Our Review of the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet

The iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet is a children’s tablet from iRulu. It comes with a 1024×600 pixel resolution screen and a protective case, that has additional strengthening at the corners, the most vulnerable point of a tablet’s screen, in green, yellow and pink.

The Kids Tablet is an Android tablet running Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box and comes with Google Play preinstalled, allowing it access to the Android content network. The tablet has 16 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory and a memory card slot capable of taking memory cards up to 32 GB in size. It has a 0.3-megapixel (MP) front facing camera and a 2.0 MP rear facing one. It comes with 1 GB of RAM and has a quad core processor.

The Kids Tablet comes with Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi. It has a micro USB port and a headphone jack and front mounted stereo speakers. The tablet’s listed battery life is 3-5 hours but, as always, this will vary depending on the use the tablet is put to.

The Kids tablet is GMS certified, where GMS stands for Google Mobile Services, which is Google’s application suite that isn’t part of the open source Android OS. GMS Certification is required to run such as YouTube, Gmail and Chrome. GMS Certification is often less important for children’s tablets, as they are often limited by various controls from using such services anyway. Therefore, although this certification does show compatibility, some of those services may not be installed anyway.

The 3-5 hours battery life is on the poor side, especially at the bottom end of 3 hours. The screen resolution is also at the lower end, although still quite common in 7″ tablets, and the front camera resolution is definitely at the bottom. Some tablets do still have front facing cameras with such a low resolution, but these are becoming more uncommon. Similarly, the rear facing camera’s resolution is also at the bottom end; no tablets have less and quite a few now have more. The front mounted speakers are more unusual, and are useful; most tablets tend to have rear mounted speakers, which get easily muffled if the tablet is laid on a surface, or even held in the hand if the hands cover a speaker.

Does the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet Have Any Parental Controls?

Parents naturally want to keep their children safe online, by controlling what they can access, and also to control how long a child spends on their tablet. This is where parental controls come in. The iRulu Kids Tablet comes with third party parental controls provided by iWawa. Using the Parental Control Interface, parents can create accounts for their children and add games, apps and websites that they want their children to be able to use or visit.

In addition, the parental controls also have time controls. This allows a parent to control how long and when children use their tablet. A daily limit can be set, giving a maximum amount of time that a child can use a tablet. Start and stop times can also be set, so a child can’t use a tablet when they should be asleep, for example. The amount of time that a child can use a tablet within these periods can also be defined, so that they don’t spend too long on it in one use, and a rest time before the tablet can be used again, can also be set.

Can Children Watch Streaming Video on the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet?

Streaming video includes films and entertainment from places such as YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime. This is an Android tablet and comes with YouTube already installed; parents should probably check that children access YouTube Kids instead of the YouTube site. Other streaming services can be installed, through Google play, and again parents should be careful about just what children have access to, ensuring that they can only view age-appropriate media and that they can’t purchase content themselves, using the parental controls and any controls that the services might also have.

Does the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet Have Any Educational Uses?

Education is frequently stated as a primary reason for purchasing a children’s tablet. The Kids Tablet does not have any specific educational uses built into it. Some tablets have such incorporated into the parental controls, but those from iWawa are not specifically designed that way. Instead, it has been certified as being a safe way for children to study, thanks to the parental controls. Parents can install educational apps, using such as Google Play, and also choose educational sites that children can visit.

Can Children Play Games on the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet?

Even though games may not be specified as a primary reason as to why children are bought tablets, it can be useful for children to be able to play them. Games can be added to a tablet as a reward for achieving something else, for example.

The tablet comes with Google Play preinstalled and games can be downloaded from that store and installed on it. Parents can download games through the parental controls, then allow children to access them.

Other than app-based games, there are also websites where games can be found. Parents will need to ensure that any such sites have appropriate games, as many will not.

Summing up the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet

At 7″, the Kids Tablet is still at a pretty standard size for a children’s tablets, even though larger tablets are becoming increasingly more common. At 16 GB, the internal memory is still in the standard range for children’s tablets, although internal memory is starting to trend higher as well. The memory card size is still typical; a few children’s tablets take larger ones, but not many yet. The rear camera is still at a typical resolution; again, these are trending higher with better resolutions. The front camera is definitely poorer in resolution than almost every children’s tablet. The screen resolution is still fairly typical for a 7″ tablet.

The battery life is on the poor side. Five hours is at best typical, and given that the tablet is rated as potentially having only three hours, this is definitely at the bottom end of the range, especially for a tablet that is not hugely advanced. Overall, the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet is not a terribly impressive tablet. Technically, it is lagging behind many of the other children’s tablets on the market nowadays, and doesn’t have the most fully-featured parental controls, even for third party controls.

Find out more about the iRulu 7″ Kids Tablet.