TABLETS FOR CHILDREN PREDATE even the iPad. They usually offer a range of features making them degrees more durable, uncomplicated, and accessible to tiny fingers and developing minds. The Fuhu nabi Pass Tab, though, may be the first of its kind that offers a compelling case for your money. It?s not so much what it does, but how you pay for it.
The Pass Tab plan, available for preorder now and shipping June 16th, gets you a 7-inch tablet with ample padding and a bevy of kid-friendly features, including access to rotating content from Disney, DreamWorks Animation, National Geographic Kids, and more. In this way, the device itself isn?t all that indistinguishable from the Amazon Fire HD 6 Kids Edition, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Kids tablet, or the iPad mini with a cheap third-party bumper case. Unlike those other toddler tablets, though, Fuhu Pass Tab doesn?t require you to pay up front. You subscribe for as little as $10 a month, or the price of a decent sandwich.
Fuhu offers two Pass Tab plans, both for the same device. That $10 per month covers a two-year span, and if you?d rather cut ties after 12 months, the number balloons to $15. Want to keep the tablet after your subscriptions up? That?ll just a be a buck for the first plan, while the latter comes with a $20 buy-out.
That may sound like it still adds up to a lot; your total payout comes to $241, max. But consider what you?re getting. That 7-inch tablet, a nabi 2S, has a powerful Tegra 3 processor, a full gigabyte of RAM, and runs a heavily modified version of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, a reasonably recent release. And all the content that the Pass Tab includes, the apps and ebooks and music and games? You?d pay five bucks a month for that alone on other Fuhu tablets. You?d be paying even more a la carte on tablets that aren?t made by Fuhu.
In that context, the Pass Tab nearly holds its own in pricing next to its closest competition, Amazon?s Fire HD Kids Edition, while offering more horsepower and a design focus geared strictly toward children?this isn?t a grown-up tablet retrofitted with a safety bumper and an interface overlay. If anything, one could argue that Pass Tab provides more power than any child might need, an assertion that Fuhu CEO Jim Mitchell naturally refutes.
Read more at?WIRED
