The Big Tab wants to be the center of attention in your home.
Fuhu, the company that builds child-focused gadgets, unveiled the 20- and full HD 24-inch nabi Big Tab today to increase collaboration and sharing in the average household.
Both tablets come with a carrying frame that acts as a kickstand, as well as a 15-point capacitive touch screen, Quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 4 processors, and 16 GB of memory. The tablets run Android 4.4.4, but have Fuhu’s Blue MorphoTM operating system over it.
The tablet’s dual mode feature allows families to switch between nabi mode and parent mode. Parent mode runs stock android and performs like your average Android tablet. If you swipe to the right, you reach the parental controls and access to the nabi mode. Nabi mode is a launcher that holds all the apps kids would use.
The nabi system has several educational apps and games, such as the Big Canvas app that lets kids draw, create animations and edit videos; the Wings Learning SystemTM , an app that features more than 17,000 lessons and 300,000 questions in Math, Reading and Writing for pre-K to sixth; and a Chore List app, a tool parents can use to create tasks for children to complete.
But some of the main features aimed at children are games, movies and books. The nabi mode houses classics such as chess and checkers as well as a game room with traditional board games and multiplayer games such as air hockey.
Fuhu also added a collection of videos and shows from Disney, Cartoon Network and Cookie Jar Entertainment. Story Time is another app that provides 35 interactive e-books from Fuhu partners iStoryTime and Speakaboos.
The nabi system also uses nabi coins, a form of currency that is used with apps such as Chore List and the Wings Learning System to reward good behavior. Children can use the coins they earn from completing a chore to buy music, movies, books and apps with these coins. These choices are curated by parents in the Parent Mode.
Fuhu has a nabi SDK available for developers to integrate nabi coins into games directly.
The folks at Fuhu want these tablets to be a product you can carry around your house that can switch from being an educational toy for kids, to a tablet parents can use for just about anything. Fuhu’s tablet is meant to be plugged in at all times, as it only lasts 30 minutes. This defeats the purpose of being a tablet if it runs for such a short period of time.
The tablets come with parental and content controls, where parents can set time controls that monitor screen time and limit app usage.
Even with several 10-inch Android tablets on the market running resolutions higher than these Big Tabs, there are still a high number of Android apps that are not optimized for the bigger screen size, so expect to see pixels for some apps.
The nabi Big Tab HD 20” and nabi Big Tab HD 24” will launch in the fall at $449 and $549 respectively. At a high price, you get a big screen that runs several unoptimized apps, 30 minutes unplugged and the usual parental controls you can find on most kid-friendly devices.