Tablet for children: the best models for learning and entertainment | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

The tablet can be used not only for watch­ing videos, but also for draw­ing and learn­ing. Pho­to: Emi­ly Wade / Unsplash.com

Tablets allow chil­dren to have fun and learn. In today’s arti­cle, we have col­lect­ed five mod­els for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es of use. Each of them has suf­fi­cient per­for­mance and auton­o­my, good screens and stereo speak­ers, parental con­trol func­tions. Our selec­tion includes bud­get mod­els and more expen­sive devices that the whole fam­i­ly can use. Read on to find out what devices to look for when choos­ing a tablet for your child.

Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 — for viewing multimedia

A wide screen with nar­row bezels and high-qual­i­ty stereo speak­ers with Dol­by Atmos allow you to enjoy video con­tent. Pho­to: techadvisor.com

With four pow­er­ful speak­ers (two on each side), sup­port for Dol­by Atmos sur­round sound tech­nol­o­gy and a 10.5‑inch dis­play with thin bezels, the Galaxy Tab A8 is great for watch­ing movies, TV shows, lis­ten­ing to music or pod­casts.

The tablet is pow­ered by an octa-core proces­sor Unisoc Tiger T618, equipped with 2.3 or 4 GB of RAM and 32, 64 or 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. The inter­nal stor­age can be expand­ed up to 1TB using a microSD card. There are no prob­lems with watch­ing videos, switch­ing between appli­ca­tions or open­ing sev­er­al appli­ca­tions at the same time. The pow­er of the chipset is enough to run light games, but for Gen­shin Impact or Call of Duty: Mobile, it is bet­ter to look at oth­er options.

The gad­get is equipped with a mas­sive bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 7040 mAh. In the PCMark World 3.0 bat­tery life test, the Galaxy Tab A8 scored an aver­age of 8 hours and 49 min­utes. With real use of medi­um inten­si­ty (web surf­ing, social net­works, stream­ing video), it lasts for two days of work.

The charg­ing speed is only 15 W — from 0 to 100% in about four hours. In half an hour, the tablet is charged from 0 to 10%, up to 80% — in 3 hours and 15 min­utes.

There are two cam­eras: 5MP front and 8MP rear. They are more suit­able for video calls, rather than tak­ing pho­tos (the stan­dard sit­u­a­tion for tablets). Images are soft with mut­ed col­ors (espe­cial­ly indoors).

The Sam­sung Galaxy Tab A8 has a fea­ture called Sam­sung Kids. It includes many games, videos and books that are safe for chil­dren and teach them in a play­ful way.

The Kids Home set­ting allows you to set the fol­low­ing restric­tions:

• calls to par­ent-approved num­bers;
• pho­tog­ra­phy with the abil­i­ty to add fun­ny stick­ers to pic­tures;
• brows­ing web­sites approved by par­ents;
• stor­age of draw­ings and pho­tos cre­at­ed in Sam­sung Kids mode or approved by par­ents.

You can set the allow­able lim­its for games, allowed con­tent and appli­ca­tions, view usage reports.

The Sam­sung Galaxy Tab A8 tablet costs from 22,900 rubles.

Pros:

• wide dis­play with nar­row bezels;
• loud, clear sound
• chil­dren’s mode;
• met­al case (hard­er to dam­age);
• good auton­o­my.

Minuses:

• slow charg­ing;
• no fin­ger­print scan­ner;
• weak cam­eras;
• does not sup­port the S Pen.

Apple iPad (2021) — for games and drawing

The addi­tion of a smart key­board and Apple Pen­cil makes the iPad a wor­thy lap­top replace­ment for sim­ple tasks. Both acces­sories are sold sep­a­rate­ly. Pho­to: pcmag.com

This Apple tablet received a 10.2‑inch Reti­na IPS LCD dis­play with scratch-resis­tant glass and an oleo­pho­bic coat­ing (does not col­lect fin­ger­prints much, easy to clean). The bright­ness of the pan­el is suf­fi­cient for indoor use; out­doors in bright sun­light, glare may appear.

The stan­dard 2021 iPad has stereo speak­ers, but they are placed side by side at the bot­tom of the device (not ide­al in terms of basic stereo sep­a­ra­tion). The vol­ume is aver­age, but in gen­er­al the voic­es sound clear.

The tablet is built on the pow­er­ful Apple A13 Bion­ic chipset and comes with 3 GB of RAM and 64 / 256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. There is no microSD card slot. It runs games like Asphalt 9 and Call of Duty: Mobile with ease.

The Apple iPad 10.2 (2021) has a 8557 mAh bat­tery. It pro­vides over 12 hours of web surf­ing or video watch­ing. A full charge takes 2 hours 45 min­utes, in half an hour the device charges from 0 to 24%.

