Which tablets would you recommend for educational apps?

Our apps are available for a wide variety of devices and platforms. We are often asked which are best. All the supported devices should work fine, but we can offer a few recommendations.

DSE's apps are now available for a wide variety of Windows, iPadOS and Android tablets that are available with many different specifications. We are often asked for guidance when selecting a suitable device for educational apps. Generally, any supported device should work fine, but there are a huge range of options to choose between.

Much will depend on your personal circumstances - including your budget and any other uses you may have for the device. Here, we offer some general guidance about what we would look for in terms of a device to run our educational apps.

General recommendations

  • A tablet is not essential - now that we support Windows, you can run our apps on a desktop or laptop PC, using a mouse and so a separate tablet is not necessary. That said, a portable device offers some advantages: for example, you can hold a tablet in front of your chest when you want your child to be able to observe how your mouth moves when you make sounds and say words as you might do if holding up a printed picture card prompt.
  • Prefer a larger display over a smaller display - a 10" (or larger) display provides noticeably more space than a 7" or 8" display to present pictures and words - particularly for matching and selecting activities involving more than two choices.
  • The processing power and storage capacity of entry-level models is usually adequate - particularly with new devices, baseline storage and processor specifications are sufficient to run our educational apps.
  • Consider any other uses you may have for the device - if it is going be used for other purposes, what are the requirement for these? The requirements for our apps are modest, but other uses may require more.

Windows tablets and PCs

We support any tablet, desktop, laptop or "2-in-1" PC running Windows 10 November 2019 Update (version 1909) and higher.

Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, HP and others produce many different tablets, desktops, laptops and "2-in-1" devices running Windows 10.

Apple iPads

We support any iPad running iPadOS version 13.1 or higher. We do not support iPhones as the screen size it too small for the educational activities that we recommend.

We recommend an iPad with a screen size over 10" in preference to an iPad mini (with a screen size of 7.9").

iPads are available from Apple.

Android tablets

We support Android tablets running Android version 5.1 and higher and with a smallest screen width of 520 device pixels. In general, this includes Android tablets with physical screen sizes of 7" and higher, though we recommend a minimum size of 9".