7 FOR ALL MANKIND WOMEN'S BERMUDA DENIM SHORT

Built-in Feature Come With Product

1. Up to $95 in savings on a Fire HD 6 or Fire HD 7, 1 year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, Kid-Proof Case, and 2-year worry-free guarantee
2. Not a toy, a full-featured Fire HD tablet with HD display, front and rear cameras, and Dolby Audio
3. 2-year worry-free guarantee: if they break it, return it and we’ll replace it for free. No questions asked
4. Unlimited, free access to curated, kid-friendly content with 1-year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited included
5. Best-in-class parental controls allow you to manage usage limits, content access, and educational goals

FIRE HD 6 KIDS EDITION TABLET, 6″ HD DISPLAY, WI-FI, 8 GB, BLUE KID-PROOF CASE

You might be currently in doubt whether to buy right away or not. Do not be in a hurry, understand and know in advance more information about what you will use frequently later. Mistakes will make you regret it later.

What They Say About ‘FIRE HD 6 KIDS EDITION TABLET, 6″ HD DISPLAY, WI-FI, 8 GB, BLUE KID-PROOF CASE’

As a family who owns multiple Fires in different iterations, I was thrilled when the kids’ version was announced. All three of my children received one. From their perspective, they were thrilled and loved it. I gave them far more time than usual to break them in over a 1.5 day period just to make sure everything was fine. Sadly, it wasn’t.

First, let’s call this thing what it really is. This isn’t a Fire designed from the ground up with children in mind. It is a basic Fire 7 HD with an altered OS that is tightly integrated into the Free Time Unlimited app, something that can be added to ANY Fire currently on the market. That’s it. Yes, it comes with a snazzy case and a longer warranty, but it’s still just a slightly altered Fire 7 underneath it all.

The issues began within the first hour of use and echo what most of the negative reviews highlight.

1 – Terrible battery life and slow recharge rate
My three-year-old first generation Fires last far longer and charge faster.

2 – Case Isn’t Impressive
When I first saw the case introduced, I imagined something rubberized with a protective cover over the screen, possibly even water resistant. No. It’s simply a piece of molded foam that you press the Fire into. There is absolutely nothing to protect the screen, reminiscent of the cheap EVA foam cases you pick up on eBay. I would not have felt comfortable simply putting them in a bag without something to cover the front. Plus, they are very easy to remove.

3 – Frequent lock-ups
We were averaging at least one lock-up per hour of use. And keep in mind that I had three of these, so it couldn’t have simply been a bad device. I was hard-resetting them like crazy. And this doesn’t count the times they randomly ran slow.

4 – Freetime Unlimited is a Mess
While lots of content is great, it becomes overwhelming where there is no organization. The apps, videos, and books pages are a random collection of stuff. My kids didn’t understand that everything has to be downloaded and at a snail’s pace at that. And, being kids, they naturally want to try opening every app they saw listed. I don’t blame them for that. But that led to the next problem.

5 – Low Storage with no way to delete data
The storage on this device is abysmal. I don’t understand what they did to bloat the OS to such a degree that it takes up nearly half of the 8G available storage (only 4.5 available to the user). With 100 apps to click on in Free Time Unlimited, one child was able to fill hers inside an hour of use. The others took a little longer, but I was furiously trying to keep up with deleting things on all three before long. And this lead to one of the most disappointing oversights I discovered. You can only delete data in the profile that is currently open. But here’s the real kicker. Wifi is designed to shut off when the device is full. In almost all cases, that ended up booting my kids out of their profile. Without wifi, I couldn’t log into their profile and could only access the adult profile. Since I had nothing installed on the adult profile, there was no way to free up enough space to reenable wifi, log back into the child’s profile, and delete items. This left a factory reset as the ONLY resolution, which is completely unacceptable.

6 – Missing Features
One of the biggest features I was excited about during the pre-release was the ability to use the camera. As it turns out, this one is now marked as “coming soon”. While I’m glad to hear it is being worked on, I think missing this at launch is a major fail. Yes, you can still use the camera but only on the adult profile, which defeats the purpose. And I’ve been around the block enough times with product launches to know “coming soon” is a promise I won’t hang my hat on.

