The tablet the doctor ordered - CuencaHighLife
The tablet the doctor ordered
Jul 20, 2026 | 0 comments
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There was a time when setting up home in a foreign country involved a refrigerator, a bed, some curtains, and eventually, if you were prospering, a television the size of a washing machine with a walnut veneer cabinet and perhaps a lace doily and a vase on the top.
Now I find myself sitting in Cuenca with an EnV children’s tablet computer propped on its kidproof stand beside my bed, and I am forced to admit that this slightly ridiculous object may be one of the most useful consumer electronics devices I have ever owned.
It cost $129 in Cuenca, and if you are a senior citizen, you may be able to claim back the 15 percent IVA, which would cover the cost of buying a necessary add-on external Bluetooth speaker.
It is officially marketed as a kids’ tablet, which means the box features smiling cartoon animals, educational software, and photographs of improbably cheerful children apparently delighted to be learning arithmetic while sitting on the ground in a meadow full of wild flowers. Yet within fifteen minutes of switching it on and negotiating the parental controls, I had transformed it into something closer to a portable shortwave radio, cinema, jukebox, travel office, bedside TV, weather station, clock radio, and emergency communications center.
And unlike the TV consoles of my childhood, it can also be carried into a hammock, which is no trivial bonus in Ecuador, (or you could place it on the locker next to your hospital bed.)
When I got it home, unboxed it, and looked at the full specs properly, I felt the first cold stirring of doubt. The processor was not going to trouble any engineering department and the 128 GB storage was modest, and the camera would not advance anyone’s career in photography, so I sat there thinking I might have made a genuinely silly mistake–but that feeling did not survive the first week.
For a newly arrived expat sitting in a minimally furnished Airbnb with nothing but a suitcase and a fading sense of optimism, this tablet may be close to indispensable. You do not need to wait for a cable installation, a shipping container, or a furniture delivery.
Hook it up to the apartment WiFi and suddenly you have YouTube, internet radio from almost every country on earth, downloaded movies, podcasts, WhatsApp, maps, weather forecasts, airline reservations, audiobooks, PDFs, and enough music to fill several lifetimes. You can download the radio apps of your choice, set the screen to dark, slip the tablet onto the nightstand, and let it run for hours as a pure audio device while you stare at the ceiling wondering whether you made the right decision moving to Ecuador. It handles that particular use case extremely well.
It goes where you go. That sounds obvious until you actually start living with something so easily portable. Into the kitchen while you cook, then to the bathroom while you brush your teeth and into the shower room if you want the morning news without getting your phone wet. Propped on the edge of the basin or balanced on a shelf or window-sill. Held in one hand while the other does something else entirely. Watched in bed at whatever ridiculous hour you wake up and cannot get back to sleep. A traditional television assumes that you will sit upright in a chair and stare at a fixed wall.
The kidproof stand is a better piece of design than it has any right to be. It folds into a carrying handle, which means the whole thing travels in one hand without requiring a bag, a case, or any advance planning. Bend back the handle and it becomes a stand at a practical viewing angle on any flat surface. It is the sort of design that makes you feel mildly foolish for not thinking of it yourself.
The specifications are low and I will not pretend otherwise. But specifications only matter relative to what you are trying to do, and if what you are trying to do is replace a bedroom television, listen to radio in the shower, watch downloaded films on an airplane, or stay in contact with the world, the specs are good enough. It is genuinely tremendous value for money by Ecuadorian standards, and better still at the senior discount with the IVA knocked off the price.
One honest suggestion: add a small external speaker. A decent compact speaker that connects either by 3.5mm cable or Bluetooth costs very little, but the difference in audio quality for music, radio, and film is immediately noticeable. The built-in loudspeaker in a cheap tablet computer can reliably be expected to be rubbish.
There is another aspect to this which fascinates me. For decades, science fiction promised futuristic electronic lifestyles involving giant wall screens and complicated computerized homes, but what many people actually seem to want is often something far simpler: a lightweight object that delivers entertainment, information, and companionship without demanding much space, money, or fuss....