Binatone Appstar Children's Tablet Review

Lara is really into her tech at present and I regularly have to wrestle my own tablet from her.  She has been trying out a tablet designed specifically with children in mind - the Binatone Appstar which is now available in Argos.

The Appstar comes in its own brightly coloured protective rubberised case which is great for protecting the corners of the tablet from bumps.  It also has a small stylus attached by a cord for use on it's 7 inch screen.  Lara struggled at bit at first with using the head of the stylus rather than trying to use it at an angle like a pencil but soon got the hang of it.

The Appstar runs Android 4.0 which means that the interface is recognisable.  However, the OS has been made child-friendly and by this I mean that the backgrounds are bright and bold and the icons are larger and less cluttered.  In 'grown-up' mode the operating system is a little more like that which I am used to on my own tablet.  I would say that I didn't find the user interface particularly intuitive to use, but Lara seems comfortable using the kid mode.

The Binatone Appstar comes with a 1GHz processor and 4GB RAM and I think the price reflects this, it is certainly less powerful and responsive than the latest 'grown-up' tablets on the market but to be very honest, I don't think my four year old is looking for speedy response times or fast internet usage!

The Appstar comes with a child-friendly internet browser and you can set up wifi connectivity when you first configure your tablet (through a step-by-step wizard) or through the parent settings.  I haven't quite worked out what 'child-friendly browser' really ... as far as I can tell it is a very limited access to pre-configured web-pages.  From the parent-mode the internet browser allows you to browse at leisure as you normally would do.

The Appstar tablet comes with over 250 'apps' pre-loaded onto it; these range from small fun games such as hangman to educational videos about volcanoes.  From autumnal craft inspiration to colouring apps.  If you set up a credit card in your parent account then you can also choose to download new apps for your children from the Amazon app store. None of the built-in apps are bog-names that are instantly recognisable but I think they are as good as, and in many cases better than, any of the apps you would find to buy on a VTech or Leapfrog equivalent.

The Appstar also features a built-in camera that allows you to take photos but this doesn't seem to have grabbed Lara's attention yet.

The Appstar tablet is available exclusively at Argos for £99.99 and it is recommended for children from 4 years upwards.  It comes with a mains adapter for recharging the battery - we found the battery life to be REALLY good, it survived nearly a week of occasional use without needing to be recharged.

Disclosure:  I was loaned the Binatone Appstar for the purposes of this review

  

Google Nexus 7 Tablet Review

We were lucky enough to be asked to give a family's perspective on the Google Nexus 7 Android tablet by Currys.

For us, a tablet needs to perform several different functions.

* Fun games for our toddler, Holly
* Educational games for our 4 year old, Lara
* Productivity and great internet access for me
* Games and entertainment for Mr. B

The Nexus 7 from Asus is part of the Currys tablet range and it seems to have managed to offer us all of these features in one compact piece of portable tech. 

I was quite comfortable using the Android operating system (currently we are running Android 4.3 aka Jelly Bean) having tried it previously on my smart phone but I was doubtful as to whether I would find is usable enough for my every day tasks such as updating my blog, sending mails, checking weather and timetables etc.  Thankfully, I actually found the Android interface on the Nexus 7 to be more usable than on my phone - it works beautifully on the larger screen (the Nexus 7 has a 7 inch LED screen) and the scrolling and icons feel very natural.  The backlit LED screen gives really bright colour and amazing colour reproduction - photos appear crisp and full of light.

Both of our girls took instantly to the Nexus 7.  They are both familiar with a touch screen interface so it felt natural to them.  The screen is smaller than they are used to and I think for our youngest daughter it requires dexterity she doesn't quite have yet but our 4 year old finds it a good size to sit and hold herself... she quickly discovered the CBeebies app on it!  Ordinarily when I use the Nexus 7 I sometimes find it frustrating that the menu and navigation buttons aren't real buttons (they are icons along the base of the screen that change their location based on the rotation of the screen and they fade away when an app is in full-screen).  However, when the girls are using the tablet, I'm often grateful that they can't find the buttons easily!

Mr. B. has embraced the internet a little more since the Google Nexus 7 came into his life.  He has discovered how easy it is to integrate your Google account with your mail app and your browser and use Google to log in to a number of different services.  I've noticed him use social media that little bit more as well!

The Nexus 7 is fast, noticeably more so than my phone or laptop... I guess that is largely to do with the compact nature of the apps we use on it; they only do what they really need to do.  The tablet has a Snapdragon 1.5GHz processor and 2GB RAM.  Our Nexus 7also has 16GB of storage space which I think could quickly run out if we are all using it for apps and music.  At present I don't think we plan to use it to store images so space won't be used up that quickly.

We found our Nexus 7 REALLY easy to connect to our home Wifi, the whole setup process took a matter of minutes.  But for Mr. B, I think the feature of the Nexus 7 he has found most impressive is the voice recognition mechanism which integrates the microphone with several of the apps we use regularly... this week I witnessed him attempt to order a takeaway through an app using his voice... I didn't point out to him that this may have been easier using a traditional telephone!

The only negative feedback that we have on the Nexus 7 is that because the screen is so compact, when you are using the keyboard, it tends to take over most of the screen space and it can be hard to reference back to the page you are typing on or for.