Kurio Kids Tablet Review

Kurio Kids Tablet Review

The Kurio 7 is specifically catered towards children with content designed around children using a child safe Android environment with rubber bumpers to help protect the tablet from, well children. The Kurio Kids Tablet is plenty more reliable and performance oriented than any other kid-friendly tablet out there such as the Fuhu Nabi Kids tablet. 

Features And Design

Measuring in at 12.1 ounce and 7.5 by 4.8 inches, the Kurio is about equal in dimensions to the Kindle Fire but much more flexible because of the rubber and plastic body. The rubber bumpers are thicker to the edges and have exaggerated corners. To the right side there is a front facing camera in the landscape mode plus three capacitive buttons that include Back, Home and the Option feature. 

The screen measures in at 7 inches and offers a 800 by 480 pixel resolution, which while being lower compared to current standards is sufficiently bright and colorful, albeit a little pixilated. A back 2.1 megapixel and front 0.3 MP camera together complete its recording features however don't expect too much from them. The Kurio Kids Tablet does handle Skype video calls well enough though.

As for file formats supported, the Kurio Kids tablet can play MPEG4, DivX, Xvid, H.264 as well as AVI videos even at 1080p resolution while supporting AAC, OGG, WAV, WMA and FLAC audio formats. As for storage options, it comes packed with just 4GB expandable up to 32GB with a microSD card.

Inside, it is powered using a A8 Cortex 1.2GHz processor with a 1GB RAM adequate for the Android 4.2 running on it. This provides just enough power for reliability and responsiveness. Unfortunately, the battery isn't strong enough to keep this kid's tablet running for long hours. At best it will do about 4 hours with maximum brightness, continuous videos and Wifi.

Content And Child Safety

What really makes the Kurio Kids Tablet unique is its sandboxed child-safe feature. It does come with an Adult Mode but it is the customizable Child Mode that draws most of the attention with the ability of setting different accounts for children of varying age and also customizing apps that they can use with varying levels of web filtering. Parents can even control the period of use or how many times it can be used in one day. Expect the basic games and content friendly enough for children as far as usable apps are concerned. As for the Adult mode, it is the stock Android.

The Verdict

While the Kurio Kids Tablet doesn't offer a lot in comparison with Amazon's Kindle Fire but the fact that it is rugged with the rubber casing and comes with parental controls and restrictive usage, essential for kids makes it a definitely better option for kids as opposed to the Kindle Fire HD. Add to this the fact that it retails at least $50 cheaper and you get an inexpensive option of introducing tablet based operation to kids without exposing them to adult content or potential dangerous stuffs.