Best Tablets for Kids: Quick Menu
We think the best tablets for kids are durable, affordable and versatile.
Finding the right one for your needs can be tricky because every kid is different, but in general, we recommend you look for a tablet with decent screen quality, excellent battery life, good parental controls, and solid durability (accidents happen!) at a reasonable price.
To help you decide which tablet is right for you, we test all of the top devices in our lab and in the real world. I personally review some myself every year, and I help oversee a team of experts who review the rest.
In general, we’ve found that Amazon tablets are great for kids and anyone on a tight budget. If you can afford to pay a bit more, iPads are excellent tablets for students and creative kids. In fact, we have a best iPads for kids guide that will help you choose between them. And if your kid wants an Android tablet, Samsung’s slates typically offer features that are competitive with iPads yet cost less.
Without further ado, these are the best tablets for kids we recommend right now, based on key factors like battery life, build quality and parental controls!
Alex Wawro
Alex Wawro is a lifelong journalist who’s spent over a decade covering tech, games and entertainment. He oversees the computing department at Tom’s Guide, which includes managing laptop coverage and reviewing many himself every year.
The quick list
Here’s a brief overview of the tablets on this list, along with quick links that let you jump down the page directly to a review of whichever slate catches your eye.
The best tablets for kids you can buy today
The best tablet for older kids
The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro (2021) is the best tablet for kids overall. It’s effectively the same, hardware-wise, as the Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet: it has the same octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM and vivacious 1,900 x 1,200 display. The big difference is that it’s designed specifically for use by older kids ages 6-12, so it comes with a one-year Amazon Kids+ subscription, a colorful kickstand case, and a comprehensive, no-questions-asked 2-year warranty that covers accidental damage.
If you’re in the market for a kid-friendly tablet, few competitors can match what the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro offers for $199, particularly with that generous extended warranty. Sure, it has all the same weaknesses as every Fire tablet — most notably, no access to the Google Play Store — but if you’re planning to give this to a kid anyway, that’s less of an issue. Amazon also sells a variant aimed at younger kids, the Fire HD 10 Kids, with the same $199 price tag.
Read our full Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro (2021) review.
The best tablet for younger kids
The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids is effectively a version of the Fire HD 10 that’s tailored for kid-friendly use — specifically, kids ages three to seven. The Fire HD 10 Kids is a great tablet for kids because it sports a bright display, a durable kid-friendly design, and excellent battery life. Plus, the detailed built-in parental controls give you a lot of control over what a child does on the device, with little risk of them going astray.
Sure, the lack of Google Play Store apps limits what you can do with this tablet, but that’s hardly a problem if you’re planning to give it to your 5-year-old so they can have something on which to watch videos. If you want a durable, affordable tablet tailored to young children, the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids is a great choice.
Read our full Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids review.
The best value
If you’re looking for a great sub-$100 slate you can give to a child, the $50 Amazon Fire 7 tablet is a great choice. It delivers pretty good performance thanks to its snappy quad-core 1.3 GHz processor, which helps a child navigate apps and browse the web faster than you’d expect from a tablet this cheap.
Just don’t expect any frills that come with more expensive tablets. The Fire 7 tablet’s sub-HD screen is not sharp enough for anyone used to an iPad, and its lock screen is filled with ads unless you pay extra. Still, it’s a great pick for kids looking for a media consumption device. Plus, Amazon tablets have some of the most comprehensive parental controls of any tablet on the market, and they work just as well on the Fire 7 as they do on the Fire HD 10 Kids tablets higher on this list.
Read our full Amazon Fire 7 review.
The best iPad for kids
The 2021 Apple iPad is a solid all-around tablet that runs just about any app from Apple’s App Store with ease, and we recommend parents looking for a cheap iPad to give a child purchase the 2021 model because it’s the last iPad Apple sold at a starting price of $329, before jacking the price up over $100 with the $449 2022 model.