But if you want to know what the #1 deal breaker was for me. Here it is:

7 – FreeTime Unlimited Doesn’t Always Work offline
I read that the downloaded apps and books in FreeTime Unlimited are accessible when offline. After testing this theory multiple times, I found it to be false. If the kids were already in their profile when Wifi access was removed, they could stay for a while, but eventually, the constant messages about no Internet connection would boot them out sooner or later. And once out, it brought up a message about no Internet connection every time you tried to select a FreeTime profile from the list. Yes, you can still access the adult profile, which takes you to the basic Kindle. But what’s the point of that? The content is in the FreeTime app.

The majority of the places where I would like to utilize the Kindles for the kids are places that don’t have Wifi – car trips, long waiting room visits, or sitting in the lobby while someone else is at an activity. If I can’t access the majority of the content my kid’s want without Wifi then it’s worthless to me.

At the end of the day, I had all three packed up for a return within 36 hours. I had high hopes for this product but was deeply disappointed with the end result. There is no way this product was adequately tested on the target market. I’ve come to expect so much more from Amazon. Perhaps they’ll be able to salvage it through OS and FreeTime updates in the future. I’m not waiting around to see if that happens.

In the meantime, I have decided to purchase standard Kindles for the kids and will not be adding FreeTime Unlimited. The parental controls that come with the standard OS are actually quite good. I’ll simply add those and throw on a few apps and books that we already own.

Update:

Took off one star. Storage is atrocious (less than 5 gb available, and it fills up in no time), and Amazon makes it incredibly hard to delete content stored in a FreeTime profile. The easiest and most efficient way to delete content is to do a factory reset, but be warned, the tablet will be out of storage again in 24 hours. At this point, I do not recommend this tablet at all. Go for a regular Kindle instead and get 16gb of storage.

Original review:

The problem is not the tablet; it’s Kindle FreeTime Unlimited. The tablet is sturdy and the case, although bulky, is perfect for kids. The tablet just arrived yesterday so I can not comment on how well it performs over the long term, but this will be our family’s 6th (7th? 8th?) Kindle and I expect it to be as durable as the other Kindles we’ve had.

So on to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited… the idea behind this service is great (it’s pretty much a library of age-appropriate apps and books), but the execution of it is terrible.

So what’s wrong with it?

1) In a regular Kindle, only the books that I’ve downloaded appear on my device. With Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, ALL of the books and apps available with Kindle FreeTime appear on the child’s Kindle. So what’s the problem with this? For one, it’s just plain difficult to navigate because there’s way too much content on the screen and there’s no way to sort it. Two, there are certain books and apps that Amazon might deem as age appropriate but I do not want my child playing with and there is no way to filter them out. So if I want him to read Curious George but skip the SpongeBob books, I’m out of luck.

2) My child is able to read books I’ve downloaded from our local library using the Overdrive and Blio apps. The problem is that if I set parental controls to allow unlimited reading and to not allow apps during weekdays, he can not access his library books. The alternative would be to allow unlimited app access, but that means that he also has unlimited access to countless other apps available via FreeTime that I do not want him to access at the moment. (Edit: books that require Blio can not be accessed at all from within FreeTime, as Blio has to be sideloaded and sideloaded apps are not available in FreeTime. However, if your library gives you the option of downloading books in Kindle format from the Amazon site, then those books WILL appear in FreeTime.)

3)Documents are not available with Kindle FreeTime. That means that all of the books that I’ve downloaded via gutenberg.org, for example, are not available. He can read them if I exit his FreeTime profile but then I lose control over what he can access. There might be some app that allows a work around and permit him to access docs, but I don’t want to waste time trying to figure out a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

4) Apps and content that I’ve bought can be added to my child’s profile, but the process is very burdensome and time consuming. Ideally, I would be able to purchase online (or on my own Kindle) and deliver the content to my child’s Kindle (which is the way it works when you’re not using a profile), but the content is not available in my child’s FreeTime profile until I specifically add it to his account. In order to do this, I need to enter my password, enter the section that allows me to manage his content, and manually add the title. Unfortunately, Amazon organizes titles alphabetically only, so if I buy, for example, a book titled “Zebras” I would have to scroll past literally hundreds of titles that are in my account in order to add that one book to my child’s account. If you haven’t purchased a lot of content via Amazon, the process would be more bearable, but for those of us who’ve been buying Kindle books for many years already, the process is tedious.

