Amazon Upgrades Kindles, Tablets, and Fire TV for Kids

Amazon is expanding its kid-friendly FreeTime content library and parental controls to every screen your kids might have. Today the company announced new kids' modes for its Kindle e-readers and Fire TV streaming stick, as well as new generations of the Fire 10 and Fire 10 Kids tablets.

The idea is that kids are going to watch things, so you might as well make them all safe, controlled, and integrated. Kids go from streaming TV in the living room, to playing games on a tablet in the back seat, to reading on an e-reader before bed—all with one integrated account, library, and parental control dashboard able to monitor how much each device has been used. I love it.

UK READERS: All-new Amazon Fire and Kindle Tablets Available to Pre-order

FreeTime Unlimited Is the Key

The pivot is the FreeTime Unlimited subscription service. The new Kindle Kids Edition e-reader and Kindle Kids Edition tablets come with a free year of it; otherwise it starts at $2.99/month. That gives you access to a big library of pre-selected kids' subscription content, focused around popular brands.

Amazon Kindle Kids' Edition

The Kindle Kids' Edition e-reader costs $109.99. It's the existing Amazon Kindle with a case, a year of FreeTime Unlimited, and a two-year guarantee, which is great especially considering this model isn't waterproof. Starting in January, you'll be able to roll your own experience with existing Kindles too, thanks to a software update.

Children's Profiles on Kindle

The service has an integrated dashboard where you can set the amount of time per day a kid is allowed to do various activities (although not down to the granular level of how much they can see one particular app or show.)

Disney Books in Kindle FreeTime

The books and audiobooks on FreeTime Unlimited are designed for ages 6-12. Importantly to me, a lot of the most popular endless series of lower and middle-grades books appear to be in there, like Big Nate and Wings of Fire. Amazon said there are libraries in both English and Spanish for the US. You can also add your own purchased or selected content to a kid's FreeTime library.

While I have a few issues around FreeTime pushing corporate-monolith content like Disney and Lego really heavily, the fact that everything in the library is human-curated puts it a giant step ahead of algorithmic morasses like YouTube.

Book Reading Status

You can spy on how much your kid has been reading, and there are badges and achievements for reading certain amounts.

Flash Cards

There are various other kid-friendly features in the Kindle OS now, such as "word wise"—automatic definitions over difficult words—or the ability to create flashcards from words within a book.

FreeTime on Fire TV

FreeTime on Fire TV appears as a software upgrade to Fire TV sticks and boxes now, and will come to TVs with built-in Fire software "soon." That lets parents lock their TVs into a kid-friendly mode with only approved (Amazon) content. You can also whitelist other video apps, like Netflix or Hulu, but then you're at the mercy of whatever parental controls are within those apps.

New Fire HD 10 Tablet

The new Fire 10 Kids Edition tablet is based on a new Fire 10 tablet with upgraded innards. The tablet has kept the same 1080p LCD screen, but has a bunch of invisible upgrades. It bumped up the MediaTek processor inside to be about 30 percent faster. An additional Wi-Fi antenna allows for antenna diversity, which will improve Wi-Fi performance. There's now up to 64GB storage and support for MicroSD cards. And the tablet has USB-C, the first Amazon product to carry that port.

It Runs Android, Sort Of

You'll be able to get the new Fire HD 10 for $149.99; we'll review it, but we expect it to be a very good, solid, basic tablet. As with other Fire tablets, it runs Amazon's heavily customized, Android-based OS, which privileges watching Amazon content; it's now based on Android 9.

If you're running FreeTime on your tablet, all of the apps are advertising-free, curated as age-safe, and forbid IAPs.

Picture-in-Picture Video

One new feature, coming with that Android 9 core, is picture-in-picture—the ability to keep watching videos while you're also doing something else.

Kids' Fire Tablet

The kids' edition of the Fire tablet adds a year of FreeTime Unlimited, a case, and a 2-year warranty for $50 more. Let's price that out; the content is worth $36, the case $15 (the official case is $35, but Amazon sells third-party clones) and the warranty $25. That's $76, so you save about $25 by getting the Kids' Edition if that's your goal.

Kindle Kids' Edition Cases

The kids' cases don't just come in pink and blue anymore; there are cute gender-neutral options, like this "birds" case or a space-themed case.

All of these new products go on pre-order today and ship on Oct. 30.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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