If your kids are like ours, they have a magnet inside then that draws them to electronics. The more expensive that electronic is, the more they want to play with it. If you read my personal site, you may remember the time my son managed to PEE on the iPad. (Yes, that really happened. And yes, he is still alive.) So needless to say, I was very excited to try out the VINCI Tab II 7″ Touch Screen Learning Tablet (WIFI)
The VINCI Tab II is a 7″ touch screen tablet, running Android, that is surrounded by a protective soft handle. The handle is a great idea – should provide better grip for kids and protection against drops. The tablet itself was pretty easy to use. My son had a little trouble at first, since he was used to a different system, but picked up on the differences quickly. It is easy for the kids and has a parental login, where you can determine what you want your child to have access too, turn wifi access on and off, as well as download their favorite games and whatnot from the Android market.
Although child-safe hardware is important, the key to this product is software, namely the VINCI Curriculum, a step-by-step learning structure comprised of 43 learning subjects and 3 levels of assessment, and covers all 6 aspects of a child’s developing mind: Thinking Skills; Emotional & Social Skills; Language and Literacy; Math & Logical Reasoning; General Knowledge; and Science. This software, which only runs on the Vinci Tab, is designed to use engaging games to provide incremental and interactive learning for children age 18 months through 9 years old. My son is 4 and he found many of the games too simple, calling them “baby games”, he settled comfortably in the level 3 section and quickly had several favorite games – mainly with numbers and math. Which made me so happy – his teacher had recommended we find some apps and games to help him with that! He loves “How Many Pins?” “Bugs” and “American Southeast” best.
Overall the VINCI software is a much better fit for older toddlers and preschoolers, rather than kids at the upper part of the age range, but with the ability to download your own apps, it is great for older kids who are a bit rough of electronics. Popular games like Cut the Rope and Where’s My Water? worked perfectly. Websites seem to load slowly and downloading apps from the cloud took forever, but once downloaded worked fine. All kids will love the VINCI Tab’s 3 megapixel built-in camera. Taking pictures of his sisters and such was very fun – and he loved looking back at the pictures he had taken and showing them off! The tablet itself is not the greatest – ours tends to crash frequently – but it’s also been dropped out of the car onto the parking lot and didn’t get a scratch, so that’s the trade off.
Basically, the software is first class – as a preschool teacher, I would have loved to have these in my classroom for the kids to play on. Really great teaching tool and dead on developmentally. If you can tolerate a few crashes, the tablet will be used for years after the child outgrows the software. So for the price, its great.
QUICK FACTS:
- Display: 7-inch (diagonal) glossy widescreen, multi-touch, 800-by-480-pixel resolution
- 3 megapixel back-facing camera/camcorder
- 512MB RAM, 8G Internal Storage
- Expandable storage with MicroSD card slot (up to 32GB)
- Full MP3, MP4 player
- 6 to 8 hours of continuous play time (6400 mAH rechargeable battery)
- Size and Weight: 7.3″ (18.5 cm) by 10″ (25.40 cm) by 0.67″ (1.7 cm); 1.5 lb (0.68 kg)
disclosure; i received this tablet to facilitate this post. as always, all opinions are my own.
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