New tablet... what am i looking for?

champ222 · 30 Dec 2018 at 07:57

Hi all.

My daughter has an amazon 7 inch fire tablet, one of the cheap ones, that she uses for youtube kids etc and im looking to replace it.

It does the job, but its very slow to navigate etc. The main issue is that the wifi drops out randomly and the only way to fix it is by switching off the wifi and putting it back on again. By which time, there may have been a meltdown.

She is getting older now, nearly 4, so some basic games, and more colouring in type stuff would be useful.

Im thinking 9 - 10 inches, resolution is not that important 1280 x 720/800 would be enough i should think.

I saw a samsung one for about £100 ish on sale, but when i looked into it, its still running android 4.4!

Any recomendations? She looks after it pretty well, but id want to be able to get a robust case for it, so something common enough to have a decent choice would be good.

With this one, i can to manually install google services etc to get you tube kids. I assume this will still be the case for newer amazon fire tablets?

Thanks

ScoTTyBEEE · 30 Dec 2018 at 23:36

iPad 2018 cost me £230. Nothing else comes close.

Sudden · 31 Dec 2018 at 09:21

Not sure if it helps any but I bought the Amazon 10 inch fire tablet last year around black friday - it has the same WiFi issue.

champ222 · 1 Jan 2019 at 13:53

Sudden said:
Not sure if it helps any but I bought the Amazon 10 inch fire tablet last year around black friday - it has the same WiFi issue.

That does help, as this was the one that seemed most likely.

Not good. Surely they cant all have that issue?

champ222 · 1 Jan 2019 at 20:45

I stumbled across a thread about a similar issues on redit. In that case, it seems the tablet would lose connection for a while, which would suggest it comes back on its own, that doesnt seem to be the case for me, but the cause was suggested to be related to the way the amazon tablets handle dhcp, and that setting it up as a static ip fixes it.

Ive set it up and will see if it improves things. Maybe try that also sudden?

You get set it per wifi connection, which is handy, by going to the wifi list and you can modify the connection, go into advanced and setup the static ip on the network.

champ222 · 2 Jan 2019 at 09:38

seems as if the above has not helped. if anything it is worse than before.

Sudden · 2 Jan 2019 at 12:37

Ah shame - it mainly seems to be an issue for me when I'm a bit further away from the router. Phones are all fine, but the tablet seems to struggle. The connection randomly just goes to 'Internet not working', even though the phone is fine, and toggling WiFi on and off fixes it. However, when it keeps happening every 2 minutes, then it needs a tablet restart. Can't even get through a single comic (ok, manga), without it dropping in the middle. It rarely seems to happen if I'm close to the WiFi though. I figured it's just a device thing. Thought it might be a problem with just my device since google didn't come up with this being a major problem, but sounds like it's at least you as well.

champ222 · 2 Jan 2019 at 14:26

indeed.

I will bring it into work, and test it here, perhaps its a quirk of my router (virgin super hub) also my boss has a fire 8 that i can try, and see how that behaves.

AthlonXP1800 · 2 Jan 2019 at 16:35

I cant believed shops still sell 4 and 5 years old android tablets at ridiculous high prices, don't bother think of get android or Fire HD tablets with rubbish wifi signals and rubbish battery life. Every android and Fire HD tablets still has these issues. When my niece Sarah was 7 years old back in 2012, she had expensive Christmas present, a Samsung Tab 2 10 inch tablet that can switched to Kids Mode but weeks after used it, she not happy with the tablet because of rubbish wifi signals and rubbish battery life. She ditched Android tablet when my sister bought second hand HP Pavilion X2 11.6 convertible laptop that can spilt keyboard and use it as a tablet with 64GB SSD, 4GB RAM and Windows 8, she absolutely loved it with Windows 10 free upgrade. Unfortunately the screen gave her eye strain so Sarah had present Acer Aspire R11 2 in 1 convertible laptop with Acer BluelightShield screen from Christmas 2017 helped reduced her eyestrains and she was very happy with it, she still use it today for play games, school homeworks etc.

When I had Linx 10 tablet back in 2014, it worked fine with old Virgin Media super hub 1 router's wireless N but in 2015 Virgin Media upgraded it to Super Hub 2ac which has wireless ac but Linx 10 wifi had trouble with signals and drop outs often, it did not worked well with latest wifi ac. I managed to get it fixed by ordered a USB wifi ac nano dongle and plugged it with USB to micro USB adapter. Installed Mediatek driver and dongle software then boom no more trouble with wifi signals or drop outs with wifi ac dongle.

I probably will need a new wifi ax dongle when Virgin Media launch new Super Hub router with wireless ax or so called wifi 6 that will provide up to ultra fast 10Gbps bandwidth.

I would highly recommend you to get a cheap Windows tablet, probably Linx 12X64 tablet which you can get for around £150 new or £110 second hand come with large 12.5 inch 1080p screen, Windows 10 Home, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage and keyboard bundle. You can install Bluestacks on Windows to run Android and install Android apps and games and also install Amazon Fire apps on it. If 64GB is not enough for both Windows 10 and Android then you can get a cheap 128GB microSD card for £20 or 256GB microSD for £30 to install games and apps on it.

Mel_P · 2 Jan 2019 at 16:39

I have an older version of one of these:

https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/tablets/android-tablets/yoga-tablet/Yoga-Tab-3-10/p/ZZITZTBYT2F

Eggscellent! No wifi issues.

champ222 · 5 Jan 2019 at 09:06

Mel_P said:
I have an older version of one of these:

https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/tablets/android-tablets/yoga-tablet/Yoga-Tab-3-10/p/ZZITZTBYT2F

Eggscellent! No wifi issues.

That looks good, but is using an older version of android. Its on Android 5 i think

ddoubleep · 5 Jan 2019 at 09:10

Lenovo Tab 4 8 Plus?

I've seen them for around £130 refurbished. Android 8, kids case available and Full HD resolution.

Mel_P · 5 Jan 2019 at 16:12

champ222 said:
That looks good, but is using an older version of android. Its on Android 5 i think

Mine's on Android 6.0.1

champ222 · 15 Jan 2019 at 10:38

ddoubleep said:
Lenovo Tab 4 8 Plus?

I've seen them for around £130 refurbished. Android 8, kids case available and Full HD resolution.

Thanks, just been looking into these. seems like a nice option. do you have one? been reading of some wifi issues (this is what we have already) and also some issues with the upgrade to android 8

ddoubleep · 15 Jan 2019 at 11:58

champ222 said:
Thanks, just been looking into these. seems like a nice option. do you have one? been reading of some wifi issues (this is what we have already) and also some issues with the upgrade to android 8

I don't have one but it's on the radar as I've just sold some gear to fund it. I'd go down used or refurb route and slap on a kid friendly case and it should serve you well.

Dandle · 17 Jan 2019 at 21:22

My kids both got Fire HD10s for Xmas and so far had no issues with WiFi drop outs at all. I think they were a bargain for £100 each and once the playstore is loaded it opens them right up.

champ222 · 21 Jan 2019 at 19:44

Im still om the fence about the fire 10. Might be a bit big for her to be honest... her current one has been behaving a bit better lately.

Might see how it goes.

Thanks again for all the help