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ToolsReading: Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021)
Deep in the Amazon Ecosystem
The Fire tablets have always been about consuming Amazon content. They started out as the “ Kindle Fire, ” intended for reading color books and streaming video. The mission has expanded, but alone slightly ; you can surely play games and join Zoom calls on these tablets, but Amazon will drive you, again and again, to the video and books it wants you to buy. This year ‘s Fire lineup has a perplex array of options, but they ‘re all the Fire HD 10 at affection. here ‘s what you ‘ll get with the assorted versions : As with any pile of features and accessories, whether it makes feel to get one of the random variable models depends on whether you want everything it contains. The Kids and Kids Pro besides get an Editors ‘ Choice nod from us ; we think they ‘re the best kids ‘ tablets you can get for less than $ 200, with hardy cases and excellent parental controls. The Plus is terrific if you need an Alexa fresh display vitamin a well as a pad and are will to shell out for a radio receiver dock. On the early handwriting, the Productivity and Plus Productivity are improbable to make anyone identical productive ; there are barely besides many apps missing from the Appstore, for reasons we ‘ll get to below. And for most uses, the basic Fire HD 10 has the best combination of price and performance—no frills, none needed .
What You Get for $150
The Fire HD 10 is made of felt credit card, and you can get it in black, aristocratic, green, or pink. It has double stereophonic speakers on circus tent, a USB-C port for charging and transferring files, and a microSD memory card slot behind a little door. The battery is not obliterable. It measures 9.73 by 6.53 by 0.36 inches and weighs 16.4 ounces. The basic model has 3GB of RAM, 32GB of repositing, and ads on the lock sieve. There are two mix-and-match ways to upgrade it mighty off the bat : pay $ 15 to get rid of the ads, and pay $ 40 for an extra 32GB of storage. Doing both just breaks the $ 200 barrier, but even among $ 200 tablets, the Fire HD 10 ‘s features are about a good as you ‘re doing to get, and for the base price of $ 150, they ‘re impressive. Just do n’t expect them to stack up against what a fancier pill or call can do .
There’s a 5MP camera on the back of the matte plastic tablet. Amazon describes the 10.1-inch, 1920-by-1200, 224ppi screen as “ brilliant. ” That ‘s overstating the case ; it does n’t get enormously bright, and the view angle is limited. however, the display has nicely abstruse colors when you look at it straight on. Photos taken with the 5MP raise television camera are inadequate, with bleached colors, poor dynamic range, and digital noise. But the 2MP selfie camera is n’t bad, particularly when compared with cameras on exchangeable tablets. It delivers absolutely acceptable prototype quality for video conferences and even functions a moment in broken unaccented. The Fire HD 10 mechanically syncs your pics with Amazon Photos .
The tablet handles Zoom just fine. The double stereo speakers are acceptably loudly, giving a 96.3dB read at six inches from the tablet. Music besides has a morsel of a space-filling sound to it because of the physical separation of the two speakers, though it ‘s truly bum ; when I was listening to the Killers ‘ “ All The Things That I ‘ve Done, ” for exemplar, the high-hat and organ were about inaudible. If you ‘re listening to music, watching videos, or taking a long television call, take advantage of the standard 3.5mm earphone jack or Bluetooth headset hold, both of which rescue decent clear audio .
Android, But Not Android
Amazon ‘s Fire OS 7 is based on Android 9, but with Google services largely replaced by Amazon services. Its interface has been radically simplified. Where it used to have a catapult with types of content across the top—books, television, etc.—there are immediately three main tabs : For You, Home, and Library. Unlike on early tablets, you ca n’t add widgets or customize the interface. home is the app grid you expect from any Android device. Library is a stack of carousels of different kinds of subject you ‘ve downloaded from Amazon : Kindle books, audiobooks, apps, Prime Video, Amazon Music playlists. For You is a slenderly annoying algorithm-generated stack of things you ‘ve used recently followed by things Amazon would like you to buy based on what you ‘ve previously used. In the lower left corner of the interface, there ‘s a short house picture. Press it and you get a device dashboard with all of your Alexa-enabled smart home gadgets and Alexa routines. Hands-free Alexa use is supported, and a toggle will put the pad into Show manner, which turns it into an Alexa smart display that shows timers, song lyrics, and recipes. ( Of course, if a bright display is all you need, you can save a little money by getting an Echo Show 8. ) One of the Fire HD 10 ‘s strengths is digest for multiple user profiles and parental controls. You can create different pornographic and child profiles. You can assign only particular capacity to kids ‘ profiles ; restrict the hours they use the tablet, the amount they use it, and what kind of subject they use for how retentive ; and look over their world wide web history. A subscription serve, Amazon Kids+, delivers a brace pour of books, comics, and videos for kids ages 3–12. I have more details on that in my Fire HD 10 Kids review .
