nabi 2 - a tablet for kids

I happen to have done my taxes already and I knew ahead of time that I was going to be spending that money on some not-so-fun things.  I had been scoping out this just for kids tablet, the nabi 2, and knew I wanted to get one for each of the boys with a little bit of "fun money".  (Because, let's face it, we really don't have much of that any other time of the year!)  As a blogger, I tried to find real parent reviews on it before buying, but there weren't really any that I could relate to.  They were more techy-bloggers and seemed to have a bias toward one brand or another and that's not what I was looking for.  I thought I'd put up a little something that might help others find what I was looking for in my initial searches!

Out of the box:

The nabi 2 doesn't have any sort of charge and you can't turn it on.  That was slightly irritating because the boys were with me when I bought them and, of course, wanted to check them out right away.  We let them charge and one seemed to charge WAY faster than the other.  That other one still seems to have some quirks, it doesn't turn on very well and doesn't like to charge.

Set up:

After it had charged and I got one of them to turn on, I found it really easy to use.  Everything was pretty self explanatory.  I set up the "mommy mode" account and put in Little Man's name (because his had charged faster and was the first one I did).  I did have to run an update on each of them, but that was easy.  I went into "Mommy Mode" and clicked the icon.  That's it, it did everything it needed to do.

When I went to set up Talker Man's, I wanted to make sure I could use the same "mommy account" for both of them, it just seems easier that way.  I could, thank goodness, and it was simple.  For the second one, instead of doing "set up account" there was a "sign in" option.

Use:

Little Man just turned 3 in November, but has had plenty of experience using my phone so he knew pretty well how to work it.  He watches a lot of the videos (Thank you, Fuhu, for putting Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on there!!) and does some of the games.  The learning segments are too advanced for him so far and I haven't searched around for many apps that are more his age level.  He does really enjoy the puzzles, so that's a plus!

Talker Man turned 6 earlier this month is able to do some of the educational stuff and plays a lot of the games and gets onto Cartoon Network and watches his shows on there.  He also really likes all the music that's available.  He's not quite as into it as I thought he would be, surprisingly enough.  I thought he'd be the one to enjoy it more, but he's kind of on a Minecraft kick and that's what he wants to do most of the time.

Little Miss Princess turned 2 at the end of December and she gets in on the nabi 2 as well.  She can watch her videos when one of the boys is willing to share.  I didn't get her one, she wouldn't get much out of it at this point.  

Semi-techy stuff:

Nabi 2 has an Android operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich), which I love, it's familiar for all of us.  No complaints there.  I like that there's the button in mommy mode to easily update the tablet and if there's a problem, you can use "nabi MD" to get immediate answers to the problem you may have come across.

App Zone 2.0: With over 500, mom-selected, kid-approved apps, App Zone 2.0 is the only curated App store made just for kids. App Zone 2.0 isn't just a website link to an aggregator of apps, it is a tried, tested and approved grouping of apps hand picked by our community of moms and dads. Search by Create, Entertain, Learn, Play and Read categories and rely on our parental guidance filters to know it's the right app for your kids!

nabi cloud: Your content anywhere. nabi™ Cloud does more than just store your content - it backs it up! Effortlessly keep your apps, games, music, movies and photos in nabi™ Cloud and never set up a second nabi again. It's automatic - sync your content to nabi™ Cloud and see it magically appear on your nabi! 2GB FREE storage, upgradable to 50GB.  

nabi sync: nabi™ Sync is a PC or Mac application (available for download) that let's you synchronize your photos, music, movies and more, and transfer them to and from your nabi. Your stuff...made easy. No wires, no SD cards - simply install the application on your computer and sync. Easy!  

For parents:

Yes, you can use it too!  It has several things already loaded (Skype, etc) and from what I can tell, it can be used for Netflix too.  I haven't tried it all out yet, the kids have been using them so much and I haven't had the time to sit down and really figure it out.  I bought them for the kids, so they're using them more than I do at the moment.

How it's holding up:

You can bet I got the store replacement warranty on these.  I love my kids, but they can sometimes be a little rough on things.  They've been dropped, they're fine.  One's screen got colored on with a black marker -- a little baby wipe and it came right off, it works fine.  They've gotten sticky and fingerprinty and wipe off cleanly.  I should really get screen protectors, but so far they still look great!  I wish there was an option to put their names on them somehow, there's always an argument over whose is whose, and of course the one that's charged is the one that's always everybody's.  The dead one apparently always belongs to the kid who doesn't want to play. ;)  I see they have some accessories coming out that look pretty nice!  There are different colored bumpers that would probably help with the "whose is whose" issue, and the headphones would be a huge plus, especially when they're both trying to play games in the car. 

What we think:

So far I love it.  We've only had them for a couple of weeks, but I really don't have complaints.  I wish they had Play Store on them to get some of the other apps that they enjoyed on my phone, but it's not really that big of a deal to us because there's so much other stuff to do on there.  I love that they can watch everything in the video sections that they can get to and I don't have to worry about them stumbling onto anything bad on You Tube.  We do wish it had Curious George on there, that's one show they all enjoy and can't get to on their tablets, but you can't have them all!  I'm very pleased with my purchases and I'm glad I could get one for each boy, because I can only imagine the fights that would be had if they had to share!  

 Disclaimer: I bought these myself, with my own money.  No compensation was received.