Recently, Amazon started filling up its tablet line-up with some decently priced and mid-ranger devices, equipped with HD displays. The newest slate from Amazon comes between the £50 Fire offering and HDX lineup of last year.
The HD 10 promises a big-screen entertainment and this makes it the closest to some of the big-screen devices of the company. However, inside and out, this device is essentially the same as its smaller 8-inch sibling. The highlights of the exterior are limited to stereo speaker grilles and the microSD card slots for expandability and it is located in a corner along the device’s edge.
At 7.7mm, this is one of the slimmest slates from the company and depending on its size and weight; one-handed use can be a bit of a pain on your wrists, especially if you are trying to use it on landscape mode for gaming or watching movies.
It comes with a sturdy metal frame and a glossy polymer topcoat. The edges offer better grip due to its fine textures, but the tablet’s back and bezel are quite shiny and vulnerable to fingerprints, smudges and smears. Therefore, in case you wish to buy this tablet, you better get a good cover case in order to prevent these.
Color and contrast are quite appealing on the 10.1inch display of the HD 10 but the poor excuse of an IPS panel along with a low 1280×800 resolution means that the images lack detail and punch in order to be a serious contender.
The Fire HD 10 is one of the first devices from Amazon to come equipped with the new Fire OS 5. This new update promises an enhanced user experience, but you get all the usual Amazon services and experiences in a pretty presentation. The new OS is heavily focused on Google’s Android Platform, which provides the groundwork.
However, even if you haven’t used a Fire OS device before, you will immediately recognize some of the features in Fire OS 5. The home screen is absent and it no longer shows the content you own but instead, the content that you would like to own. The internal hardware of the Amazon Fire HD 10 is quite simple to say the least.
The device comes equipped with a MediaTek quad-core 1.5GHz/1.2GHz processor which is paired to a single gigabyte of RAM but at the same time, general usability with the larger Fire Tablet feels pretty decent.
That being said, the overall navigation in the UI is quite smooth and lag-free, various 3D games ran without any hitches and streaming of videos appeared to be quite flawless. The HD 10 also promises 8 hours of battery life with 16GB and 32GB storage options which is further expandable up to 128GB using a microSD card.
The Fire HD 10 also comes with VGA/5 megapixel pair, which according to the company, has been designed to work in low-light conditions, which necessarily mean indoor lighting. With a price tag of 169.99 pounds, the deal appears to be a bit steep with what’s on offer and you will need to shell out an additional 99 pounds for a keyboard dock.
In the meantime, Amazon has released a new firmware version 5.2.2 which is suitable for the Fire HD 10 tablets along with the 5th generation Fire and Fire HD 8 models. It comes with a new design which makes it easier and quicker to discover new content or resume games and movies among others.
The recent release also brings support to the Amazon Underground feature which brings stuff like OfficeSuite Professional 8, Goat Simulator, and PhotoSuite 4, completely 100% free to its owners. The reading experience has been further improved by introducing the new Word Runner feature.