One of the best drawing tablets for kids can be a great way to encourage children's creativity. Children's drawing tablets are often versatile, appeals to kids' love of technology and they don't leave the mess that often comes with pens or paints on paper.
Nevertheless, there's a lot to consider when choosing the best drawing tablet for children. You need a device that can stand up to some touch treatment, especially for younger kids, and it needs to be intuitive to use. At Creative Bloq, we've been reviewing drawing tablets for over a decade, so we know our stuff. When it comes to the best tablets for kids, we not only pull from our own experience using them, but also compare that against customer reviews from parents and get our own children to use the tablets when possible.
The list below is our selection of the best, broken down into broard age categories. We'll start with ages 0-4, we then move on to more advanced options for young artists aged 5-12, and finally, we the best drawing tablets for teenagers. Generally, the older the child you're buying for, the more pricey the tablet will be with advanced features such as improved build, specs, and pen pressure.
This drawing tablet for tiny hands is available in several bright colours. A step up from Etch-A-Sketch, it's perfect tablet for small children who are just beginning to enjoy drawing. It's easy to use, it's cheap, and it's impressively rugged. Read more below
For slightly older kids, a pen computer like the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Edition provides more flexibility with internet access and a wide range of apps available while providing parental controls that let you control what content your child can access. Read more below
Wacom is a well-known brand for professional drawing tablets, and this incursion into budget territory is a great starter option for teenage artists, especially now it supports Chromebooks. Read more below
The best drawing tablets for kids in full
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This is a drawing tablet for really tiny hands. Available in a choice of bright colours, it's the perfect tablet for small children who are just beginning to enjoy drawing. It's easy to use, it's cheap, and it's impressively rugged and splash-resistant too.
If we were to give the Richgv LCD tablet some product context, we'd say that it's a step up from an Etch-A-Sketch. It's powered by a single CR2016 coin battery, and with the included stylus kids can write or doodle on the screen with clear, sharply delineated lines. You can then hit the clear button to refresh the screen whenever you like. Another thing we like is it's compact enough to take anywhere – a great emergency distraction when you're out and about.
There's no internal memory, so the tablet won't be able to save any doodles. If your kid is old enough to be bothered about that then they're likely ready for one of the next tablets on our list. For the littlest ones though, we think this is the ideal starter drawing tablet. Read more in our detailed review of the Richgv LCD tablet.
Considering a proper tablet for your kids? While Apple and Samsung's tablets are reasonably solid and kid-friendly (find out more further down this list), they're not specifically designed for children. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Edition is a tablet that's properly suitable for little hands, and so for our money, it's the best choice for the pretty big 5-12 year range.
The tablet comes with a year's subscription to Amazon Fire for Kids Unlimited, meaning you can pick from the various drawing and doodling apps in Amazon's appstore to get your child started on an artistic adventure – though do bear in mind that you'll need to pick up a stylus separately, as it doesn't come in the box. The Fire HD 10 Kids Edition doesn't have pressure sensitivity or other advanced drawing features, meaning any cheap stylus will do the trick. See our guide to the best Android styluses for some ideas.
Also, while the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Edition does have internet access, it comes with plenty of handy parental controls that let you control what content your child can access, and even set screen time limits.
Wacom makes premium drawing tablets for professional artists, but the Wacom One sees it venture into more budget territory with an affordable pen display for beginners. It has much of the same great tech you'd find in the larger, more expensive Wacom drawing tablets in a small package.
Obviously, some sacrifices are made for the price point. The stylus isn't as sophisticated as the one that comes with Wacom's professional tablets, and the screen brightness and resolution are lower. Nevertheless, we think this is a a great affordable option for a young artist to hone their skills, and it's perfectly sized to drop into a school bag or college backpack.
While originally released for Windows and Mac the One by Wacom is now compatible with Android devices and most importantly Chromebooks; just plug it in, download the drivers and you're off. As a lot of students and kids now use Chromebooks for school and college work, this is a huge advantage.
The Repaper is a hybrid tablet similar to the Wacom Bamboo Slate (below). We think it's particularly cool because it has pressure sensitivity, giving it a much more analogue feel and bringing it more in line with professional graphics tablets.
In the box you get both a 9000 2B Faber-Castell pencil and the Repaper Stylus, meaning your child has the option of drawing on paper, or directly on the tablet. Either way, their drawings can be easily exported to a digital device running Android, iOS, MacOS or Windows, and the tablet is also compatible with most common drawing software. It's a little complex for young kids, but budding artists of 10 and up will have a terrific time with the iskn Repaper.
Even though Wacom tablets are usually seen as the premium products on the market, the Wacom Bamboo Slate is the cheaper of the two hybrid tablets on our list. And it's a great bargain. Wacom describes it as a 'smartpad', designed to turn sketches and handwritten notes on paper into digital files in a variety of formats, which can then be sent to a tablet or PC via Bluetooth or USB. As such it provides the best of both worlds; your child can enjoy the tactile pleasure of drawing on paper than then see the results transferred to a screen.
It really feels like using a pad, because it effectively is. Your child clips the paper in securely, then draws on it, and whatever they create will be captured digitally. If you've got an avid paper scribbler on your hands and would like to induct them into the digital world, this is a great way to bridge the gap.
Well built and satisfying to use, the Wacom Bamboo Slate is an older product, but still well worth picking up. Just remember to keep your little one well supplied with paper!
For a fully-fledged graphics tablet that's suitable for kids and young teenagers, you can't go far wrong with the Wacom Intuos S. The smallest member of the Intuos family, it's a great all-rounder that doesn't cost a fortune; bear in mind, though, that it needs to be connected a computer or tablet with its own display. With the Intuos s you get a flexible range of drawing options, and it comes with the Wacom Pen 4K, which is battery-free and delivers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity.
The Inuos S has four ExpressKeys, which can be customised to preferred functions, and four rubber feet to help it stay still on flat surfaces. If you're aware of Wacom's reputation for expensive gear then the relatively slender price of the Intuos S may come as a pleasant surprise; the tablet is also a couple of years old, so discounts do tend to pop up not infrequently. Keep an eye out.
The only real bugbear with the Intuos S is that its drawing surface might simply be too small for some ambitious young artists (see our Wacom Intuous Pro Small review for more details). There are larger Intuos models available if you suspect that might be the case, though be aware that these do come at higher prices.
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Matt has been a technology journalist for over 15 years, writing for publications such as T3, MacFormat and Creative Bloq. He's a managing editor of TechRadar, Creative Bloq's sister site, where he can be found writing about and reviewing laptops, computers, monitors and more. He often writes for Creative Bloq, helping creatives find their perfect laptop or PC.