There is a 12-megapix­el self­ie cam­era on the front, which is great for online chat­ting. The res­o­lu­tion of the rear cam­era is 8 megapix­els, the pho­to qual­i­ty is aver­age (noise is notice­able, dynam­ic range is lim­it­ed, col­ors are mut­ed).

After adding a child to a fam­i­ly group, you can con­fig­ure parental con­trol set­tings:

• age restric­tions for dif­fer­ent con­tent (movies, games, books, etc.);
• usage time lim­its for dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions;
• restric­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion;
• approval of free app down­loads and pur­chas­es.

The Apple iPad (2021) tablet costs about 29,400 rubles.

Pros:

• durable case;
• good per­for­mance and auton­o­my;
• the self­ie cam­era is great for Face­Time and online chat­ting;
• 1st gen­er­a­tion Apple Pen­cil sup­port (sold sep­a­rate­ly);
• parental con­trol.

Minuses:

• out­dat­ed design with wide frames;
• mediocre stereo speak­ers.

Xiaomi Pad 5 — universal option

This tablet will be appre­ci­at­ed by young artists, design­ers, lovers of pho­tog­ra­phy, games and movies. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

One of the key fea­tures of this mod­el is a smooth (120Hz) 11.0″ IPS LCD screen with 10-bit col­or sup­port (can dis­play up to 1 bil­lion col­ors), HDR10 and Dol­by Vision (allow you to enjoy max­i­mum qual­i­ty on all stream­ing ser­vices) .

Xiao­mi Pad 5 is equipped with four pre­mi­um speak­ers with Dol­by Atmos sup­port. All dri­vers are quite large, 16 x 20 mm, and are locat­ed sym­met­ri­cal­ly on the short sides behind the dot­ted grilles. They pro­vide a loud, bal­anced sound.

The Xiao­mi tablet is based on the Snap­drag­on 860 chipset and comes in 6GB RAM + 128GB stor­age or 6GB + 256GB stor­age. The built-in mem­o­ry can­not be increased. The per­for­mance is suf­fi­cient for heavy tasks and demand­ing games. The device works sta­bly under high loads (the gad­get scored 85% in the hourly CPU stress test and 99.4% in the GPU stress test, these are high fig­ures).

Xiao­mi Pad 5 is com­pat­i­ble with the pro­pri­etary Smart Pen (not includ­ed). It allows you to eas­i­ly cre­ate sketch­es and draw­ings.

Behind the Xiao­mi Pad 5 is a 13-megapix­el cam­era with dual LED flash. The image qual­i­ty is excel­lent for a tablet: excel­lent sharp­ness and detail, rich, vivid col­ors, low noise. There is also an 8MP front cam­era for self­ies and video calls.

The tablet has a fair­ly large 8720 mAh bat­tery. It lasts for 14 hours 31 min­utes of web brows­ing / 14 hours 20 min­utes of video play­back / up to 12 hours of gam­ing. The glob­al ver­sion sup­ports 22.5W charg­ing (Chi­nese — 33W) and ful­ly charges in 2 hours (Chi­nese — in 1 hour 38 min­utes).

There is no sep­a­rate chil­dren’s mode on the device. The parental con­trol func­tion works using Google Fam­i­ly Link (you need to down­load it from the app store). Anoth­er option is to install chil­dren’s ver­sions of pop­u­lar apps (like YouTube for Kids).

Xiao­mi Pad 5 sells in gray, white and green col­ors at a price of 27,700 rubles.

Pros:

• excel­lent dis­play;
• sta­ble flag­ship-lev­el per­for­mance;
• decent pho­tos on the main cam­era;
• works for a long time and charges quick­ly;
• good sound qual­i­ty.

Minuses:

• no 3.5mm head­phone jack;
• there is no fin­ger­print scan­ner;
• there is no spe­cial chil­dren’s regime.

Realme Pad Mini LTE — for reading books

The tablet has sev­er­al modes for com­fort­able read­ing books. Pho­to: techadvisor.com

The Realme Pad Mini fea­tures an 8.7‑inch IPS LCD dis­play with a 5:3 aspect ratio. In pro­por­tion, it cor­re­sponds to the size of a print­ed book. Chil­dren who love to read will prob­a­bly appre­ci­ate the Pad Mini as a sort of portable back­lit col­or e‑reader. The soft­ware includes var­i­ous view­ing set­tings, for exam­ple:

• Eye Com­fort mode, which makes the col­or tem­per­a­ture warmer;
• spe­cial read­ing mode — mono­chrome pic­ture;
• a dark mode that can dis­play white text on a black back­ground when read­ing.

