Review: Amazon Kindle Kids Edition Is the Best eReader Value
Tags: Gadgets, Kindle, Technology, Kids, Parenting

By Sascha Segan

Don’t be fooled by the name: Amazon’s new Kindle Kids Edition isn’t just for kids. As I was testing it, I realized there’s no reason for adults not to buy it. It’s a $109.99 bundle of hardware and services that makes sense for everyone. There is nothing inherently locked-down about the kids’ unit; turn off the parental controls, and it’s just a Kindle. While it isn’t our favorite Kindle overall — that remains the Paperwhite — the kids’ Kindle represents the best value for your eReader dollar.

Pros: Excellent value. Parental dashboard lets you monitor your child’s reading and control their Amazon product use.

Cons: Not waterproof. FreeTime Unlimited pushes picture books that don’t look great on the 6-inch screen.

Bottom Line: No matter your age, the Amazon Kindle Kids Edition is a terrific value for anyone looking to buy an ebook reader.

What You Get

Like other Amazon kids’ products, the Kindle Kids Edition isn’t actually new hardware—it’s a bundle of existing hardware and services at a discount. For your money, you get a base-model Kindle without ads ($109.99); a cute, kid-friendly case ($29.99); a two-year, no-questions-asked warranty ($14.99); and a year of FreeTime Unlimited or a year added to your subscription if you have one ($35.88 for a one-child plan). That means you get $190.85 of product for $109.99, which is a pretty solid deal. Even if you discount FreeTime Unlimited, you still come out ahead.

You get four case options: a blue one, a pink one, one with cute little creatures, and one with birds on a wire. I love the birds-on-a-wire case. It’s gender-neutral and totally adorable.

As mentioned, the Kindle itself is Amazon’s base model, which has a front light for night reading, Bluetooth support for audiobooks, and a just-okay 167ppi screen. It’s not our Editors’ Choice in large part because it isn’t waterproof; the latest Paperwhite is, and a lot of people want to read in the bath, by the pool, or on the beach. The Paperwhite also has a flat front panel so sand and other gunk doesn’t get caught around the screen. A Paperwhite without ads plus a case and a two-year warranty costs $205.

What About the Kids?

I’m happy making a Kindle a regular part of my child’s reading diet. Kids go through books fast, and we have limited shelf space in our house. We definitely supplement with the public library, but that doesn’t always have what we want, especially if it’s the latest book in a hot series. (Also, we have a running problem with library fines.)

It’s important to know what a Kindle is good for, though. This Kindle is best for chapter books, not picture books, comics, or picture-heavy books like the Geronimo Stilton series. The black-and-white, six-inch screen is just a little too small for most picture books, comics, and manga. For picture books and comics, you need a tablet, and for manga, I recommend the Kobo Libra H2O.

There are exceptions. Amazon’s subscription service includes the terrific Phoebe and Her Unicorn series, which uses four large, clear panels per page and renders beautifully on the six-inch Kindle. But a manga like Yotsuba&! has text that’s just too small to read here. This is actually fine at our house, where we sometimes have to strong-arm our child to read chapter books. Saying, “You can read, but only on this device that properly renders only chapter books,” works out pretty well.

Amazon’s subscription service has appealing books, but many of them have graphic elements that don’t render well on this Kindle’s small screen.

Freeing Your Child to Read

FreeTime Unlimited is a key element of the kids’ Kindle experience; it’s a subscription service that offers a bunch of popular book series. If your child is into these series, and you don’t have your act together to get them out of the public library, it pays for itself pretty quickly.

FreeTime Unlimited has Fancy Nancy, Harry Potter, Narnia, and Warriors. It doesn’t have Emily Windsnap, His Dark Materials, or Wings of Fire. It has a lot of TV and video game spinoffs, which I don’t care for, but a lot of elementary school kids like to cut their teeth on.

In my mind, a little too much of its library is focused on picture books or picture-enhanced books. Amazon’s goal here, of course, is to get you to also buy a Fire tablet (such as the Fire 7) for your picture books, and you can use that tablet with the same FreeTime subscription.

The Kindle plugs into an overall parental dashboard that lets you monitor your child’s reading and activities and gives you some quick talking points about certain books so you can have discussions about them. Pop over to the parent dashboard on your phone or the web, and you’ll see which books your child last read, for how many minutes, and on which days, along with whatever else they’ve been doing on their Amazon devices. You can add content from your own adult library to their profile, disable all devices for a while, or set time limits. I’d like it to be even more granular, letting you toggle on and off specific content on specific devices, but it’s a start.

There are also some kid-friendly Kindle features that apply to all Kindles now, like the ability to press on words to get dictionary definitions, the ability to create flash cards from those definitions, and Word Wise, which pops definitions up over complex words automatically. If a kid would rather listen than read, there’s a collection of Audible audiobooks in FreeTime Unlimited, but you’ll need a Bluetooth speaker or headphones.

And at the end of the day, this is just a Kindle. When your child isn’t reading, you can pull it out of kids’ mode by entering a password and use it with your regular library. As we mentioned, though, the base Kindle isn’t our favorite. The Paperwhite, with its smaller dot pitch, has sharper text and thus is easier on my tired old eyes. But your kids probably won’t mind.

Word Wise helps kids understand the meaning of more difficult words.

The Right Reader for Your Kids?

The Amazon Kindle Kids Edition is a terrific ebook reader value for children and adults alike. No other eReader provides this overall package at this price, and if your budget is limited, this is a very good buy.

That said, there are better ebook readers at higher prices. I strongly prefer a waterproof model, like the $130 Kindle Paperwhite or the $170 Kobo Libra H2O. Amazon sells most of the ebooks in the US, and if you have an Amazon library, then you’re probably getting a Kindle. Kobo models shine if your primary use is borrowing from a public library or reading books from non-Amazon sources. The good news is that these are all strong choices, and we can all stand to read a little more.