Tablet Comparison: LeapPad Ultimate vs nabi Jr

The LeapPad Ultimate is an educational tablet for children whilst the nabi Jr is a starter tablet. The first difference is the size; the Ultimate is a 7″ tablet whilst the nabi Jr is only a 5″ tablet. The Ultimate has a higher screen resolution than the nabi Jr; 1280×800 pixels compared to the 800×480 pixels of the Jr, although larger tablets do tend to have better resolutions. Both come with a protective case. The Ultimate’s case comes in several colours and can store the included stylus; the nabi’s case comes in nabi’s signature red.

The nabi Jr is an Android tablet running 4.4 KitKat, although this does come with nabi’s Blue Morpho OS overlay, a suite of child-friendly and parent-approved tweaks for the OS. The Ultimate is not an Android tablet, running Brio OS, and can only get apps from the LeapFrog App Center or use LeapFrog cartridges with its cartridge slot.

Both tablets come with 8 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory, although the nabi also comes with a memory card slot capable of taking memory cards up to 32 GB in size, something the Ultimate lacks. Both tablets come with WiFi; the nabi Jr also comes with Bluetooth and Near Field Communication, the latter being a short range, secure wireless transmission method uncommon in children’s tablets. The Ultimate has a micro USB port whilst the Jr has a nabi Connector, a custom port that functions as both USB and HDMI but requires a custom cable.

The Ultimate has front and rear facing cameras, both of which have a resolution of 2.0 megapixels (MP). The Jr has only a single, swivel-mounted 2.0 MP camera.

Both tablets come with parental controls supplied by the manufacturer. The parental controls on the Ultimate are LeapFrog’s own, very strong and inflexible controls that only allow children to access around 1,000 pieces of manually approved web content. The nabi’s controls are built into the Blue Morpho OS overlay, along with the Wings Learning System and nabi Coins.

The tablets are aimed at different markets; the Ultimate is an educational tablet and the Jr is a starter one, although it does have good educational features as part of the OS overlay. Even though it is smaller, the Jr does have some better technical specs in some areas than the Ultimate, and is certainly more flexible online and has access to a wider range of cheaper apps. The LeapPad Ultimate is a narrow-focus educational tablet whilst the nabi Jr is a more fully-featured tablet which also has decent educational features.