Conclusion: the tablet is great, but Kindle FreeTime Unlimited needs plenty of work. If you’re not satisfied with FreeTime Unlimited’s (lack of) parental controls, you might be better off with the regular, $99 Kindle Fire, a sturdy case and a 2 year protection plan.

Edit: At the moment (as of 11/30/14), it makes no sense to buy this tablet given the discounts on the Kindle Fire 7. It’s currently priced at $109, and if you have an Amazon card and apply code HDL30ARC, you get an additional $30 off. The grand total before taxes is $84.21- that’s less than half the price of the 7in kid tablet. Get the tablet, a sturdy case and a 2 year protection plan. Suscribe to Kindle FreeTime Unlimited when it’s ready for prime time.

Edit: Disregard the above as it no longer applies. I won’t delete it for the sake of transparency.

Worst software and customer support ever!

I am so disappointed with Amazon on this; I have had no problems with any of their products or their customer support in the past (on average, I place 2-3 orders with Amazon every week), but this product and their customer support regarding this issue has been abysmal and atrocious.

As MANY other reviewers have noted, you run out of space VERY quickly on this (we’ve had ours for about a week) and we got the low storage notification. And sure enough, it disabled wifi and usb file transfer because there was low storage. Because it disabled wifi, it wouldn’t let us log in to the kids’ profiles to delete apps. If we can’t delete the apps, we can’t enable wifi. If we can’t enable wifi, we can’t log in. Vicious catch-22.

So I called Amazon. First person I spoke with took down all my information (even though I had initiated the call through the website and selected the device) and then said she couldn’t help me and would have to transfer me. I get transferred and the connection is terrible; I could barely hear the second person.

The second person said that I have to turn the device off and back on. I told them I had already done that and it hadn’t solved anything. They said I would have to do it again. So I did it, and of course, nothing happened. She then says she has to reset something on her end so that we can log in. I explain that it doesn’t make any sense that we would have to call in and spend 20-30 minutes on the phone every week to be able to log in to our device. She says there’s nothing she can do. Eventually I am able to log in to the kids profile, but when I try to go into settings, it just freezes. So I still can’t delete apps. We also get disconnected.

I call Amazon back. Explain everything again. Get transferred again. Explain everything again. Get told it’s a software issue. I explain that it’s been a software issue for three months and nothing has been done. She says, "yeah, I know." I said thousands of people have reviewed the product and MANY of the reviews mention the same issue. She says I have to do a factory reset and it might solve my problem. Might?!? So I ask her, is doing a factory reset the only way to resolve this problem? And she says yes. So I ask her, "does it make sense to you that a user has to reset their device and delete everything just so they can log in?" And she avoids the question for a bit, but finally answers, "yes, that makes sense to me." What?!? I ask her, "so if you have a phone or computer and start running out of space, it makes sense to you that you would have to delete everything?" And she says, "no, that doesn’t make sense, but the Kindle isn’t a computer or a phone." To which I say, "well, it’s a tablet and the basic operating functions work on the same principles as a computer or a phone." Silence.

After going around in circles and spending over an hour on the phone with Amazon (over an HOUR!!!), the resolution is that she’ll send an e-mail to the development team (no, she didn’t know if they would respond or read the e-mail) and that I would have to just do a factory reset every time this happened.

