Amazon Announces New Fire HD 10 Tablets

Amazon today announced new versions of its Fire HD 10 and Fire HD 10 Plus tablets, plus a Productivity Bundle that includes one year of Microsoft 365 Personal.

“Our best tablets just keep getting better,” Amazon vice president Kevin Keith says. “The new Fire HD 10 is brighter, thinner, and lighter, with an octa-core processor for fast and responsive performance, 50 percent more RAM, and all-day battery life—and is still only $149.99. Plus, we added new apps, features, and accessories, including a Productivity Bundle with the Fire HD 10, a Microsoft 365 Personal subscription, and a detachable keyboard case, to help you get more done.”

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The new Fire HD 10 is offered in Black, Denim, Lavender, and Olive colors and provides an octa-core 2 GHz processor, 3 GB of RAM, a 10.1-inch 1080p display, 32 or 64 GB of expandable internal storage, Dolby Atmos audio, and hands-free Alexa support. Amazon says the device will get 10 hours of battery life.

The new Fire HD 10 Plus is $30 more expensive and adds 4 GB of RAM, a premium finish in Slate, and wireless charging capabilities. And the Productivity Bundle starts at $220 and provides a Fire HD 10 or Fire HD 10 Plus tablet, a detachable keyboard cover (also available separately for $50), and one year of Microsoft 365 Personal.

The Fire HD tablets and Productivity Bundle are available for preorder today and will ship beginning May 26. You can learn more on the Amazon website.

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Conversation 19 comments

  • Pbike908

    27 April, 2021 - 11:37 am

    <p>The Galaxy Tab A for about the same price as the 10 Plus is a better deal. I had an older Fire Tablet. No Google Play store is a PIA. Sure you can sideload the Google Play store, I did, however, the interface is still clunky.</p><p><br></p><p>If you are gonna buy a tablet, get a legitimate Android one or an Ipad.</p>

    • walterwood44

      27 April, 2021 - 2:54 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#625267"><em>In reply to Pbike908:</em></a><em> I bought two of the 2018 8-inch Fire tablets on sale and they now sit unused because they are too slow. I did hack them to allow the Play Store and other features but still painful to use for any thing other than just browsing. I ended up with the Galaxy Tab A for me and got a discount on a JBL Home device for my wife in the kitchen. I would never consider an Amazon device again. Fool me once …</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

      • obarthelemy

        27 April, 2021 - 4:03 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#625319">In reply to walterwood44:</a></em></blockquote><p>The 8 and the 10 are different beasts. The 8 has ARM cores A5x, the 10 has A7x. </p>

        • michael_jones

          27 April, 2021 - 5:29 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#625326">In reply to obarthelemy:</a></em></blockquote><p>Don't waste your money. It's the same processor used in the last 2 versions of the FireTablet. So it will be just as great/bad as those previous versions as well. </p><p><br></p><p>Though I recall reading somewhere that that was as much to blame on Google and as on Amazon. Because Amazon chooses to roll their own ASOP based OS and not certify them as Google Play compatible, that fact locks them out of sourcing SoC's from the normal major providers like Qualcomm. This is due to licensing restrictions imposed by Google making them unable to sell to people that aren't using Google Android versions vs ASOP. So you get a MediaTek processor here that's probably used in a lot of places (Ubiquiti uses them in their routers and switches for instance), but that are hardly contemporary in Android terms.</p><p><br></p><p>Anyhow, back away from that buy button.</p>

    • winner

      27 April, 2021 - 11:50 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#625267">In reply to Pbike908:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can install Google Play if you look around on the web.</p>

