My kids have had the Kindle Fire tablets for a few years. The hardware is pretty underpowered but they were super cheap. However the Amazon software on top of it is fucking TERRIBLE. To allow your kid to access a web site, you have to log into the tablet with your own PIN, twice for no reason, then wait for the horribly laggy app to load, then add the site, then go back to the kids' login.<p>My hopes for this Kindle reader wouldn't be high.
Walled gardens like the Apple iPad and Kindle provide strong management controls for content and time management. And these seem necessary to help parents manage how their children consume.<p>The risk for competitive ecosystems without these central controls, of course, is that people have a tendency to stick with the tools they know. And I am certain that these companies consider the stickiness of their ecosystem as kids transition into adulthood.
My elementary aged child has a Kindle locked in FreeTime mode. He checks out Kindle books from our local library from my phone once a week. There's no clunky E-reader based browsing for books, a near infinite supply of well curated books by librarians, no subscription, and it involves all steps he can do by himself. I highly recommend this setup for anyone thinking of a device like this!
Sounds like a rather well designed offering, pricing seems to be fine as well.<p>But imagine the horror if your kids most sacred book gets removed from the offering by amazon and there is nothing you can do to fix this (besides buying the paper version, maybe). But would your kid know how to use it?