Watch out for deals too as Amazon frequently offers deep discounts on its Fire tablet range. The Fire HD 10 Plus version adds a soft-touch finish, wireless charging and 1GB more RAM, none of which are really required for a tablet like this and so I would recommend saving the extra £30/US$30 with the standard model. The screen is pretty big and crisp, the speakers are fairly good, plus long battery life makes it an excellent lower-cost media consumption tablet as long as you’re happy to swim in Amazon’s ecosystem without access to Google or Apple’s apps. There are very few competitors that offer the level of software support Amazon does for Android tablets at this low cost. The 2021 Fire HD 10’s revamped design and reasonable performance have done just enough to keep Amazon at the top of the budget tablet pile. The regular Fire HD 10 costs £149.99/ US$149.99 with 32GB of storage.įor comparison, Amazon’s Fire 7 costs £49.99, Fire HD 8 costs £89.99 and Apple’s 10.2in iPad costs £329. Removing the ads costs an extra £10/US$15. The Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus starts at £179.99/ US$179.99 with 32GB of storage, which comes with ads on the lockscreen. The lack of popular password managers makes logging into apps and services extremely tedious if you rely on one that isn’t available in the Amazon app store. There’s a little flex in the body and the screen when pressed too hard, but the tablet feels robust. There’s a new smart-home button in the bottom left of the navigation bar that gives you instant access to devices such as lights and speakers you’ve set up with Alexa. ‘Show mode’ allows you to turn the tablet into an Echo Show-like Alexa smart display, either manually or automatically when placed into an optional charging dock (which isn’t currently available in the UK).
You need an Amazon account to use the tablet, plus a Prime subscription giving access to Prime Video to really make the most of it. Note that Fortnite is not available for Fire tablets, even through the Android Epic Games store. Zoom, Skype and Alexa are available for video calling, while the store features a fairly large range of games, even if many of them are rubbish. The search bar at the top takes you to results from the web, Amazon’s shop and your content, emails and other bits.Īmazon’s App Store has most of the media consumption apps you’re likely to want in the UK, including Spotify, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Netflix, Disney+ and Sky Go, but BT Sport, Google’s various apps such as YouTube, Chrome and Maps, and Apple’s Music and TV are a no-go. The interface is fairly simple, with a traditional home screen of apps flanked by pages called “For You”, featuring app and content suggestions, and “Library”, listing things you own such as Kindle books, games, movies and other bits. Amazon typically supports its tablets for longer than low-cost Android rivals, with at least several years of software and security updates. The new tablet runs the same Fire OS 7.3 as the previous version and the Fire HD 8, which is based on Android 9 but lacks Google’s services and the Play store, instead relying on Amazon’s App Store and services.
No mainstream web browsers are available in the Fire OS app store, leaving Amazon’s Silk browser the main choice - which means you have to sync your bookmarks from Chrome using an extension. The company offers trade-in and recycling schemes and publishes information on its various sustainability efforts. They contain 28% post-consumer recycled plastic. The Fire HD 10 and HD 10 Plus are generally repairable. Batteries in similar products typically last for at least 500 full-charge cycles while maintaining at least 80% of their original capacity. SustainabilityĪmazon does not provide an expected lifespan of the battery in the tablet. Using a 15W charger shaved 30 minutes off that time, whether wired or wireless for the Plus model. The tablet charges really slowly, taking at least four hours with the included 9W power adaptor. The tablet will last a couple of days with mixed use or more than 12 hours streaming video over wifi, according to my testing – but of course, playing graphically intensive games significantly decreases battery life. A dedicated game mode automatically optimises the tablet for games, turning off hands-free Alexa and other background tasks when playing.īattery life is very good. That’s twice the amount of the previous-generation machine, which significantly improves multitasking. It has the same processor as the regular Fire HD 10, but with 1GB more of RAM for a total of 4GB. The Fire tablets are typically fast enough, but won’t beat more expensive rivals for raw performance. All the ports and buttons are in the right side of the tablet, while the microSD card slot for adding more storage space is in the bottom edge.
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