prefer a 10" at a slightly higher price, but I don't have the small hands or working eyes of a 6 year old either.
 
I have stayed away from Kindle's for two reasons:

1) The OS is a forked Android 2.3 *if I recall correctly*. An outdated and feature-crippled Android is not what I am after; especially considering...

2) There is a Kindle app for Android.

There are some name-brand tablets out there that are competitively priced relative to Kindles but have Android 4.x.
 
Unless you are really set on an actual tablet (i.e. Android, iPad, Kindle, etc.), you might consider something like the Leap Pad Ultra (which does WiFi), Leap Pad 2 or the Innotab. They are strictly educational and are made pretty tough for kids. My 7 year old daughter has one and loves it. The Leap Pad 2 can be found for about $75 bucks or so. It lets them get used to a tablet and lets you know when they are responsible enough for a "real" tablet.
 
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Originally Posted By: Rand
Originally Posted By: apwillard1986
Kindle all the way. The new HDX was on sale earlier this week for $179.00. I am not sure what it costs currently but that sure seems like a good value to me.


where was the HDX for 179? seems incorrect?


http://news.yahoo.com/kindle-fire-hdx-drops-184-135029600.html

I saw it while shopping Amazon for other gifts and briefly considered ordering one. The 179.00 price I remember was cyber Monday if I recall.
 
Originally Posted By: bepperb
Any Android 4.x tablet from a name you've heard of should be great. (Samsung, Nexus, LG, Acer). I wouldn't go for an ultra low price one, the Gorilla Glass on our Acer has been worth the premium with my 4 and 6 year olds.


Even here, you have to be careful. We have a 7" Acer Iconia A100 tablet, and it works fine, but the screen is horrible. This is a known limitation of them, but my dad bought it when 7" tablets first came to market. He paid $259 for it at Best Buy (which tells you how long ago it was). Tilt the screen in three directions and it's fine. Tilt it at a certain angle away, though, and it completely washes out. Battery life is also extremely poor. Again, a known limitation of this model, but it's a limitation that other tablets don't have. I'm also disappointed in the lack of support from Acer in terms of software updates. I think you're more likely to find that a tablet like Samsung or Nexus will stay more current with software for a longer period of time than some other brands.

I'd say that anything from a first-tier manufacturer like Samsung, Nexus, Apple, etc, is almost always going to be good. Those second-tier manufacturers, at least as I refer to them, the guys like LG, Acer, RCA, etc...you sometimes find good stuff, and sometimes not. You really need to research before a purchase. The third-tier stuff...like the Polaroid and no-name tablets at Walmart...these are truly dispensible loss-leaders that really aren't worth messing with in my opinion.

What model Acer do you have?
 
Originally Posted By: Nick R

What? The Nexus 7 is in the $200 range, and is extremely fast and a fantastic tablet overall. It even has a Quad Core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM.

My brother got one for his birthday, and honestly it's definitely the best tablet out there for the money.


And the iPad Mini still beats it out on benchmarks.... Android is a relatively inefficient OS even with the recent improvements in Project Butter. Even the newest Android handsets were having trouble meeting the iPhone 5 in benchmarks before it was retired. That alone should tell you something about OS efficiency.

It is probably a good tablet but at $200 I'd seriously look long and hard at others. Forgot about the Kindle HDX and you could also throw the Nook into there.

The problem with Android is the low end stuff, like Windows machines is utter junk and will never be supported. What you see is what you get. Forget any cases, extra batteries, and most important, any OS upgrades. Which leaves the mid-high end stuff and there are some good deals and if you go that route, definitely buy from a manufacturer you know. And even then it will get abandoned in short order. (My Droid X was promptly abandoned by Motorola and Google. Had I bought an iPhone 4 I would be running iOS 7 on it today. Same deal with the Motorola Xoom.)
 
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It's not about OS efficiency. It's about apple putting a massive piece of silicon in their devices. The A7 is 64 bit and over 1 billion transistors: in a phone. Android is NOT the low end stuff, and anyone who even thinks that doesn't really pay much attention to details in the tech space. IE what is going on behind the scenes. Android HAS low end stuff sure but you get what you pay for for the most part. And the Nexus 7 is an impressive piece of kit.

Once ARM releases the A57 ISA we should see some interesting stuff.
Even before that, Qualcomm just announced their own 64 bit architecture, Snapdragon 410.

I suggest you read this review, since you obviously haven't even touched a Nexus 7. It's also a nexus device which means device updates come directly from google, and google is very good about supporting nexus devices with updates. I just got 4.4 kitkat on my 1st gen nexus 7 the day it was released.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7231/the-nexus-7-2013-review
 
The new Dell Venue tablets shouldn't be overlooked either - they are a great value. The 7" is regularly priced at $149 and the 8" at $179, but are frequently on sale.

I have the 8" and really like the performance of it.
 
Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd


What model Acer do you have?


We have an Acer A500, but I also have an A100 in the house that's my nephew's. Both bought refurbished on their Ebay store and both a couple years old. I'd certainly agree they don't compare to an Apple, Samsung, Nexus but still gorilla glass is amazing and I've never had a hardware problem with them. Keep in mind these are for kids, if I used them more I might complain more.

So yeah, I wouldn't buy an Acer if I were going to be stranded on an island for a decade, but for little kids they work great. On thing to note, you can buy a TPU (a type of plastic) case on ebay for under 10 bucks whatever tablet you buy. Cheap insurance with kids.
 
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