Improved Power
Amazon powers the 2021 Fire HD 10 with Mediatek ‘s Helio P60T, the lapp processor that ‘s in the 2019 Fire HD 10. It delivers about 50 % better web browsing performance than the chip in the Fire HD 8 mannequin, according to the Basemark Web benchmark—a significant, noticeable improvement. ( I did n’t run comparisons with the Fire 7 because it ‘s identical slow, has only 1GB of RAM, and could n’t complete any of our benchmark tests. )
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On the overall PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark, the HD 10 scored 5376, far better than the HD 8 ‘s 4290. It besides comes with 3GB of RAM, more than the 2GB in the Fire HD 8 and the 2019 HD 10. That makes for a much more fluid experience switching apps, particularly if you ‘re using productivity apps such as Microsoft Office. This is the first Amazon tablet on which I never experienced a slowdown or bumble. See How We Test Tablets See How We Test Tablets More RAM enables a new split-screen feature. It ‘s relatively easy to pop two apps onto the screen door at once, something I found very helpful when I was writing my Fire HD 10 Productivity inspection. The P60T provides adequate ability to play videos and audiobooks, display Kindle books, do Alexa farce, make Zoom calls, and run some basic games. It does n’t have a gambling GPU, but stick to older, casual, or lower-res games and you ‘ll be ticket. The older action game Riptide GP2 stuttered on the Fire HD 8, but played smoothly on this HD 10. Roblox is playable here but can be jerky .
Older action games, such as Riptide GP2, play well. Battery life is excellent, lasting for 12 hours, 48 minutes of Amazon Prime video playback over Wi-Fi. The battery charged from flat to 100 % in 3.5 hours. There ‘s dual-band Wi-Fi in the Fire HD 10, but its utmost speeds are limited by the chipset. On a 500Mbps harmonious connection with excellent sign strength, it managed no higher than 275Mbps down. I saw 143Mbps down on an iPad and 134Mbps depressed on the Fire at one location with middling bespeak, and 44.6Mbps down on the iPad and 12Mbps down on the Fire in a very weak-signal placement .
The tablet has a USB-C port and a standard headphone jack.
The App Gap
right nowadays, Amazon ‘s specify app storehouse is most of what holds its tablets back. Amazon tablets do n’t have Google Play or any early Google apps, because Amazon is trying to position itself as a Google rival. That means Android developers have to individually submit their applications to Amazon ‘s store, and many have n’t done that. The Appstore is n’t a total zero. It has Discord, Minecraft, and Roblox ; Microsoft Office and a bunch of Office-like apps ; and Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, and Sling television. But there are no Google apps, including YouTube. Both of our standard test games, Alto ‘s Odyssey and Genshin Impact, are missing, as are the benchmarking apps we use for tests. If you want to communicate over Signal or Slack, there ‘s no app for that. If you like watching Apple TV+, you wo n’t do it here. It is surely possible to get other Android apps onto this pill. You can download the APK files from APKMirror.com or transfer them over from another Android earphone. There are dozens of vane pages about how to hack the Google Play store onto Amazon tablets ; they do n’t work right immediately because of a new translation of the Fire OS, but I ‘m sure they ‘ll be updated soon. But all of these solutions are kludgey and bad, and you should n’t have to live with them. The Google Play ones, specially, are unsupported and can break with OS upgrades. This is why I think of Amazon ‘s tablets as media pulmonary tuberculosis and Alexa devices preferably than full-featured competitors for Chromebooks or Apple ‘s iPads. The device is powerful enough to rank with those other tablet, but you have to jump through hoops to get apps that should be a few taps aside .
Tablet or Kindle? Both Is Good
A 10-inch tablet is n’t an ideal ebook reader. If you ‘re reading standard, black-on-white textbook books, you ‘ll be much better served with the restful screen and lighter weight of an E Ink proofreader such as the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. however, the Fire 10 HD excels at displaying picture books and comics. As I said in the Fire HD 8 review, an 8-inch pill is precisely a little excessively belittled for a two-page circulate in a comic ledger. On a 10-inch, 1080p tablet, that unfold is courteous and clear. magazine pages are besides clear at this size. Amazon ‘s Fire tablets put Audible ‘s audiobooks movement and center. They besides support a feature called ingress read : As you listen to the audiobook, the text of the book is displayed and highlighted in synchronize with the audio so you can follow along. think of it as subtitles for an audiobook. This is particularly utilitarian for beginning readers, speech students, and people with auditory disabilities. Amazon wants you to get your media through its built-in storehouse, but it besides supports Overdrive and Comixology, equally well as assorted PDF and CBR readers that work with sideloaded or download content. unfortunately, Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe are among the apps missing from the Appstore.
An Indisputable Bargain for Amazon Fans
The new Fire HD 10 is Amazon ‘s best tablet, thanks to the bouncing processor and capacious total of RAM. Amazon tablets have a reputation for lethargy, but that is n’t the subject any more. This pad has the same chip as the Lenovo Chromebook Duet ; it ‘s the best you ‘re going to get at this monetary value. But this is however an Amazon pad, not a general-purpose Android or Apple slate. The exploiter interface is great for easily getting to Amazon content, and the multiple exploiter profiles and parental controls are terrific. You equitable have to contend with Amazon quirks like the circumscribed Appstore. The best pill is however an iPad—if you can afford it. A sixth-gen iPad costs $ 329. Samsung ‘s Galaxy Tab A7 looks better than the Fire HD 10 in every way, with a higher-resolution 10.4-inch filmdom and wide Google Play support, but it costs $ 220. interim, most tablets in the $ 150 range are gawky and decelerate. The 2021 version of Amazon ‘s Fire HD 10 gives you by far the most power and features you ‘re going to get for less than $ 200, and earns our Editors ‘ Choice award .