On top of ALL this, when I go into the storage settings, it shows me that my files are taking up 4.99GB. Except right below that, it lists what’s taking up space in decreasing order, which are: 1. System (622.99MB), 2. System Applications (105.88MB), 3. Books (40.52MB), 4. Videos (10.32MB), 5. Miscellaneous (480.97KB), 6. Music (444.00KB), 7. Audiobooks (368.00KB), 8. Docs (316.00KB). So TOTAL space it shows I am using in the breakdown is about 780MB. NOWHERE close to the 4.99GB it says I am taking up. When I ask her to explain that, she says, "oh, that’s a software bug too. The developers are working on it."

How can Amazon let these huge showstopping bugs get through to production?!?

Has potential to be a really good tablet for children but they really need work on tightening up the interface (like the accidental drop down menu that constantly gets in the way, perhaps set it so that it requires a 2 or 3 finger swipe to initialize it..) Also the storage space is abismal, its crazy how fast you can fill this thing up and its a pain to remove apps from within free time. They need the option to be able to do it from the adult profiles (managing storage space from basically an admin account). The carousal needs to be revisited. I’ve noticed my son responds much better to tile/icons setup in a grid fashion, rather than GIANT tiles that he has to scroll through. Need an easier way to tell what is actually stored on the tablet vs. cloud/streaming. Overall, I’m not really impressed with it (considering it was $200) but I do get a kick out of seeing my toddler play with it. Amazes me how fast these toddlers can pick up on electronics. But the clunky user interface frustrates him too often. Amazon if you are listening, please pay more attention to at least the idea of setting the "drop down" screen to a multi-finger gesture instead of a single swipe from top to bottom. Just was anyone play fruit ninja on it and you’ll see why it’s EXTREMELY LAME.

Avoid until amazon fixes wifi / storage issues. Device turns off wifi if it gets low on storage and there is no way to free up space without resetting the whole device up from scratch. turning on wifi takes you to a screen to manage storage and the total storage used doesn’t add up to what is listed. My sons device shows 4.99GB used with 557MB system, 100MB system applications and 1.16GB used under my sons profile under other users. There is no way to delete the 1.16GB that he has used and regardless it doesn’t all add up to the 5GB that the device says is used.

If storage space is required for wifi to be used the device should stop allowing downloads when it gets close or automatically remove content as needed.

I really wanted to like the Kindle Fire HD Kids edition but even this newest generation suffers from a number of critical flaws (at least for my family’s intended use). Coming from an iPad 4th Generation (64GB) that unfortunately suffered a fatal accident. My 2 year old had effectively co-opted the iPad, so my wife and I decided that any replacement would be purely dedicated to child use. With this in mind, the price and packaging for the Fire HD KE seemed like a good fit — why spend $700 on another iPad that’ll only be used to watch kids videos?

On the plus side, the size and weight of the KE, and the foam case, are far better suited to little hands than the full size iPad 4 in LifeProof case. Sound quality is great, also.

Now for the drawbacks. First, my daughter’s experience with the iPad involved a bunch of mashing the home button when she grew tired of whatever video or storybook app she’d been using, so right away the lack of a physical back or home screen button became a source of friction and frustration for her use. I knew the tablet had no physical buttons when I ordered, so perhaps I’m to blame for this issue more than Amazon. The abysmal lack of usable storage space, however, is something Amazon truly needs to address. Most of the "preloaded" kids content *requires an internet connection at all times* to function, so forget using this thing in the car or in a restaurant, unless you turn your mobile phone into a hotspot first. Be advised that some carriers charge extra monthly fees for that capability; others may throttle tethered connections after a certain amount of data is used, so watch out for overages if you go this route.

So the storage space issue is critical if you plan, like we did, to load a few videos on the tablet to get you through those times when no WiFi is available — for us, long car rides served as the primary use case. I was able to get 1 standard definition full length movie and a few TV show episodes on the KE before it was filled to capacity. We have a number of Amazon Instant Video purchases that would have been nice to add — but all of them are too large to fit on the KE. I can’t emphasize enough how much better the approach taken by Microsoft and Samsung is in this department. User upgradeable, removable storage will be an absolute prerequisite for my family’s next tablet purchase.

In mixed use, battery life is neither remarkable nor poor.

