Nabi 2 vs. Nexus 10

[akaluza]

Well, I wouldn't say the N7 "works just like the iPad"! It's actually a bit more sophisticated. The Nabi 2's kids interface (they call "Nabi Mode" is more like the iPad as it just shows a list of apps (and folders if you choose.

Apps are definitely important. The Nabi has the advantage of having a whole kids curriculum (math, science, English and social studies) of lessons built into it which are not available on the N7. There might be ways of purchasing some of the same content, but I'm not sure exactly. Regarding apps again, The Nabi can easily install the Amazon App Store, which has 50,000 apps on it, so it's not like they are going to be missing much. There definitely some apps that are so far only available on Google Play, and if those apps are things that you really want, then it's worth taking the trouble to sideload them. I wouldn't recommend rooting for someone who isn't all that tech-savvy, plus it supposedly could void your warranty. The main apps that you wouldn't have access to on Amazon which you would have on Google Play are Google apps, but those also can be loaded from files that are available elsewhere on the net - you don't have to get them from Google Play.

I'd definitely take them to a local Best Buy (or maybe Walmart), but call first to make sure they are on display, and have them play with each and see what they think.

One other thing I should mention is that while Android Central is a great forum for asking questions and getting help on Android devices in general, most of it is geared towards adults, not kids. I'd love it if they would make an "Android for kids forum" and have suggested it, but so far there hasn't been a response. Some people do modify their N7 (and other tablets) for use for their kids and so post here occasionally, but in general, it's not going to be as easy to get answers here as it is for the Nabi. I say that because the Nabi has a facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/nabitablet) which has a ton of activity. I came to it last December when we got our first Nabi and started helping less tech-savvy people with questions. The company, Fuhu, was enlightened enough with me and a couple of other parent who would help out that they made us official helpers or "Fan-a-Techs" and our number has grown to I think 16 or so overall. So generally when you post there any question, you will get multiple detailed answers almost any time of the day or night from us or from the Fuhu employees. They are truly one of the most customer-oriented companies I've seen. I've worked with them behind the scenes as well, and they are coming out with some really awesome kid-centric accessories for the Nabi 2 hopefully in time for the holidays as well. They are really a great company. Google isn't too shabby either ;-) And of course they are huge huge huge in comparison to Fuhu, but that size also means it is sometimes dificult to get a personalized answer or help from them, whereas that is fairly common for the Nabi, which is especially important if you are not particularly tech savvy...

Great info!! Thanks. This all helps me with deciding which is best. Maybe I'll just get the N7 for my 6yo and the Nabi 2 for my 4yo and maybe get the best of both worlds since it's so hard deciding on just 1 tablet. They both sound great, that offer different things. Hmmmm. I really do appreciate everyone taking the time to bare with me and help me along the right path!!

 

[dvdmon]

Just wanted to mention that the Nabi is going to be $129 at both Best Buy and Walmart for Black Friday. It actually went on sale at Bestbuy.com for that price this morning and sold out, but some people are apparently having luck refreshing the page multiple times and being able to buy it. I tried for the heck of it, and quit after 50 refreshes. But anyway, $129 for something pretty close to an N7 is I think a pretty good deal.

nabi - nabi 2 Tablet - 8GB Memory - NABI2NV7A

 

[Amylase453]

Here's what I'm doing for my kids:

• Nexus 7
• BobJ case
• Kid's Place Parental Control (free)

The Nabi 2 is fine but I don't want flash a ROM or have to deal with their skin or overlay, I'd rather mess around with my own stuff in my finite free time.

 

[dvdmon]

Here's what I'm doing for my kids:

• Nexus 7
• BobJ case
• Kid's Place Parental Control (free)

The Nabi 2 is fine but I don't want flash a ROM or have to deal with their skin or overlay, I'd rather mess around with my own stuff in my finite free time.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81s-yigmTWL._AA1500_.jpg

Total Price $220, right? Compare with Nabi 2 for $129 (Black Friday Price, which you can get right now if you go to Best Buy).

 

[Amylase453]

Total Price $220, right? Compare with Nabi 2 for $129 (Black Friday Price, which you can get right now if you go to Best Buy).

Correct. However I'm thinking about access to the Play store and resale value as well.

 

[dvdmon]

Correct. However I'm thinking about access to the Play store and resale value as well.

Yeah, resale value I have no idea about. Then again, at $129, I bet you could resell it for $75 in a year without too much of a problem and then you're out, what $50 for an entire year's worth of use?

As far as Google Play, it is true that it's much less painful to have full Google Play capability vs. sideloading, and if you don't want to have to root, that might be worth $100 to some. Hope you can find the N7 for a discounted price. Are there any BF sales for it?

