General tablet advice needed please.

Here's my dilemma guys.
Our little lad needs a tablet for schoolwork and I've got no clue about them whatsoever.
It needs to be fairly robust and easy to use, and he is going to want to be able to play RTS games on it.
As well as things like Angry Birds!
He's just about to turn 5, so want to get it for him for his birthday

I've never had a tablet and frankly have never been comfortable with PC's that don't have keyboards or things like a cd/dvd drive.

So if any of you guys can just imagine I'm from the past and explain this to me in simple terms I'd appreciate it.

Stay away from the cheap ones as the glass easily breaks. My daughter got an Ipad mini from my mother-in-law and it's been holding up for the past two years with the otterbox. I hear that Samsung makes a great one for kids that's even water resistant. For the Ipad, Apple allows you 3 "accidents" under warranty. That's just my experience. My daughter loves it, of course.

the new iPad mini 3 in a three piece otterbox case should hold up nicely. it's light, fast, very easy to use and with the hardshell/builtin screen protection/rubber shock case it can take a pretty decent beating.

Gotta agree with James. The Ipad Mini in a rugged otterbox case is the way to go. My daughter loves hers and no accidents yet.

Thanks guys, really appreciate the help!

The Apple products are so pricey here. Even Smasung can be heading that away. Is there something inbetween crap and Ipad that is worth looking at?

Which leads me onto my next question. Can you play proper rts games on these things?
If so... how?>

Metal Slug said:

Which leads me onto my next question. Can you play proper rts games on these things?
If so... how?>

Click to expand...

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/ga...d-conquer-you-ll-love-these-ios-games-1124172

cdamm said:

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/ga...d-conquer-you-ll-love-these-ios-games-1124172

Click to expand...

Ah I see, thanks.
So if these games are available it's a cut-down special version to download.

If you think Apple's products are a bit pricey you could just check a Google Nexus 9 for example, it's a bit cheaper than apple.

But, of course, it will use Android instead of iOS and not everyone likes it (I have an old Asus transformer with android for mi 2 year old daughter and likes it)

There's a tablet called the Nabi Jr. that you might consider:
https://www.nabitablet.com/nabi-jr

It's designed to be rather robust, and comes with an integrated rubber casing. It's also Android, so you can install the wide range of Android software available (I think -- not sure how the parental lockout works).

Another one that one of my co-workers got for her 6-year old daughter, and really liked, was the Leappad:
http://www.leapfrog.com/en-us/store/p/leappad3/_/A-prod31500

didn't amazon make a kid friendly one? pile of free games, no in app purchases....

I have a two year old girl who has now taken ownership of our house iPad whenever she can see it lying around. She is actually better on it than my mother in law. I have tried other tablets like the Tesco Hudl2 which I actually thought was a great tablet, but it was no where near as easy to understand for a child.

I understand there is a 3 year age gap, but basically what I'm saying is the iPads just work better, without knowing how to use them (if that makes any sense). Kids Sen to just get all the gestures and everything works as they expect.

Price wise I would stay away from the iPad mini 3 as its insides are hardly any different than an iPad mini 2. The mini 2 is the best value apple tablet you can get at the minute (in my opinion) they are going for just over £200 here in the uk.

Hope all this waffle helps.

Surface 3
TBH I'd consider what "schoolwork" means. If the school works a lot with MS Office products you'll want something that can handle them and documents to go wouldn't be my favourite choice on Android, therefore you'd to MS or Apple.
If I want to "work" with something I wouldn't want an OS that is a different OS than my main system - therefore I'd go for some win8 tablet. (may be different if you have macs at home - strictly speaking you'll still have a "different os" but transitions will be smooth)
If the school uses Google docs or OpenOffice knock yourself out with whatever you may seem fitting.

5 year old and gets a tablet? For school work? Where does he study, the ESA?