The best tablet for your pre-K to middle-school kids is usually the one you aren’t using anymore. But we’ve spent hundreds of hours testing tablets; if you need to buy one, we recommend Apple’s 9th-generation iPad, which has the best combination of ease of use, performance, kid-appropriate app selection, and price. It can do anything your kid might want, from schoolwork to games, and it should still be usable three or four years from now.
Our pick
Apple’s entry-level iPad has the best combination of ease of use, performance, app selection, and price—whether you’re an adult or a kid. The 64 GB version is a good buy unless you plan to download a lot of high-end games or 4K video.
The iPad is a fast, well-made tablet with a great screen, but its app selection may be its best feature. You can, of course, also use it to download or stream video from just about anywhere, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube Kids. But Apple’s App Store offers a huge range of educational apps and games for kids of all ages, as well as tons of apps for creating and editing art, video, and audio, which can nurture a child’s creative impulses. An iPad isn’t cheap, but it will last for years—thanks to great hardware and to frequent system and security updates—and the app library means an iPad will stay useful as your kid grows and their interests change.
Budget pick
The Fire HD 8 Kids Edition is slower than an iPad, with a worse screen and a much more-limited app selection, but it’s inexpensive, includes a childproof case and an accidental-damage warranty, and it has good parental controls.
If you want a tablet mostly for kid-focused video, books, and music, Amazon’s Fire HD 8 Kids Edition is less than half the price of an iPad, and it’s a decent 8-inch tablet that includes a protective case and a year’s subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, which has an extensive library of kid-friendly content. The Fire HD 8 Kids Edition is much slower and more difficult to use than an iPad, and it has far fewer apps and games, but its smaller size may be more comfortable to hold for younger kids, it supports multiple user accounts, and it’ll survive a drop better than an iPad. And if your child does manage to break it, the two-year accidental damage warranty will get you a no-questions-asked replacement.