Imagine for a moment you are in an airport. Its crowded, you’re juggling luggage and an infant and tensions are running high. You hand your Precious Darling the (rather overpriced) tablet you got for her entertainment. In seconds she’s upset, the wifi isn’t connecting and nothing works on the thing without a wifi connection. How do you connect? It should be simple, you have several devices of your own .. It’s not. You fiddle with the thing for a few minutes and manage to find a connection. There. Two minutes later Darling is crying, nothing on the tablet is working. Why?! There is no more available memory. How?!? You JUST got this thing! You check, she was able to click on and download apps and books with reckless abandon and in the space of seconds fill the entire, nearly nonexistent, available memory. You delete everything you can find and unlink your own account you had to add to start the device. After you’ve created as much space as possible you hand it back. This buys you 5 more minutes of quiet. You repeat this process two more time, Dearest Darling One becoming increasing hostile with you each time. You are clearly doing this to her on purpose. After a grand total of 20 minutes she is upset again, this time the battery is dead. The charger is at the bottom of your suitcase because you carefully charged the device last night and could never DREAM you would need to again before you reached your destination… What you didn’t know was in addition to needing a wifi signal, containing the available memory of a fruit fly and being as user friendly as a cornered rat this device also drains its power supplies even when NOT IN USE so all those precious minutes it was sitting idly with its screen shut off in your bag on the way here were wasted. It’s done. You, cursing this horrible device sent from the depths of Hell to destroy the last shred of your sanity, scrounge up some work papers and a crayon or two. Never again.

There are many significantly poor designs to the FreeTime user interface and parental controls. It provides you as the parent with limited control without spending an inordinate amount of time setting it up. (1) Extremely limited memory. Advertised as 8GB with 4.5GB available to the user (No provision for a memory card). Even the remaining 4.5GB are not all available to you for your purposes. We have 1.44GB for 33 Apps (about half of which were already on the kindle), 0.25 GB of photos, 0.2 GB of games, only 0.013 GB of Vidoes, and 0.006 GB of Music AND IT’S TELLING ME THERE’S NO MORE ROOM. This means that you must use WIFI to watch videos and …. (2) We cannot watch videos while taking road trips b/c there is no memory. (3) The Apps page lists over 500 apps that I did not choose to have available to my kids and did not download. This is to show you what apps are available. But if you have WIFI on to let your kids watch videos, then they can at any time download any of those apps. The same is true for Videos. Most other devices have an App store that you go to if you want to search for Apps to download, they don’t put all the apps on your desktop. This also makes it extremely difficult to search through and peruse apps that you’ve downloaded which you don’t want to put your your home page yet. The same goes for videos. This may not bother you as much, but we prefer our 3-yr-old not to watch Power Rangers and Frankenstein. I can go on and on about other features that are poorly designed. However, I’ve spent the last 35 minutes on hold with a representative and need to ge to work.

We got this for our two kids to share and they absolutely love it! So does their father. Everyone has their own "profile" with their own set of videos, books and games. Although mom hasn’t had much of a chance to use it yet with everyone else clamoring for it, I do love the fact that I can set up bedtimes/wake up times for each of the kids. Being able to set learning/reading goals for them to meet before they can play is wonderful as well.

I would definitely recommend this to any parent looking for a tablet for their kids. Plus the free 2 year worry free replacement plan really gives you peace of mind!

The free membership for free time unlimited is also a big bonus since they have access to so many apps/videos and books right off the bat!

Not happy with this product at all – my child was frustrated because the screen was not sensitive enough to the touch. Also, it’s impossible to download movies and or shows and use the tablet normally- it’s one way or the other – not enough memory no matter what tablet you use.

Conclussion

There is not much we can do to help you. All decisions are now in your hands. We hope that after reading the information about the product above, now your insight is broader. The more you know, the better the decisions you will make.

Have something to say about FIRE HD 6 KIDS EDITION TABLET, 6″ HD DISPLAY, WI-FI, 8 GB, BLUE KID-PROOF CASE? Dont be hesitate, drop something in the comment.