Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Tablet (2020)

Attached Video from INITIAL review (Highly Rated). Attached Images from UPDATED review (Not Recommended). ------------------------ UPDATED REVIEW : 28 August 2022 ------------------------ Regret. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely once you hit its limitations. TLDR : Child can never have their own Amazon account without credit card information and proof of residence in THEIR name. So you can never buy apps on their own account for later use. Apps are non-transferable. #Regret My kiddo has a Furby Connect toy, the app will not work in kids mode as it requires location services to be active. There is no override for this. Other apps we wanted to install were also complaining. We were also wanting to purchase apps which would have a longer lifespan and any in-app purchases on the actual child account will be lost as they age and obtain their own account anyway. Other issues with the kids mode, the tablet grows considerably slower with time, adding in an SD card still triggers an error about the tablet being full even though there is room, you just have to say ok and try to "ignore" it. So, easy fix right? Set up an account for the child, load account with gift card, for the games which that were played the most on Kids+ - purchase those apps on the new account, lock everything down with an external app such as Kaspersky Kids. Step 1. Create Gmail account purely for use on tablet Step 2. Factory Reset tablet to set up with single "adult" account Step 3. Create Amazon account for child Step 4. Spend considerable time and effort setting up tablet with already purchased apps from Google Play and other free apps from the Amazon App store. Step 5. Lastly, add Credit card for purchases on Amazon account. Purchase first app on tablet. Amazon Account locked. Unusual activity detected on account. Please wait 24H for someone to be in contact. Wut ? Tablet is completely inaccessible. Right ok so ... Step 4. Factory reset.... Step 5. Make another account for child. Step 6. Spend the rest of the day setting up the account. Step 7. Buy $25 gift card for new account with your own Amazon account Step 8. Redeem $25 gift code on account for tablet Step 9. Things seem to be working fine. Child asks for one more app she used to enjoy. Try to add app. Step 9. Account locked. Unusual activity detected on account. Please wait 24H for someone to be in contact. .... wa wa wa. Step 10. Contact Amazon Support. - Be transferred to Kindle Support - Beg and Please for Amazon to unlock tablet account for child. -- Support person asks if I had already redeemed the voucher // About to answer "Yes" // Browser update force closes browser, minor cursing. - Resume chat (Thank a higher power for that) -- Assigned new kindle support person. - New support person claims to read chat. The new support person wasn't even understanding my problem, I needed the account unlocked and they started to talk me through doing a factory reset. At this point I lost my cool. Expletives were expressed. Tagged out and other half tags in. Chat goes around in circles whilst Amazon requests that we send in Proof of Address and Credit Card information for the account holder and the explanation of "Child is 4 and does not have a credit card, or actual proof of address for that matter, we are the parents, why can we not just enter our card information?" We are told to submit the information and wait 24H. Obviously my child does not own a credit card or receive any bills in their name and therefore this becomes an unsolvable paradox. I am now sitting with a locked account I can't unlock and a redeemed $25 gift card redeemed on that account as well. This is nothing short of BLATANT THEFT. Step ....... OMG. Don't do it, just don't. We went the very next day and purchased an Samsung A7 Lite instead. Huawei would have been the better choice due to Samsung's bloatware, but thanks to their fragile stance with the Google Play store, they are best left alone for now. For those interested in my original, higher rated review, find that below... ------------------------ PREVIOUS REVIEW : June 13, 2021 ------------------------ Amazing -- Provided You Have No Interest In Previous In-App Purchases It's amazing! So what's to dislike? Well not much tbh, but I've mentioned two reasons below, so you can decide for yourselves whether or not this would be a deal breaker for you. TLDR; CONS #1 -- No extension option on lock #2 -- No support of previous in-app purchases PROS #1 -- Interface that adjusts to age range #2 -- Full parental control and remote access to tablet through Amazon account #3 -- Year free of Kids+ #4 -- Very responsive and durable #5 -- Support for shared apps such as Netflix and Plex ------------------- #1 One obvious missing features (for me anyway), is an "extension" button. There was an option for that on the leap pad epic when it locked, where you could extend the time for a set window, be it 15 or 30 minutes. Seriously how often does your child ask, "Just 15 more minutes". This would be a seriously useful feature and I can't believe it isn't here. To extend the time, you actually need to change the time when the device will lock on a general basis, which is covered by only two tabs, weekdays and weekends. Also, Friday night is not counted as part of the weekend, so even if you set the device to lock a little later on weekends, be advised that you'll be in for a fight on Sunday night. Thing is, once I change the time to say 6:15pm, to allow for that extra "15 minutes", I then have to remember to change it back before the following night as otherwise it will only lock at 6:15pm and adding on an extra begged-for 15 minutes would then be 6:30pm. The child obviously won't understand this mistake and you end up in a loop of doom. Just unnecessary admin really. You can however adjust this remotely within your Amazon account itself and I have pulled this off before when I've remembered with just minutes to spare. Still, no one wants to be James Bond all the time and overall, just not a good user experience. The pause and resume buttons within the parent dashboard, as useful as they seem, do not override the bedtime controls. So thinking that I could just ask the tablet to resume and then manually pause it again 15 minutes later is also a no-go. #2 Have you previously done in-app purchases and effectively purchased the full version of a game that you would like to share with your child? In-App full version purchases such as those required by Bimi Boo and Pink Fong... Well sadness is that they simply don't work, your child has to play on the account with which the in-app purchases took place and this defeats the purpose as this is the adult account. Even though you share the apps with the child account, only the free version is shared and not the full version. It is at this point where you begin getting keyboard imprints on your face. I sat on an amazon help desk chat for well over an hour, was transferred 5 times and they promised to help me and then the last agent being at the actual app store, my final stop, disconnected without initiating the chat. Further keyboard imprints take place. During that support process I was told I would need to change my child out of the 3-5 age range in order for them to work, not something I wanted to do as it bypassed parental controls for that age group and at the end of the exercise, it was not something that worked anyway. I was then advised to remove and re-add the account, that too did not work. I eventually contacted the creators of Bimi Boo and they told me that the Amazon App store doesn't support the sharing of in-app purchases, I would need to take up the matter with Amazon themselves. I simply haven't had the energy to revisit this. I do think the only way to do so however, is to be refunded and then do the in-app purchases a second time through the actual device itself. The device is assigned it's own kindle address, but is not otherwise associated with an email address of its own. So I'm not even entirely sure how in-app purchases would work here either. Anyway, that is $60.00 or so of previously purchased apps which I cannot use unless I repurchase -- gah. I would love to otherwise transfer ownership to that device somehow -- Not like I bought those apps for me anyway. Rant aside. This is an amazing little device, it is wonderfully responsive and the Kids+ selection is beyond amazing. Everything there is full version and the only 'coins' needed are those you earn in-game. My three year old loves the "My Hungry Caterpillar" game where you feed him, play with him and put him to bed for a period of days until he then turns into a beautiful butterfly; after which the whole process begins again. Another firm favourite is "Little Fox Animal Doctor" where you cure a number of very cute little characters who are ailing from various illnesses and accidents. The tablet includes a year free of Kids+ and for a monthly cost of $5 a month, it is definitely worth it for the quality of content, lots of Disney apps too. My favourite thing about this tablet is that the interface changes based on the age group. The current group my daughter is in, 3-5 has only images, the next group up 6-12 a has large images and text, finally the teen group pretty much looks as it does in the adult mode. This would actually make a mighty fine Android tablet all on it's own. In conclusion, other than the cons mentioned above, this is a very worthwhile purchase.