Amazon Fire HD 10 kids pro tablet
Buy now £199.99, Amazon.co.uk
The tablet itself is sleek – much more akin to an adult’s tablet really. The screen is a generous 10.1in and it feels really nice and big – definitely a step up from the younger kids’ versions.
The tablet comes with a case – our one was black, but there are a few colours to choose from. The case feels sturdy but discreet, and has a useful stand and carry handle like the bumper-style offerings for younger kids.
The screen is bright, with a good sharp image thanks to the HD display. There’s also a front and back camera, which takes decent quality photos (depending on your skill, we suppose).
There is also a charge cable and plug in the box – always a relief as so many tech products seem to come without a plug these days.
Set upGetting started with the Fire HD 10 kids pro was easy, so long as you have an Amazon account. If you have kids already linked to your account, their profiles also automatically transfer onto the tablet.
If you don’t have kids assigned to your account, it’s easy to set up. You can give them a passcode, and once you’ve entered their age the tablet will show them age appropriate content (more on that later). Then it’s just a case of everyone choosing apps to download to get started, and you’re away.
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There seems to be endless content for our kids, across all age ranges. The younger kids loved having access to Disney+, while the elder kid got stuck into Harry Potter.
The device includes a year’s subscription to Amazon Kids+. After the year’s up you have to start coughing up, but the subscriptions start at £1.99 per month, which feels like good value.
There is also BBC iPlayer Kids, Netflix, Roblox, Minecraft and Zoom to keep slightly older ones entertained – this tablet is aimed at primary-school-aged kids, after all.
The web browser on this model is open to browsing, but it filters content so your kids don’t quite have the whole world at their fingertips. This was great for making our older tester feel a bit more grown up.
If you’ve fully bought into the Amazon ecosystem and have Amazon Prime, then there’s also loads of kids' films and TV shows that your little ones can watch.
For parents, there’s loads you can do with this tablet once the kids are in bed, or have spent all their screen time. We liked that we could stream Prime Video and prop it up in the kitchen while we cooked – you can’t argue with there being another way to watch Below Deck Mediterranean, right?! You can also read books (remember when Kindles just used to be about books?), the news and magazines, as well as play a huge range of alarmingly addictive games.
Parental controlsThe parental controls on Amazon’s dashboard are comprehensive. You can set time limits and times of day when your kids can use their screens (and give them different boundaries at weekends to weekdays).
You can also tell it what age content you feel is appropriate for your child up to the age 13, while you can also monitor what content they’ve been viewing. You can see which apps they’ve used in the last seven days, and what they’ve most recently used. It will then give you a breakdown of how they’re spending their time on their screen.
You can grant access to other apps that aren’t immediately accessible for children, such as Tik Tok, Netflix and BBC News. This allows the content to grow with your child, rather than them growing out of the device once the apps are too young for them.
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Quite sneakily, you can also use the “learn first” features, which let you set education time goals, and ask the device to not show them any entertainment until they’ve met their learning time goals.
We liked that each child has a separate profile, which let us set limits that felt appropriate for each child. This means while one kid might be ok with slightly scary films, another kid of the same age might end up having nightmares – we found it great that Amazon allows you to tailor limits to each child rather than software deciding based on their age.
You can also manage the parental controls remotely, so if you’re at work and want to give or take away screen time while they’re at home you can do that. You can also simply pause the device – and finally get everyone’s attention.
The verdict: Amazon Fire HD 10 kids pro tabletIt’s hard to fault Amazon’s Fire HD 10 kids pro – it’s fun, easy to use and with the comprehensive parental controls and decent guarantees, it’s basically hassle-free, and all encased in some pretty decent, grown-up tech. The one thing we did find is that if you have more than one child, squabbles will break out over whose turn it is to use it. Sadly, Amazon doesn’t have any parental controls for that.