The best kids’ tablets for homework, gaming and creativity

A whole inch bigger than the Amazon Fire 7 kids tablet (£114.99, Amazon.co.uk), and according to our kids the bigger screen is more appealing. It also has more internal memory than the Fire 7 with 32GB, or you can opt for the 64GB. The Fire HD 8 kids has the same option to bolster this to 1TB using a microSD card, but you’ll need to fiddle with settings and getting the cover on and off to achieve this. Speaking of which, the cover pretty much makes the tablet bounce and is super grippy, meaning we weren’t worried about leaving our preschoolers with it to drop at will. And Amazon has made this with preschoolers up to tweens in mind (they say three to seven-year-olds).

Another step up from the 7 Kids is the HD screen. Did our testers notice? Not really, but perhaps if they were watching a lot of films or TV they might. Content-wise, the tablet comes with a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+, which offers a whole host of entertainment – and educational stuff too. They’re going to while their screen time away with apps from LEGO, the BBC, Disney and the ever-present Blippi.

Using the parental dashboard you can set kids’ ages (you can manage up to three kids’ separate profiles on the tablet) individually, so it shows content that’s appropriate for them. If they try to download anything that is not appropriate for their age, the person with parental control will get an email and you can allow or deny them the ability to download it. You can also set the tablets to a younger-child theme, which is designed for pre-readers.

Not every parent is going to want to fork out for an Apple iPad, but for those who are looking for something that is going to grow with their kids, the iPad 10th gen is hard to beat. It comes in a range of colours to appeal to everyone and we also tested ours with an Apple Keyboard (£249, Apple.com) and Apple Pencil (£99, Apple.com), for the full experience.

Our testers found this made the iPad completely frustration-free. The Apple Pencil let them work on creative projects that required fine accuracy, and the keyboard sped up writing and general use like nobody’s business. This made it great for both fun projects – creating super-slick Tik Tok vids, for example – and home learning tasks too. It basically becomes a laptop with these additions. However, it’s not drop-friendly, and so therefore is safer in older kids’ hands in our opinion.

Apple doesn’t allow you to switch between profiles on a device, meaning it’s quite tricky to share it across a household especially if you want parental control on their profile and not on yours. Plus, the parental controls will apply across all devices linked to the Apple ID – so, you wouldn’t be able to apply thes restrictions on the iPad and not have it on your phone. However, if your child is ready for the responsibility of their own iPad, then you can log them into their own Apple account on the device and tweak your parental controls as you want, monitoring screen time, content, website access and purchasing.

Contentwise, you can basically access anything your heart desires via the App Store from CBeebies to social media and all the streaming services, plus video-editing apps and everything in between. The iPad isn’t the answer for everyone, but for an all-singing, all-dancing tablet for an older child, it’s basically impossible to beat.

With more than 14 inches of screen to gaze at, this tablet is huge. That, along with the price tag, puts it firmly in the late teens category we’d say and it’s designed for that too. It comes with a snap-on keyboard with trackpad, and an S pen. With these peripherals, it’s easy to switch between editing Tik Toks and doing the hard graft of homework.

The humongous screen is going to satisfy screenagers whether their vice is YouTube or gaming and the AMOLED display is excellent too, handling dimly shot gritty content so we could see everything in detail. The S pen slots into the cover to charge, the keypad keeps the tablet safe when moving around, and yet it’s incredibly lightweight. Basically, everything about the Samsung Galaxy tab S8 ultra all feels extremely slick (apart from the mouthful of the name).

You can still keep track of your child’s usage via the Google Family link, which is essentially a parent dashboard. This will let you set time limits, locate the device on a map, manage the content they have access to, and much more. It is a bit faffy to set up, but between you and a teen it should take no more than 30 minutes or so. Overall we were really impressed by this Samsung tablet but for the price tag, you’d hope so!

You might also be interested in the newest version of this tablet, the Samsung Galaxy tab S9 ultra (£1,199, Currys.co.uk).

Designed for kids aged 3-7, this 7in screen is great for little hands. It comes with a child-proof bump case that will protect it from even the most savage drops. If the worst does happen, the Fire kids tablets come with a two-year warranty for total peace of mind. They also come with a year’s worth of access to Amazon Kids+.

Having tested Amazon’s former iterations of Fire Kids previously, we were impressed by the updates Amazon has made to this model. It seems to move with more zip, which was appreciated by both impatient parents and kids. The whole user interface is easier to navigate too, including the parental controls. During the super-speedy set-up, we were able to set up kids’ accounts with their ages, screen time limits and set when the tablets automatically power down every day. You can also use the Amazon Parent Dashboard to pause the tablet remotely. This was handy when our screenagers were reluctant to put down their tablets.

During testing we found the battery life to be decent, offering hours of use on a single charge – Amazon claims 10 hours. There’s 16GB of internal memory, or you can opt for a beefier 36GB. And there’s an option to whack it up to 1TB using an external memory card. This is quite tricky though, in our experience. We’d say this tablet is great for younger ones, and will last them until their tweens, offering decent value for money.

Those who favour Android and Google are going to feel at home with this Lenovo Tab, as it is indeed an Android device. From a parent’s perspective, this means you have access to Google Kids, which intelligently provides content based on your children’s interests. If you have kids of different ages, fear not – each can have a login on the device.

Setting up the tablet for kids means it looks kid-friendly and keeps them within a safe boundary, showing them only content that’s age appropriate. You can also use Google’s Family Link to monitor usage and what access your kids have to content. This is a great bridge tablet between the world of drop-proof tablets that some kids may feel they’ve outgrown, and the sophisticated world of grown-up tablets. The price of the Lenovo may also be more palatable for those doing the purchasing too!

Check out those colourway names. It’s a dead giveaway that the Fire HD 8 Kids is designed for slightly older kids than the others on this roundup. Indeed, Amazon says it’s ideal for 6-12 year olds, and we tend to agree. The cover is more grown up, for one. It’s less bouncy and more sleek – with added rainbows. The slim case is a welcome relief if you often take your kids’ tablets out and about with you – it fits much more easily into a bag than those big bumper covers. But the cover still has that useful stand that we love to see on Amazon’s kids’ tablets.

Again, this tablet comes with a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+. After that you’ll need to stump up £6.99 per month to get access to it – it doesn’t come included in Amazon Prime, either. However, you’ll probably be sucked in. Or should we say your kids will be sucked in and you’ll just be footing the bill. And as it has an 8in HD screen, no matter what they stream – be that Star Wars, Sonic or Harry Potter – it’ll be in decent quality. There’s also good sound quality thanks to built-in Dolby-Atmos sound. You can also add other apps such as Tik Tok or iPlayer, if you grant access.

The Parent Dashboard on Amazon’s kids’ tablets is one of the best parent control centres we tested. We felt in control and aware of everything our testers were doing on the tablet. It gave us total peace of mind, allowing us to block websites and apps. You can also see their activity and monitor their calls and messages from this dashboard.