Our Review of the nabi Jr

The nabi Jr. is a 5″ tablet designed for children manufactured by Fuhu. The tablet has an 800×480 resolution touchscreen and comes with a protective silicone bumper with extra strengthening at the corners in nabi’s signature red, intended to reduce the chance of damage if the tablet is dropped.

The Jr. an Android tablet, running 4.4 KitKat, with nabi’s Blue Morpho OS overlay, an overlay of the standard Android operating system with over 400 kid-friendly and safe features incorporated into it. Although it is an Android tablet, it does not have access to Google Play but apps can be installed from Amazon.

The Jr. comes with 8 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory and a micro SD card slot, which will take memory cards up to 32 GB in size. The Jr. comes with a single, 2.0 megapixel, camera. This is not front or rear mounted, as is the case in the majority of tablets. Instead, it is swivel mounted on one end of the tablet, and the swivel allows the camera to be pointed forwards, backwards or any point between.

For wireless communication, the tablet comes with the essential WiFi, the less common, in children’s tablets, Bluetooth and the rather rare (in children’s, and many adult’s, tablets) NFC, or Near Field Communication. WiFi allows the tablet to connect to the internet and Bluetooth allows it to communicate with other Bluetooth-enabled devices, including such as Bluetooth speakers. NFC is a very short range, a few centimetres, very secure and slow method of sending data between two NFC-enabled devices, a feature that is most commonly seen in contactless payment methods. Given how rare NFC is in children’s devices, this is most likely to be used between two nabi tablets.

The tablet comes with two front-facing speakers, an integral microphone and a 3.5mm headphone jack. For connecting to other devices, it has a custom nabi Connector port, which functions as both a USB port and an HDMI port, but requires a custom cable. It has a quad core processor and 1GB of RAM.

At 800×480 pixels, the tablet’s resolution is quite low, but this is a smaller tablet and lower resolutions are more common on smaller tablets than they are on larger ones. There is only a single camera, although it is not simply front-facing, or rear-facing, for that matter. Being swivel-mounted means that the camera can be pointed forwards, for such as selfies and video chatting, or backwards, for more normal use, and any point in-between. At 2.0 MP the camera is on the lower end for a child’s tablet; some tablets have better resolution but not many have worse for their primary camera.

At 8 GB, the internal memory is not that high, compared to many newer children’s tablets, although a substantial proportion of older models do still only have this amount of memory. The ability to take a 32 GB memory card is also pretty standard, as is the amount of RAM. The nabi Connector is more of a nuisance, as it requires a custom cable to use with the port, so if there are any problems with the cable, a new one will need getting; a standard micro USB cannot simply be used to replace it.

What Age is the nabi Jr. Suitable For?

The nabi Jr. is aimed at younger children, of age 3-5 years. This is younger than is typically the case for most children’s tablets; although 3 years is usually the minimum age suggested, the maximum age is normally higher. This puts it definitely into a starter tablet category. Children will therefore outgrow the tablet comparatively rapidly, more so than might be the case with other, more powerful, tablets.

Does the nabi Jr. Have Any Parental Controls?

It is important for parents to be able to protect their children online, and this is where parental controls are important. The nabi Jr. is child-safe out of the box and has two modes, nabi Mode and Parent Mode. In the password-protected Parent Mode the tablet will operate like a normal Android tablet and parents can use it as such, as well as controlling what their children are able to do and check up on usage. In nabi Mode, the Jr. will function as a child-safe tablet.

What Are the nabi Jr.’s Time Controls?

The time controls on the tablet are part of the parental controls on the Jr. These controls allow parents to monitor what their child is doing on the tablet. Parents can see just how much time a child is spending on the tablet, and how much time they are spending on individual apps and activities.

Parents can set time limits for app groups and individual apps, as well as for the tablet as A whole. Parents can set mandatory exercise times, during which animated characters encourage the child to exercise. As a reward for spending time using educational apps, parents can reward a child with more time on other apps and games.

Once a time limit is reached, the tablet does not simply turn off. Instead, animated characters will let the child know it is time to do other things, such as play, sleep, exercise or homework.

Does the nabi Jr. Have Any Educational Uses?

Education is often stated as being a primary reason why parents buy a tablet for their children, even though, over time, the tablet may be used for recreation as well. The primary educational facility of the Jr. is with the Wings Learning System, but users can also install educational apps and visit educational sites, which broadens the educational experience available.

What is the Wings Learning System?

The Wings Learning System is a suite of educational apps that is part of nabi’s Blue Morpho OS overlay. The learning system consists of three primary components.

Wings First Steps comes with the complete pre-kindergarten curriculum in reading, writing and maths installed, which has 1,450 free lessons, or a full years’ worth of lessons. It also has 200 assessment problems in English and Maths for kindergarten courses.

Wings Classroom has various videos that can walk a child through core concepts.

Wings N-Site is the part of Wings that parents can use. It gives grade-based assessment’s of their child’s progress, how a child can improve in problem areas and usage reports.

What Are nabi Coins and the Treasure Box?

Nabi tablets come with a curated app store, the Treasure Box, and nabi Coins. Nabi Coins are a virtual currency and parents can purchase these Coins with real money, then give the Coins to a child. This means that children can use these Coins to purchase things from nabi without using real money. Children can be rewarded with nabi Coins for anything they choose. There is a built in app called the Chore List which parents can give Coins in exchange for completing items on their list. The Coins can then be used to purchase content from the Treasure Chest, nabi’s curated app store.

Can Children Play Games on the nabi Jr?

Being able to play games may not be the stated primary reason for purchasing a tablet for children – education often is – but it is often a secondary one. For one thing, being able to play games can be used as an incentive for a child to do something else.

Using nabi Coins, children can buy their own games, as well as other content, from Treasure Box, nabi’s curated app store, as previously mentioned. Curated means that there will not be the sort of inappropriate content that could be found on other app stores.

Summing Up the nabi Jr.

At 8 GB, the nabi Jr. now has a fairly average amount of storage. More modern tablets will usually have more; however, given the age range the tablet is aimed at, the memory should be adequate. Being able to expand the storage with memory cards is useful, and now pretty much standard.

The screen resolution is on the low end, but this is a smaller tablet, and lower resolutions are more common on smaller tablets. The tablet as a whole is smaller than the typical tablet, as most are in the 7″ range; some are bigger few are the same size and there are probably no smaller ones currently. The tablet being smaller should not be much of a problem, as it is aimed at younger children with smaller hands. The camera resolution is fine, although having a rotating camera is unusual, and perhaps a point of vulnerability.

What is probably the biggest drawback, and this is currently true of other nabi tablets, is he custom nabi Port, which requires a similarly custom cable. Although this is pretty standard for nabi tablets, it is more inconvenient than a standard micro USB port, should the custom cable get damaged. A standard micro USB port can take a standard cable, something many households have lying around. This custom port requires the purchase of a custom cable.

This is definitely a starter tablet and one that will more than likely not be usable for as many years as a more advanced tablet would be, as children will want better, more capable tablets. The nabi Jr should be considered as something suitable for a child’s first proper tablet rather than anything more than that.

Find out more about the nabi Jr.