 

[Husker Z]

Just a quick note, my sister and bro in law got their boy one last Christmas, the first Nabi and they say its been the biggest POS they've ever purchased. Nothing works right on it and the battery tanked after just a couple of months. I'm sure it's improved, but it truly seems more of a toy than anything. I got my kids 8&4 the N7 for Xmas, I think they are going to love it.

 

[dvdmon]

Just a quick note, my sister and bro in law got their boy one last Christmas, the first Nabi and they say its been the biggest POS they've ever purchased. Nothing works right on it and the battery tanked after just a couple of months. I'm sure it's improved, but it truly seems more of a toy than anything. I got my kids 8&4 the N7 for Xmas, I think they are going to love it.

We had the first Nabi as well, and yes, the quality was not great compared with higher-end tablets. More on par with cheapo no-name brands. However the current Nabi is like night and day different. It has the same processor as the N7 and is incredibly quick and responsive. We've had almost zero glitches and Fuhu pushed firmware updates to the tablet 3 times to both remove bugs and increase performance, battery life, etc. The N7 is a great tablet of course, and definitely has some advantages (and some disadvantages) to the Nabi, and I'm sure they will love it. For those who are looking to save a little money without sacrificing a lot, though, I still think that the Black Friday price for the Nabi 2 is an incredible bargain, so for those who want to give a tablet to 2 or more kids, you could end up saving hundreds of dollars by opting for that over the N7.

Also, another note - Fuhu just came out with sneak previews of a whole bunch of (kid-friendly) accessories to the Nabi that will go on sale in 5 days on their online store. No pricing info yet, and just images, but there's stuff like keyboards, kickstands, REALLY nice headphones that have volume limiting in kids mode but not parent mode, etc. You can see them on the Nabi's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nabitablet

 

[akaluza]

All great info everyone!! We've decided to get 1 nabi 2 and 1 Nexus 7. We have 3 children. So with the Nabi 2 having access to Fooz Kids university (everything educational) and the N7 having access to Google Play. We can enjoy the best of both worlds. Both seem like great tablets, that offer different things.

 

[akaluza]

All great info everyone!! We've decided to get 1 nabi 2 and 1 Nexus 7. We have 3 children. So with the Nabi 2 having access to Fooz Kids university (everything educational) and the N7 having access to Google Play. We can enjoy the best of both worlds. Both seem like great tablets, that offer different things.

I do realize if you're super tech. savvy you can root the Nabi to Google Play, but.... I am not. LOL!!

 

[dvdmon]

I do realize if you're super tech. savvy you can root the Nabi to Google Play, but.... I am not. LOL!!

Sure, but remember that you can also sideload any apps from your N7 onto your Nabi 2. Here's a blog post that has step-by-step directions to do just that.

Wanting to Play! ~ Everything Nabi!

Also, definitely check out the Nabi Facebook page and support page for lots of great info, and you might want to pick up a microSDHC card to store music, photos, videos, etc. - you can convert your kids favorite DVD's to digital files and put them on that for viewing in the car or anywhere else that doesn't have Wifi. Good luck!

 

[Amylase453]

At $129 its compelling, assuming you can get one at that price. The specs are good, but I would still rather pay the extra $70 to have access to the Play store without messing around with ADB, rooting, installing GApps etc. The screen is not as good as the Nexus 7 and the N7 has 16gb of storage versus the 8gb of the Nabi.

With 4.2 and multiple users, I could easily set it up as a 7" option for me if I don't want to bring the Nexus 10 with me. I've tested this with the N10 and the Kids Place app I posted earlier.

The Nabi 2 does one thing very well. For a little more I can make a N7 do the same thing. And, the N7 does a lot more when its not a kids tablet.

 

[davela72]

We had the first Nabi as well, and yes, the quality was not great compared with higher-end tablets. More on par with cheapo no-name brands. However the current Nabi is like night and day different. It has the same processor as the N7 and is incredibly quick and responsive. We've had almost zero glitches and Fuhu pushed firmware updates to the tablet 3 times to both remove bugs and increase performance, battery life, etc. The N7 is a great tablet of course, and definitely has some advantages (and some disadvantages) to the Nabi, and I'm sure they will love it. For those who are looking to save a little money without sacrificing a lot, though, I still think that the Black Friday price for the Nabi 2 is an incredible bargain, so for those who want to give a tablet to 2 or more kids, you could end up saving hundreds of dollars by opting for that over the N7.

