It's hard to fully trust a device with ecosystem like Android's, but there are more and less annoying options. I tried a cheap Lenovo tab and was pleasantly su

It's hard to fully trust a device with ecosystem like Android's, but there are more and less annoying options. I tried a cheap Lenovo tab and was pleasantly surprised how little lenovo crap was on it. Additionally, it let's you uninstall pretty much everything, including their apps, plus they stay uninstalled even after system upgrade. It supports multi user, so you can have "kids space and parent space" if you want (which can have separate sets of apps). It may be obvious, but tables like Xiaomi fail on both of those aspects. Screen is a bit dark though, I have it at 100% most of the time. I'm not sure how big screen you really need, but for cheap phones I tried Realme twice and was impressed. Their <$200 tier is perfectly usable speed-wise, look good, also has very little realme software and let's you uninstall anything (permanently). I had zero problems with F-droid on any of those. F-droid basic updates in the background with no use intervention, so it makes an interesting tinkering device.