The Sprout Channel Cubby and the Orbo Jr are both 7″ tablets designed for children, so what are the differences between the two? Both tablets have 7″ touchscreens and both screens have a resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Each tablet comes with a protective bumper intended to reduce the chances of damage if the tablet is dropped, although the bumper on the Orbo covers more of the tablet than that of the Cubby. The Orbo’s bumper also comes in different colours, blue, pink, red and green, whilst that of the Cubby only comes in green.
Both tablets are Android tablets, with the Jr running 4.1.2 Jelly Bean whilst the Cubby runs the more recent 4.4 KitKat. Each also has access to Google Play, but this can only be accessed on the Cubby outside of Cubby Mode.
The memory of the Cubby is substantially higher than that of the Orbo. The Cubby comes with 16 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory, four times the 4GB available on the Orbo. Each tablet also has a memory card slot, allowing the available memory to be expanded using memory cards of up to 32GB in size.
Both tablets comes with stereo speakers, a microphone and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Each tablet has two cameras, a front facing and a rear facing one, although on the Cubby both of these cameras are 2.0 megapixel (MP) whilst on the Orbo only the rear facing camera is 2.0 MP; the front facing camera is only 1.3 MP in resolution.
Each tablet comes with WiFi, but the Cubby also comes with Bluetooth, allowing a greater range of devices to be communicated with. Each has a micro USB port but the Cubby also comes with an HDMI port as well, which can be used to connect the tablet to such as suitable televisions. The Cubby has a quad core processor, whilst the Orbo Jr only has a dual core.
Regarding parental controls, the Cubby comes with them built-in, allowing a parent to control what sites and apps their child has access to, especially as Google Play can only be accessed through the parental mode, as well as limit the time they spend on the tablet. The Orbo has no parental controls as standard.
The Sprout Channel Cubby is noticeably more expensive than the Orbo Jr, but it is also substantially more powerful and capable, having more memory and a more powerful processor.