Admittedly, the newer iPads have faster chips inside a sleeker design with thinner bezels and no headphone jack, but the newer design and speedier processer doesn’t change much about the moment-to-moment experience of using the tablet. If you want to give a kid an iPad the base 10.2-inch model is the cheapest option you have, and it’s a great tablet thanks to its beautiful display, speedy performance and good battery life.
Read our full Apple iPad 10.2-inch review.
The best Android tablet for kids
If you want to give a kid an Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab A7 is a great choice because it’s a decent iPad competitor that costs nearly $100 less. It’s a great tablet to give an older kid, and it’s also great to share among a family because Android lets you set up multiple profiles and set parental controls on a per-profile basis, ensuring you can filter and control what kids of content your kid(s) can access.
Plus it’s got endurance to spare, lasting 13 hours and 13 minutes on the Tom’s Guide battery test. Oh, and it’s also got an iPad Pro feature that Apple makes you pay a lot for: facial recognition to unlock the device. And just like Apple’s pricier tablets, the Galaxy Tab A7 charges over USB-C, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble replacing lost or damaged charging cables. And while it’s not as fast as the iPad and its screen isn’t as bright, neither is a serious problem at this price — especially when Samsung gives you true Android with the Google Play app store, and not the watered-down Amazon Fire tablet experience.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 review.
How to choose the best tablet for kids
Still not sure which tablet is right for the kid(s) in question? Here are some important things to consider, things we also consider when choosing which tablets to add to this list from the many we review every year.
Screen size: Tablets come in a variety of screen sizes ranging from 7 to 10 inches. If you expect your kid to be watching a lot of videos, they’ll want the biggest, nicest screen possible, so consider the Fire HD 10, the iPad, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7. But if you just want a tablet a kid can use to browse the web and read ebooks, a smaller display, like those on the Fire 7 or Fire HD 8, will be more than enough for your needs.
Battery life: Every tablet we recommend on this list lasts at least 8 hours or more in our battery tests, so you can count on good battery life. But if you want something that can really go the distance, look for tablets that last 12 hours or more in our testing, like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab A7 or Amazon’s Fire 10 Kids tablets.
Budget: You can spend anywhere between $50-$800 on a tablet for kids, or more if you splurge on extras like a stylus or keyboard cover. Generally we recommend you not give a child something more expensive than you’re willing to pay to replace when they break it. So the older and more trustworthy they are, the more you may be able to justify spending. The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 is great for older kids since you can often find it on sale for under $200, and the 2021 iPad costs under $400 new if you can find it, though the more expensive newer models (which start at $449) are also faster.
Younger kids might be better served by the $200 Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids or HD 10 Kids Pro tablets, since they come with kid-friendly extras like durable cases and 2-year warranties. If your budget is in the $50-$100 range, the $50 Fire HD 7 or the ~$100 Fire HD 8 are good, no-frills Amazon Fire tablets that offer decent performance and Amazon’s in-depth parental controls.
Age: How old is the person you’re buying this tablet for? Obviously if it’s for you and your family, buy whatever you like, but if you’re getting a tablet for a specific child, there are a variety of kid-friendly options depending on their age. For those ages 3-7, the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids offers decent performance, great parental controls, and a colorful drop-resistant case. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro offers effectively the same benefits for the same price, but it’s aimed at older kids in the 6-12 range. And if the person you’re buying for is older than that, they should be well-served by the standard Amazon Fire HD 10, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7, or the basic iPad.
How we tested these tablets
First, we run as many benchmarks as that tablet will allow, to see how fast they are in ways that can be compared directly against competitors. We say “will allow” as some tablets, like Amazon’s Fire slates, have trouble with side-loaded Android apps. We then use colorimeters and light meters to measure how colorful and bright these tablets’ screens can get. After that, we put them through our in-house battery test, which times how long it takes — while surfing the web with brightness at 150 nits — to drain a tablet of a charge.
After that, we do the same things you do — browse the web, watch YouTube, play games, compose emails — and then a lot more. We also try and write some (or all) of our tablet reviews on the tablets we’re testing, especially if there’s a keyboard attachment available.
