Image: LENOVO
SAVE $20.99: The Lenovo Smart Tab M8 is on sale at Walmart for just $99 as of May 21 — that’s 18% off its suggested retail price of $119.99.
Hot take: Middle schoolers are the trickest group to shop for when you’re in the market for a kid-friendly tablet. Your little tyke’s probably going to outgrow Amazon’s popular Fire Kids tablet lineup by age 10 or so — even the new Pro models won’t be much use to them past age 12 — but something like an iPad is a bit much for their purposes (especially with no dedicated parental controls).
SEE ALSO: Which tablet to buy for your kid: For scrolling in the stroller (and beyond)
That’s where the Lenovo Smart Tab M8 comes in. With a special kid’s mode, a quad-core processor, Dolby Atmos speakers, a whopping 18 hours of battery life, 32GB of storage, and a built-in Google Assistant, it’s a well-made Android tablet that affords middle schoolers a little more independence without setting them totally loose on the Wild West of the internet. Plus, Mom and Dad can get down with its extremely reasonable pricing — we found it on sale for just $99 at Walmart as of May 21, which is a good 18% off its $119.99 MSRP (and only $10 away from its all-time-low Black Friday pricing).
Amazon also sells the Smart Tab M8, FYI, but its inventory was down to just one unit at the time of writing. (And it was marked way up to $144.99, for some reason.)
Image: screenshot via amazon
What’s especially cool about this particular tablet is that it doubles as a smart display when you pop it into the included charging dock, so kids can ask Google to shuffle through their favorite playlists and check the weather. The bright, 8-inch HD display makes it great for video calls with Grandma, too — and you don’t have to worry too much about setting screen time limits (though that’s an option on the kid’s mode’s usage dashboard), since the display is specially designed to reduce blue light and go easy on their eyes.
Head on over to Walmart to snag it for just $99, and it’ll ship with free two-day delivery.
