The Amazon Kindle Kids model is the same as the base model 11th Generation Kindle e-reader. It comes with three colorful cases and a free one year subscription to Amazon Kids+ which gives your child access to thousands of audiobooks and ebooks. A host of parental controls keeps your kid from accessing the internet browser or can even disable purchases from the store.
The Kindle Kids has a six inch capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1448X1072 with 300 PPI. It has a sunken screen and bezel design, so fonts will look razer sharp. This is primarily due to it having exposed e-paper, so there is no layer of glass or anything else getting in the way between your eyes and the screen. When reading outdoors, the screen will not have any glare from the sun. It is packing in four white LED lights to power the front-lit display, which will allow you to read in the dark. Amazon is really promoting system side dark mode, which will invert the colors, so the background will be black and the text will be white.
Underneath the hood is a 1 GHZ single core processor, 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. It finally has a USB-C cable, so this will be used for charging the battery via wall outlet or your computer. When it comes to battery life, a single charge lasts up to six weeks, based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13. Battery life may vary depending on use. Audible audiobook streaming over Bluetooth will reduce battery life.
The big visual difference between the Kindle Kids and the regular Kindle comes from the included case, which bumps up the overall size and weight slightly. Currently, there are three styles to choose from: Ocean Explorer, Space Whale, or Unicorn Valley. The cases are really well designed and do not cost anything extra. The e-Reader costs $119.99 and can be purchased from Amazon.
Amazon Kids mode is a truncated, curated version of the standard Kindle interface, limiting what can be read to Amazon’s list of kid-friendly content, or books parents add to the profile. Kids mode adds two useful features for children learning how to read. Vocabulary Builder tracks every word that’s looked up, helping kids remember what they’ve learned and even generating flashcards for them. The Awards section gamifies reading by setting different achievements that can be earned from reading, like Book Worm for reading at least 30 minutes a day, and Serious Reader for reading 500 pages.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
