A quickie review (just) before Christmas (though if you’re a twitter follower you’ll know I tweeted an even quicker one yesterday!) – obviously this isn’t an in detail cover of this item because we’ve only had it a couple of days, and the first day it was on charge! However, if you’re strapped for a pressie – suddenly discovered that your parents have bought your child exactly the same as you did (don’t laugh, happened to me last year!) you could do worse than supply them with a KidzStar tablet. (They are available at Argos who I believe are open for the next few hours 😉 )
Smallest loves her new iPad. It’s rugged and easy for her to manage. The silicon bumper, supplied with it, means I’m reasonably sure it’s safe from accidental bashes, and the pen, attached with a cord slots away into a neat holder, so this has survived three days so far. A good sign. The screen obviously isn’t as responsive as something like a high end phone, but to be honest, this isn’t a bad thing, it means she has to make a firm decision to do something rather than just swiping at it madly. The pre installed software has held her enthralled, and while it annoys me that I can’t attach it to the play store and pop on lots more apps, she hasn’t complained about the lack of angry birds once.
The battery life appears to be between 4 and 5 hours under solid play, which isn’t that far off a games console – longer would be nicer obviously, but we’re coping. And we’ve yet to break into the included £10 gift card for the proprietary apps store, but that will be a nice treat next week.
All in all, Smallest is utterly thrilled with her new toy, and while a tablet that actually allowed a parent to do other things would be better from some points of view, I think she’d prefer it this way – I’m less likely to steal it. Apart from that, I’m impressed.
techno-mole says
Sounds like a halfway decent tablet, I have seen some at a higher price with less specs.
We got our son a tablet for his last birthday, we got it from ebuyer for slightly less than Argos are selling this one, but it comes with better hardware and more storage, although having a rubber bumper would have been handy.
He loves it, I had to get an sd card as even with the storage it has (16gb) he wanted his primeval dvd’s put on it and a load of dinosaur related programs, so he needed some extra storage.
If you can’t get the play store on it, you can always try other app markets, like Amazons or app brain, that’s assuming this tablet will let you install .apk files.
Still sounds like a good tablet though.
andrew watkins says
we bought 3 of these at xmas and already 2 of them have cracked screens so the orange bumper may seem like a good idea but obviously not working as planned.
Jax says
Ours is still going strong despite much use. I’ve been pleased with it as a kid’s device though it’s not something I can use myself.
Julian-Ray says
We got this for Mr Bounce’s 7th birthday and it’s a big hit with him. I’ve been able to download some good apps from the Amazon appstore. The only problem we have is that over enthusiastic use of the stylus has broken the rubber end in the space of two weeks!
Jax Blunt says
we had a similar issue a little while after I posted the review – we went on ebay and bought a bunch of replacement styluses (styli?) for next to nothing 😉
Jo-anne low says
Having bought a kidzstar for my 3 yr old LO Christmas, it’s great apart from the stylus which this rubber came off within 2 days. There are none on eBay has anyone any ideas?
Jax Blunt says
Ours went that way after a while but the tablet itself is still going strong. I just bought a number of rubber typed stylus on eBay, they don’t attach although they could be tied on. Most of the time the kids use their fingers though.