Also, another note - Fuhu just came out with sneak previews of a whole bunch of (kid-friendly) accessories to the Nabi that will go on sale in 5 days on their online store. No pricing info yet, and just images, but there's stuff like keyboards, kickstands, REALLY nice headphones that have volume limiting in kids mode but not parent mode, etc. You can see them on the Nabi's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/nabitablet

Not to jump too off topic, but I saw all of the accessories that are going to be released for the Nabi and am very impressed! I think it's the fact that for a small company, they are releasing such a variety of what appear to be quality accessories.

My wife and I waited at Wal Mart last night for roughly an hour and a half and picked up 2 Nabi's. I am going to play with one of them to get the Play store to work, it doesn't look like too difficult of a task. My wife wanted me to give our 8yo daughter the N7 that I recently picked up for Christmas but I'm having a hard time with that.

 

[dvdmon]

Not to jump too off topic, but I saw all of the accessories that are going to be released for the Nabi and am very impressed! I think it's the fact that for a small company, they are releasing such a variety of what appear to be quality accessories.

My wife and I waited at Wal Mart last night for roughly an hour and a half and picked up 2 Nabi's. I am going to play with one of them to get the Play store to work, it doesn't look like too difficult of a task. My wife wanted me to give our 8yo daughter the N7 that I recently picked up for Christmas but I'm having a hard time with that.

Dave, just a heads up that both Walmart and Best Buy seem to have way underestimated the demand for the Nabi on Black Friday and due to the large number of new tablets out there, Fuhu is having some server issues when it comes to creating your initial account. If you've done this successfully so far, great, but if not (or if you run into any other issues getting to some of the Foozkids apps), you might want to wait till later today when they resolve the issues.

 

[davela72]

Dave, just a heads up that both Walmart and Best Buy seem to have way underestimated the demand for the Nabi on Black Friday and due to the large number of new tablets out there, Fuhu is having some server issues when it comes to creating your initial account. If you've done this successfully so far, great, but if not (or if you run into any other issues getting to some of the Foozkids apps), you might want to wait till later today when they resolve the issues.

I just read that on their FB page, thanks for the heads up. Yes, I was surprised that a LOT of people in line at WM were there for the Nabi. OK, back to Nexus10 material, I'll quit hijacking.

 

[Amylase453]

Just an update on this.

I bought two Nexus 7's as I intended. I checked at the time and the $129 Nabi's were out of stock. I hadn't really intended to go that route but I checked into it.

Cases: I still like the BobJ case I linked earlier but I actually wound up with the Seidio ACTIVE Case for Google Nexus 7. They were $7 more, each, than the BobJ and the colors were a little more subdued. The Amazon.com: Poetic REVOLUTION was another front runner but only comes in black and I already deal with enough "that's mine" from little people. The colors make it easy to figure out what tablet belongs to what kid.

Screen protectors: I bought some clear 3-pack from Ebay.

Parental Control: I am currently test driving several. The best launcher replacement is KIDOZ however I really want the kids to use a less custom "Fisher Price" looking interface, i.e. Android. The solution thus far is Funamo. This basically sets up controls leaving stock Android (mostly) as is. I really like this one, kicker so far is that it's $20 per tablet.

 

[PoledratheSorceress]

Hi there. I was wondering how you were getting on with Funamo. I got a nexus 10 which the family want to share and, after the 7 yo got herself onto YouTube, I'm looking to wrest back some control, while still letting them have their own user accounts.

 

[anon(847090)]

Hi there. I was wondering how you were getting on with Funamo. I got a nexus 10 which the family want to share and, after the 7 yo got herself onto YouTube, I'm looking to wrest back some control, while still letting them have their own user accounts.

have tou tried kids place? https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...ils?id=com.kiddoware.kidsplace&token=oO0BTSm9

Features:
★ Custom home screen displays only apps that parents have authorized
★ Can prevent children from buying or downloading new apps
★ Capable of blocking incoming calls when Kids Place is running
★ Capable of disabling all wireless signals while Kids Place is running to avoid exposure to cell phone, wifi and Bluetooth radiation
★ Can restarts apps accidentally stopped by small children, allowing parents to stay focused on their own tasks.
★ Add custom wallpaper to customize your child?s experience while in Kids Place
★ Timer feature to lock Kids Place after specified amount of time.
★ Appropriate for children of all ages - babies, toddlers, even teenagers

 

[Devlyn16]

Thanks for the link Still1, I will add it to my bookmarked apps in the play store incase i ever need to share it with another parent.

 

[Amylase453]

Hi there. I was wondering how you were getting on with Funamo. I got a nexus 10 which the family want to share and, after the 7 yo got herself onto YouTube, I'm looking to wrest back some control, while still letting them have their own user accounts.

Funamo is great. It's transparent (until something restricted is attempted) the support is great, the online web console is very good too. I bought Funamo after testing some free options, Funamo is the way to go IMO. I also installed Cerberus.