Hellobee Boards

I've only had Ipads; I briefly considered the Fire for kids, but at the end of the day I like the Ipad the best. For apps that I need to keep on the Ipad but don't want her to access I just move them to a folder and move it a few "pages" back. She has plenty of other apps to entertain her anyway.

I have an almost 3 year old and we've loved Endless Reader, a bunch of the shapes/sorting/puzzle apps, oh and Sago Mini!

I have found that the apps are the better for the ipad. We have a kindle fire, and for a while we had that monthly subscription where you can get games and books, but we ultimately discontinued that and decided to just use the ipad.

What kind of phone do you have? I think that's usually the indicator for what type of tablet you should get. If you have an iPhone, you should probably get an iPad. If you have an Android phone, an Android tablet would be your go-to.

We have the Kindle Fire and love it, but mostly only use it for videos and watching things on Amazon Prime and Netflix. It also allows us to give each kid their own profile and load their own videos and apps and disable the wifi, so I don't have to worry about what they are doing when they are using it. My profile is password protected, so they can only access their own profiles.

My 4yo has a Kindle Fire and it's perfect for his needs. He plays some games and will probably use it to watch a movie on plane rides and stuff. I like that he has his own profile and I can set limits on it and block him from making purchases. Purchases can only be made through my profile, which is password-protected.

My daughter (23 months) loves the endless apps. She has the numbers, alphabet, and reader ones.

I would go for the iPad.... you can find refurbished ones on sale directly from Apple or Amazon.

My almost 5 year old LOVES it, but we have to restrict it heavily or he gets addicted, haha.... We mainly only use on the weekends or for travel. My 24 month old also loves it, but he's not great at operating some of the games yet. We have the ELMO 123s, ABCs, and he needs help with it, but that's fine. He also likes to do coloring apps, and play with the CARS apps, and of course, watching videos. The ipad is great because if you have Amazon Prime and you own any movies you can download them directly so you don't need to be connected to WiFi when traveling!

i fully admit to when I'm solo parenting and when i brought LO 2 home as a newborn I relied pretty heavily on the iPad and it worked wonders!

My son got an iPad Mini for Christmas last year when he was 2 years old (I was hesitant to spend the money but my MIL was all about it so, fine by me!) He loves it and I love it for things like travel (we are flying today actually, just me and him, and a fully charged iPad with movies is crucial).
However, I do try to limit it because I swear he acts out more from the iPad than traditional TV.
The TV I can just turn off even mid show and say “ok time to go” and he’s fine. But the iPad is a BATTLE with tantrums. The timer feature has helped immensely but it’s still not always an easy transition. 50/50 he’ll freak vs just hand it over.
So my advice is to keep it hidden/not accessible and just take it out for periods of time when you need/want to. Definitely use the parental controls/timer. If it’s out of sight it’s mostly out of mind or I can distract with something else.

Another vote for an Ipad. We recently bought the kids two Fire tablets and we absolute hated them! With a passion! They were super slow, sometimes refused to charge, and the Amazon app platform is horrible. One of the Fires allowed Netflix movie downloads, but the other did not. We have had an Ipad for several years that my 5 year old uses and have never had issues with it, even though it's been dropped way too many times and the screen is all cracked. I plan on getting my two year old an Ipad mini.

@Adira: Agreed. These threads always seem to split by which type of phone you have. Iphone users struggle with the Kindle interface, Android users are generally more familiar and happy with it.

We're an Android family, so the kindle fire kids edition is wonderful for us. It comes with Amazaon FreeTime so he can download whatever game or video strikes his fancy without us having to worry about being charged or typing in passwords, or having to skip ads in the middle of a game.

We got our LO a Kids Kindle Fire around that age. He really enjoyed all the apps that came with the free 1 year subscription to Amazon Freetime. We used it for travel, doctors waiting rooms, etc. It still works just fine almost two years later. I feel like even if we upgrade him to something else in future it was the best choice. I didn’t stress if he dropped it etc because of the case and awesome warranty.

ETA DH and I are team Apple all the way, but I just couldn’t justify the cost of an iPad for a toddler!