Fire HD 10 Review – Design, Hardware, Performance, and More

Fire HD 10 Review

The Fire HD 10 (review) immediate appeal is for families, offering far better value than its premium rivals, with a whole tablet experience.

Its strength is entertainment, making it ideal for travel or as a second screen for movies and TV.

Design

• Plastic construction
• The 262 x 159 x 9.8 mm; 504g
• Black, twilight blue, plum, and white colors

Here on the face of it, apart from the changes in the colors, there is no real difference in the Fire HD 10 2019 compared to the previous versions:

• There has been a change in how Amazon displays its logo, moving to just an arrow, but otherwise, this tablet’s build and size are the same as ever.
• But there is a significant change: the inclusion of a USB Type-C instead of the old Micro-USB connection.
• Amazon had taken a while to evolve its devices to this new connection standard. While on a smartphone, it makes perfect sense to use this connector.
• Devices like the Kindle and Fire tablets have had their way using the old standard for some time.
• It’s welcome as it means you may not have to charge the older charger and can only use one cable for everything. It is also more accessible to the plugin.
• You can’t escape that the Fire HD 10 is big and sticky. While the Fire 7 gets away with it, once it lives up to this model’s expansive 10-inch size, there’s a lot of plastic to grip.
• So it doesn’t have the premium feel you get from an aluminum-finished iPad. Or other tablets that can use glass.
• At a similar time, the weight is kept low. And it would help if you never forgot the cost – here, and you are not paying premium prices.
• So the use of plastics is accepted. Sticky fingers are easy to clean too, and the handles wear down quite well too.
• For those who want more protection for the kind of damage children can cause, there is the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition.
• Which comes with a protective case and warranty, along with access to Fire for Kids Unlimited for one year. It is worth looking at if you are shopping for children.

Hardware and performance

• 10.1-inch 1920 x 1200 pixel display (224ppi)
• Quad-core MediaTek CPU, 2GB RAM
• 32/64 GB storage, microSD slot

With a 10.1-inch screen on the front of this tablet and Full HD resolution, there’s plenty of room to touch, play, and watch:

• That’s what this tablet is really about. Though the resolution isn’t as significant as some high-end devices, it’s high enough for things like gaming and watching movies.
• While the 19:10 aspect is well suited to video content, it is a great tablet to download shows from the likes of BBC iPlayer, Amazon Video or Netflix, to entertain yourself on long trips.
• Yes, it is an IPS screen, so it does not have the delicious dynamic range that you can get from an OLED screen as you might find on a Samsung or Apple tablet.
• Again, that’s relative to pricing – and it’s hard to complain when this tablet from Amazon is half the price.
• One thing that loans itself to a great experience is the stereo speakers. Perhaps unusually, the speakers are on one side rather than the ends.
• So you have to style sure you don’t cover those openings, providing an impressively wide soundstage with appreciable volume.
• There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack, which is handy for traveling, or Bluetooth wireless connectivity if you prefer.

Battery duration

• 10 hours life, 5 hours to charge

Here battery life on the Fire HD 10 will last the stated 10 hours. You’ll find this out if you sit back and take movies for 10 hours. So it’s likely to last you a couple of days at no charge if you only use it at night:

• One of the things the Fire HD 10 is pretty good at is keeping that load on standby. You can sit unused and standby for weeks and still have a charge when you do it again.
• Of course, this largely depends on what you’ve installed and whether those background processes are constantly asking you to do things.
• But if you’re primarily using it for movies, you’ll probably find that it will keep your load.
• Here it will take five hours to charge, which isn’t exactly fast, given that most phones will now fully charge in just over an hour.
• Nonetheless, as we said earlier, the addition of USB Type-C at least means you’re using the latter—connector type.

Software and ecosystem

• All Fire tablets use the same software, a custom version of Google’s Android operating system, called Fire OS.
• It’s designed to fit in with the Amazon ecosystem rather than Google’s, and that’s precisely what it does.
• As such, it presents your Amazon content in the home screen environment, so you can access the Kindle books you own and access content that is unlocked by your Prime subscription.
• That is one of the great attractions of Fire. There’s a little better at this price if you want a large tablet for kids to use.
• Sure, Apple’s iPad is a better all-around device, but it’s twice the price. To play tap games or watch Peppa Pig, that makes no difference.