SmarTab 7 product reviews

We'd had a really good tablet and it ended up getting dropped and not working anymore, looking at options and wanting something more child friendly, so after doing some looking around, and looking at our bank balance, this tablet was on special and we chose to pick up one of these.

I ran into trouble with it right out of the box. When it first starts up, and you set everything up, you can enter in a password for the Child's Mode, it only takes 8 characters and my first attempt was 9, it hasn't told me of this and when I tried to get out of Child's Mode I was unable to and had to reboot the entire system, the second time around only putting in 7 characters and this time it was fine. The tablet does come with quite a few games already downloaded as part of the system, which my kids are really enjoying, there's even some that are nice for learning a bit such as a dot to dot game which includes both numbers and ABC's which has been useful with teaching my children how to count and their ABC's.

One aspect of this that I really like is that I can go into Child's Mode and change the settings so that I can pick which apps that I have added, can be accessed by the kids ie. downloaded Netflix but I don't want my four year old to have free reign on it, downloaded Fruit Ninja and was able to set it so they can't play on Netflix, but can on Fruit Ninja. There isn't a lot of room on the device to download a lot of apps, and obviously the more you download the worse this system operates, at one point we had twelve games downloaded on it and it was near impossible to use, a reboot and only two apps downloaded on it and it's working really well again.

You can connect this to your TV if you wish, but you will need a mini HDMI cable to be able to do so, which is handy for times you want to watch Netflix on the TV. The camera on this isn't the best in quality and there is one app where you can put yourself into the picture but due to the quality of it, it doesn't do the best job, also, it's very irritating when it comes to removing the hundred or so photos that Miss 4 does as I have to go into Child Mode, into the app and then delete each single photo one by one, no bulk delete option.

This isn't a bad tablet, though it can be a bit restricting and there was a time I really didn't like that, a few months on I'm actually glad that I can't download a hundred apps on it, it means I have to think about what we download and ensure that it will be a good one for the children and not a literal waste of space on the device.. When in kids mode it is very easy for them to operate and they all enjoy their time on it, $199.99 in comparison to other devices isn't too expensive but I would have been happier to spend less on it.