Amazon’s Fire HD 10 is a tablet with a 10.1 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display, a quad-core processor, and at least 32GB of storage. With a list price of $150, it costs almost twice as much as an entry-level Fire HD 8, but it has a bigger screen, more storage, a faster processor, and it comes with a longer warranty (1 year instead of 90 days).
Now Amazon is adding another option: a Fire HD 10 Kids Edition. It’s up for pre-order now for $200, although Amazon is running a promotion right now that lets you pick up two tablets for $300.
Here’s what you get for your extra $50:
- Kid-friendly bumper case
- 1-year subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited
- 2-year “worry-free guarantee”
- Parental controls
The bumper case is nice. But honestly, those other features are what make Amazon’s Kids Edition devices worth the price of admission for parents of small children.
Not only does the worry-free guarantee give you another 12 months of protection in case anything goes wrong… but Amazon doesn’t care why your tablet isn’t working. If your toddler dropped it in the toilet, stuck it in the microwave, or jammed the ports with Play Dough, you’re covered.
FreeTime Unlimited, meanwhile, includes access to 15 thousand kid-friendly apps, games, books, videos, and other content. If you decide to keep using the service after a year you’ll be billed $2.99 per month (for Prime members, or $4.99 for non-members), but you can cancel at any time.
There are also parental control options that let you do things like setting time limits on the device to set how much screen time you want your kids to have on weekdays or weekends, setting a bedtime when everything will shut down, or using age filters for different types of content, or enable or disable the web browser.
You can also access a web-based Parent Dashboard to view activity reports, set parental controls, and access other features without touching the tablet.
Amazon already offers Kids Edition versions of its other tablets. There’s an Amazon Fire 7 Kids Edition with 16GB of storage and a $100 price tag, and a 32GB Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition that sells for $130.
The new Fire HD 10 Kids Edition is up for pre-order now and it should begin shipping July 11th.