For use in the sun, the bright­ness of the screen will not be enough (only 360 nits).

The gad­get has stereo speak­ers that pro­vide accept­able clar­i­ty and good vol­ume. But the sound pro­file is flat, it lacks bass.

The hard­ware basis is the Unisoc Tiger T616 chipset. Avail­able mem­o­ry ver­sions are 3 GB RAM + 32 GB inter­nal stor­age or 4 + 64 GB. You can expand the built-in mem­o­ry using a microSD card. When mul­ti­task­ing, the delay is some­times notice­able. At the same time, the tablet pro­vides bet­ter per­for­mance dur­ing the game than dur­ing nor­mal use. Asphalt 9 runs with­out much com­plaint, and Call of Duty Mobile can be played at medi­um graph­ics set­tings.

The tablet is pow­ered by a 6400 mAh bat­tery. In the PCMark bat­tery life test, the device showed 16 hours and 22 min­utes of screen time. Despite the sup­port for 18W fast charg­ing, the gad­get charges quite slow­ly – after half an hour from 0 to 23%, up to 100% – in 2 hours and 45 min­utes. Thanks to the reverse charg­ing, Realme Pad Mini can be used to replen­ish the bat­tery of oth­er devices.

The self­ie cam­era is 5MP and can be used for face unlock. At the back is an 8‑megapixel cam­era with­out LED flash. The qual­i­ty of the images is sat­is­fac­to­ry, even in good light­ing con­di­tions they lack details. But you can use it for video calls.

There are pre­in­stalled Google Kids Space and YouTube Kids apps. When set­ting up an account, you need to select a usage role: child, teen, or par­ent.

The Realme Pad Mini LTE tablet is avail­able in blue and gray col­ors. The cost starts from 13,990 rubles for the 3/32 GB ver­sion.

Pros:

• good per­for­mance for the price;
• excel­lent auton­o­my;
• pre-installed appli­ca­tions with parental con­trol func­tions;
• com­pact and light­weight (372 g);
• afford­able price.

Minuses:

• low screen res­o­lu­tion (800 x 1340 pix­els);
• poor cam­era qual­i­ty;
• there is no fin­ger­print scan­ner.

Huawei MatePad T 10 is an affordable tablet for preschoolers

Huawei MatePad T 10 is the cheap­est tablet in the col­lec­tion. Pho­to: kantotech.ph

Huawei MatePad T 10 received an IPS LCD pan­el with a diag­o­nal of 9.7″. It is bet­ter to use it indoors, because on the street its bright­ness will not be enough even with min­i­mal sun­light.

There are stereo speak­ers, but their place­ment is not ide­al — a child can block dur­ing use.

At the heart of the Huawei Matepad T10 is the rel­a­tive­ly pow­er­ful entry-lev­el Kirin 710A chipset. You can’t play demand­ing games. The tablet is good for every­day use, such as watch­ing videos, read­ing e‑books and play­ing chil­dren’s games (for exam­ple, Mobile Leg­ends runs at medi­um graph­ics set­tings).

The Matepad T10 is avail­able in 2+16GB, 2+32GB, 4GB+32GB, 2+64GB and 4GB+64GB stor­age options depend­ing on the amount of RAM and stor­age. There is a slot for mem­o­ry cards.

The rear cam­era has a res­o­lu­tion of 5 megapix­els, the front — 2 megapix­els. They are suit­able for video calls. The col­ors in the pho­tos lack sat­u­ra­tion, the faces are smoothed out.

The capac­i­ty of the bat­tery is not large for a tablet — only 5100 mAh. With inten­sive use, it will not last for a full day of use (approx­i­mate­ly 4 hours of video play­back). Fast charg­ing does not sup­port — from 0 to 100% it takes a lit­tle less than 4 hours to charge.

There are no Google ser­vices or the Google Play store on Huawei Matepad T10. Appli­ca­tions are down­loaded from the com­pa­ny’s App Gallery store. Huawei con­tin­ues to devel­op it and adds more and more new appli­ca­tions.

Parental con­trol is enabled in the set­tings (“Set­tings” → “Dig­i­tal Bal­ance”). It allows you to lim­it the access time to the tablet or appli­ca­tion (access and time of use).

Huawei MatePad T 10 is sold in blue at a price of 11,000 rubles.

Pros:

• enough per­for­mance for every­day tasks and light games;
• parental con­trol;
• the most afford­able price among all the con­sid­ered mod­els.

Minuses:

• takes a long time to charge, holds a charge less than oth­ers;
• low screen res­o­lu­tion (800 x 1280 pix­els) and wide bezels;
• no google play ser­vices.

All prices are at the time of pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle.