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“Tablets are proving to be an interactive learning tool for kids with tablet-owning families, with 57 percent of children using educational applications and 77 percent playing downloaded games“, according to a study from Nielsen Co.
If you child is one of the 77 percent that use a tablet to play games then you know how controlling which apps they download and play can be a chore. Then you also have to worry about them clicking over to your work files, the texting app, the YouTube app and more things that aren’t intended for children. Amazon’s answer is Kindle FreeTime Unlimited.
Exclusive to the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, FreeTime Unlimited offers parents an easy way to control exactly where their children go on their tablet while offering a complete inventory of free games, videos and books to keep them interested. For a monthly fee Amazon will provide a collection of educational and fun apps within a locked user screen set up for your child.
The Pros
Variety is King — FreeTime Unlimited offers thousands of games, educational apps, books and videos which are safe for your child. Set up is easy enough with the app already standard on Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD models. Parents can register an account through their Kindle Fire, set up monthly payment and then set up a profile for their child. The child’s age is used as a guide for which apps will be available through the service.
Secure and Safe — Parents have the option to limit or lock almost every aspect of their Kindle while in FreeTime mode. Activities such as using the browser, downloading apps, changing the volume, accessing video and exiting FreeTime can be locked with a parent chosen password (I recommend using a short password because you will need to type it often). You can also set time limits. One extra bonus is that, even if the Kindle is shut off or restarted, FreeTime will still be active when it starts back up again.
Great Value — Apps can be expensive. $2.00 for a game your child loves may not seem like a lot, but when your child loves 12 different games then the cost adds up. As your child grows older you also have to continuously refresh the selection to match their increasing intelligence and abilities. FreeTime offers a continuous stream of apps (some free anyway, but a large percentage paid if bought separately) for one monthly fee.
Amazon also takes care of the app rotation and adjusting the selection to your child’s age as they grow. But that leads me to my first issue with this app…
The Cons
Limited Control Over Apps — FreeTime claims to provide only apps that are age appropriate for your child. When you set up their profile you select their birthday so the app can pull games, books and videos that match their level of learning and ability. Unfortunately, the apps selected for my child were not always age appropriate. None of them were violent or scary, but many are for a higher age group. My son is 3, yet there were many apps in his rotation that were for kids in the 8 – 12 range. Things such as advanced reading (where the game depended on the child reading a full sentence to play), apps in other languages like Dutch and French, or complex math such as multiplication problems. These apps only served to frustrate my son.
Crashes, Crashes and more Crashes — Within only a few weeks of use, any video app began to crash. Disney Junior, PBS Kids, etc – all died within seconds of starting a video. Sometimes the video would just freeze and other times the entire screen would go black. At times I could use the back arrow and return to the main screen, but usually I had to hard reboot the system. Typically, after backing out of the video, the sound still played. The app was keeping the videos (sometimes several at once) cached in the background. I would be forced to exit FreeTime (password), access the Kindle settings (password), force stop the app, clear the data and reboot. This happened with almost every video that was viewed through FreeTime. If I exited the app and started a video on my Netflix app or Amazon Instant Video – it played without error.
Storage Issues — With each video or game FreeTime left running in the cache, more memory was gone. Typically the Kindle would freeze with a ‘Storage Running Low’ error within a few days of use. This required yet more time to force stop all of the apps, clear the data and – often – completely uninstall apps before yet another hard reboot. At one point I had uninstalled all FreeTime apps and cleared data — and the memory was still 75% taken by ‘unknown’. After a factory reset it went back to a reasonable level. So what was FreeTime storing? I have no idea.
No Removal — Don’t want your child playing Sponge Bob games? Want to get rid of that app that keeps freezing and making your toddler scream? Too bad. There is no way to completely remove apps from FreeTime. You can uninstall an app, but your child can reactivate it from the FreeTime library at any time.
RJC Rating:
[krating type=”group” group=”Variety Offered , 4.0 | Price , 5.0 | Ease of Use , 2.0 | Performance , 1.5 | Customization & Control , 2.0″ showvalue=”true” overall=”true” overalltext=”OVERALL RATING” color=”yellow” shape=”star”]
The vast, rotating library offered by FreeTime is a step above other child safety apps. Unfortunately, the overall performance, crash issues and lack of complete control make this app more hassle than help.
If you’re looking for a way to make your Kindle Fire or Fire HD child friendly, I suggest searching out a different safety app (We now use Kids Place Parental Control) and manually downloading some of the hundreds of free apps on Amazon. My son now has a child-locked screen with over 30 apps that don’t crash – and it didn’t cost me a dime. It may take more time to set up and change out the apps when he needs something new, but it’s less stress than dealing with the errors of FreeTime Unlimited.
