A properly good kids' tablet for under €250
A Redmi Pad 2 from €149.90, Ollie's Camp at €5.99, and a rugged case at about €25. That is the whole shopping list, and it beats most things sold as a 'kids tablet'.
Tablets sold as “kids tablets” are usually a bad deal. You pay a premium for a chunky bumper, a slow chip and a locked-down store, and in two years the thing is landfill because nobody ships updates for it. Meanwhile the software that makes it a kids tablet (the part that actually matters) is often a subscription.
There is a much better version of this, and it costs less. Buy an ordinary budget Android tablet, put the right launcher on it, and drop it in a case built to survive a four-year-old.
The shopping list
1. The tablet: Redmi Pad 2, from €149.90
The Redmi Pad 2 Wi-Fi model with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage costs about €149.90 at the time of writing. For a young child it is more than enough, and a few of its specs matter more than the benchmark numbers:
- An 11-inch, 2.5K screen. Big enough for two heads over one tablet, which is how a lot of this actually gets used.
- A 9,000 mAh battery. It survives a long car journey, a flight, and a weekend at your parents’ house without anyone hunting for a charger.
- A microSD slot. This is the quiet hero. Load it with your own music, audiobooks and photos and none of it needs a connection, an account or a streaming service.
If you can stretch to it, the 8 GB / 256 GB model at about €189 is the one that lasts. The extra memory is what keeps a tablet feeling quick as apps get heavier, and it will most likely keep up without trouble until your child is about thirteen. A dedicated kids tablet is usually outgrown years before that, so over its lifetime the 8 GB model is the cheaper buy.
You almost certainly do not need the 4G version. A tablet that cannot leave the house on its own connection is a feature at this age, not a limitation.
2. The software: Ollie’s Camp, €5.99
A stock Android tablet is not a kids tablet. It is a Play Store with a screen attached. Ollie’s Camp replaces the home screen with big, calm tiles holding only the apps you picked: no store, no browser, no feed, no suggestions.
It also gives you the part the cheap hardware cannot: screen time budgeted per category rather than per app, so “one hour of Watching” means one hour whether it goes to one video app or three, plus allowed windows like “nothing before 15:00”, and a family library of your own music, audiobooks and photos.
One payment. No subscription, no account, and nothing about your child leaves the tablet.
3. The case: about €25
Buy a rugged EVA foam case with a handle and a built-in stand. Search for “Redmi Pad 2 kids case” and take any of the well-reviewed ones; there is little to choose between them. The handle is what makes it survive being carried around by one corner, and the stand is what stops it being propped against a cereal box.
This is the part people skip and then regret within a month.
The total
| Redmi Pad 2, 4/128 Wi-Fi | ~€149.90 |
| Ollie’s Camp | €5.99 |
| Rugged case with handle | ~€25 |
| Total | ~€181 |
That is less than most dedicated kids tablets, and you end up with a device that is genuinely good rather than deliberately hobbled, one that will still be a decent tablet for somebody when your child has outgrown it. With the 8 GB model the total comes to about €220, for a tablet that can stay in use until your child is around thirteen.
Setting it up, briefly
- Set up the tablet normally, then install only the apps you actually want your child to have. Resist the urge to add “just in case” ones.
- Install Ollie’s Camp and set it as the default launcher. The parent PIN is what gets you back out.
- File each app under one of the six categories (Learning, Games, Reading, Listening, Watching, Making) and set a daily budget on the ones that need one. Leave the rest unlimited.
- Put your music and photos on the microSD card, or point Ollie’s Camp at the Navidrome, AudioBookshelf or Immich server you already run.
- Put it in the case and hand it over.
One thing this deliberately does not give you
No built-in browser, no chat, no social media, and no web filtering to make any of those safe. That is a choice, not an omission. Below about ten, we think a tablet is for watching, playing, reading, listening, learning and making, and a filtered web is still the web. You can still put Chrome or Firefox on the home screen like any other app if you decide your child needs it; we just don’t advise it.
If what you need is to know where your nine-year-old is and what they are messaging, this setup is the wrong shape and we would rather say so.