Tablet Comparison: LeapPad Ultimate vs Fire 7 Kids Edition

The LeapPad Ultimate is a children’s educational tablet and the Fire 7 Kids Edition is a more general-purpose tablet, so how do they differ? There is also the Fire 8 Kids Edition, which differs from the Fire 7 in a few ways. The Ultimate and the Fire 7 are both 7″ tablets and both have a 1024×600 pixel resolution screen (the Fire 8 is an 8″ tablet with a 1280×800 resolution screen). Both tablets come with a protective case in several colours; the Ultimate’s case has a slot for its accompanying stylus.

The Fire 7 is an Android tablet but it runs on Amazon’s own variant of the OS. It cannot easily install Google Play but comes with the Amazon Appstore installed. The Ultimate is not an Android tablet and cannot install Google Play. The only places that the Ultimate can get content from is the LeapFrog App Center or LeapFrog cartridges.

The Ultimate comes with 8 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory, and lacks a memory card slot. The Fire 7 comes with double that, with 16 GB of internal memory (the Fire 8 has 32 GB) and comes with a memory card slot capable of taking memory cards up to 256 GB. Both tablets have WiFi and a micro USB port; the Fire 7 also has Bluetooth.

Both tablets have front and rear cameras. Both cameras on the Ultimate have a 2.0-megapixel (MP) resolution, whilst only the rear facing camera on the Fire 7 has that; the front facing camera only has a resolution of 0.3 MP.

Both tablets come with parental controls supplied by the manufacturer. The parental controls on the Ultimate are LeapFrog’s very strong, inflexible controls. Children can only view around 1,000 pieces of hand-selected appropriate web content. The parental controls on the Fire 7 are far more flexible and are built into Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, a subscription service that comes with over 13,000 pieces of included content.

The Fire 7 also comes with Amazon’s 2 year “worry-free” guarantee, whereby Amazon state they will repair or replace a damaged tablet, even if the damage is accidental. The battery life of the Ultimate is listed as being 5+ hours; the battery life of the Fire 7 is 8 hours and of the Fire 8 is 10 hours.

In technical terms, the Ultimate is only better than the Fire 7 in one area, and that is of its front facing camera. In every other area, the Fire 7 beats it. The Amazon tablet’s guarantee also appears to be better. The LeapPad Ultimate is a very narrow focus educational tablet with limited uses outside that area whilst the Fire 7 Kids Edition is a far more capable general-purpose tablet, and the Fire 8 even more so.