Which Tablet is Better, the Dragon Touch K8 Kids or the Fire 8 Kids Edition?

The Dragon Touch K8 Kids and the Fire 8 Kids Edition are both 8″ tablets designed for children, so how do they compare? The Fire 8 is also available as the Fire 7, a 7″ version of the tablet. Each tablet has a screen resolution of 1280×800 pixels (that of the Fire 7 is 1024×600 pixels). The Fire 8 has a protective silicone bumper intended to reduce the chance of the tablet being damaged if it is dropped and comes in several colours. The K8 Kids has a two-tone protective case with integral stand and attached stylus.

Both tablets are Android tablets, with the K8 Kids running 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box. The Fire tablet, however, uses Amazon’s own offshoot of the Android OS. The K8 Kids comes with Google Play installed, whilst the Fire 8 does not, instead using the Amazon Appstore.

The K8 Kids comes with 16 gigabytes (GB) of internal memory whilst the Fire 8 comes with 32 GB (the Fire 7 only comes with 16 GB). Both tablets have memory card slots; that on the K8 Kids will take cards up to 32 GB whilst the Fire tablets take cards up to 256 GB. The tablets all have quad-core processors, WiFi, Bluetooth and a micro USB port.

Both tablets come with front and rear facing cameras. The K8 Kids has a 2.0 megapixel (MP) front-facing camera and a 5.0 MP rear-facing one. By contrast, the front-facing camera on the Fire 8 is only 0.3 MP and the rear facing only 2.0 MP. Both come with headphone jacks and the K8 Kids has a single speaker, compared to the stereo speakers on the Fire 8 (the Fire 7 only has a single speaker too).

Both tablets come with parental controls. Those on the K8 Kids are provided through KIDOZ, which has some included content, whilst those on the Fire 8 are through an included year’s subscription to Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, which comes with over 13,000 games, apps, TV shows, educational apps and ebooks. In both cases a parent can also control what their child has access to.

The Amazon tablet comes with Amazon’s 2 year “worry-free” guarantee where Amazon say that they will repair or replace a damaged or faulty tablet, stating that this includes accidental damage. The K8 Kids has a stated battery life of 3 hours whilst the Fire 8 has a stated life of 10 hours (the Fire 7’s life is stated as being 8 hours).

The cameras on the K8 Kids are substantially better than those on the Fire 8, but this is the only technical area where it exceeds the other tablet. The screen resolution is the same but the Fire 8 also comes with stereo speakers, more internal memory and greater memory card capacity. The Dragon Touch K8 Kids is a decent enough tablet but the Fire 8 Kids Edition looks to be generally a better tablet and comes with what looks like a superior guarantee.