The article is promoting this product as a better alternative than buying a smartphone for your kids. $279 is cheaper than most smartphones. And it's not too hard to find overt Apple ads that list much higher prices. Listing the price of a product in an article singing praises of that product does not constitute the article being critical of Apple.
Perhaps we've exhausted this topic. I view it as mildly positive and very weak journalism, not balanced. Your view is more drastic.
A balanced article would have found some parents who all said, "Hell, no, I'm not buying that for him. He'll lose it inside of a month." There are probably a lot of such parents.
As for "singing praises of that product" -- I think that is totally legitimate. It IS a product that does a lot of stuff and some people might like it for that. Do you expect them to invent some faults with it?
I'd also expect a real journalist to get some numbers on their sales, not just find one user who likes it.
(On the other hand, Walt Mossberg would have tried it for a week and given it a grade, idk what.)