  • brisonharvey

    Premium Member
    27 April, 2021 - 1:08 pm

    <p>I actually had just pulled my old Fire HD 8 out of a drawer to play around with it. I had forgotten some of the positives of the device, but quickly remembered all of the negatives. </p><p><br></p><p>Positives:</p><ul><li>Plastic back, glass front. Great for a high usage device. Feels a little less premium but a little more durable.</li><li>Decent speakers. Not nearly as good as my iPad Pro, but good enough to watch something in a pinch.</li><li>Amazonification of the device does have some perks, like reminding me which books I own and that I can watch movies on Prime. Nothing exclusive but makes it easier to find their content (which if you are already paying or have paid for it, makes you feel like you are getting more out of the device).</li><li>Echo built in, setup and ready to go. Which is really handy when your smart home is built around Alexa.</li></ul><p>Negatives:</p><ul><li>The random Android apps that aren't in the store. I mean Google Apps are a given, but a variety of others aren't either.</li><li>The inability to remove or add content to the home screen besides Amazon stuff. Consider it the flip side of the other point I made earlier. </li><li>Poor performance (see below)</li><li>Bad screen (see below)</li></ul><p><br></p><p>So how might this refreshed device help?</p><ul><li>Performance was terrible. So sluggish and slow. Trying to get Spotify to play a song took years through the app. Will 4GB of RAM and an "octocore processor" help? Well, it can't hurt…</li><li>The screen on the "Fire 8 HD" barely met that threshold. 720p is garbage for a "content consumption device." It was much lower quality than I remembered. Maybe the full 1080p option on the 10" will help?</li><li>USB C is a nice touch since everything else uses that anyway.</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Would I buy it for the ability to email someone quickly with Outlook? No.</p><p>Would I buy it for a kid? Maybe…if they are younger than 13 and really want a device.</p><p>Would I buy it for traveling or a post-pandemic plane trip? Perhaps. It barely crosses the lowest threshold. If money is tight, and you already use Android, I would suggest giving it a try before a splurge on an iPad.</p><p><br></p><p>Who are these devices for?</p><ul><li>People who subscribe to all things Amazon and/or read Kindle content frequently</li><li>Younger children who need a device</li><li>As a smart home hub of sorts if you've built it around Alexa (with the stand, it can double as a bad speaker Echo device)</li></ul><p><br></p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      28 April, 2021 - 6:12 am

      <blockquote><a href="#625286"><em>In reply to brisonharvey:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote>The random Android apps that aren't in the store. I mean Google Apps are a given, but a variety of others aren't either.</blockquote><p>Reddit is a good example, every time I go to a subreddit, it say I should open it in the app – only there is no reddit app!</p><p>What sold the 8HD was the sub 80€ price (in Amazon's regular promotions). At that price it was unbeatable, for what you get and the restrictions can be lived with.</p><p>If I'm paying "real" money for a tablet, it should be a real tablet with all the flexibility that offers. I find the 10 is not a bad device, but the Amazon restrictions are too much at that price and I'd rather pay a few more Euros for a Samsung, for example.</p>

  • ghostrider

    27 April, 2021 - 1:32 pm

    <p>None of the FireHD tabs have actually been very good – they're all missing key features. I guess Amazon including 12 months M365 is part of this tie-up they have with Microsoft, which all seems a bit cosy now doesn't it! I'm sure we'll see Alexa become the default consumer assistant on all MS devices in the not-too-distant…</p>

  • brduffy

    27 April, 2021 - 2:35 pm

    <p>The wireless charging capability is intriguing. One of the things I would like to do is connect the tablet to my dac so that I can use Alexa to play music from my Amazon Music account. That has always been an issue because you could never charge the tablet while it was connected to the DAC. I wonder if that problem will be solved with the wireless charging option?</p>

    • MikeCerm

      27 April, 2021 - 2:54 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#625298">In reply to brduffy:</a></em></blockquote><p>Maybe, but wireless charging is terribly inefficient, and if you leave a device on a wireless charger all the time the heat will kill the battery. The tablet has a headphone jack, so you could use that and leave the USB-C port for charging. If you really think an outboard DAC is a big deal, you can get a USB hub that does power delivery.</p>

      • solomonrex

        27 April, 2021 - 6:33 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#625318">In reply to MikeCerm:</a></em></blockquote><p>I’m not sure. I wirelessly charged my Galaxy s8 and it still has plenty of juice. Certainly more than my wife’s iPhone from the same year. I’m sure it’s better to plug it in, but it might not be terrible to charge wirelessly sometimes, either.</p>

    • obarthelemy

      27 April, 2021 - 3:16 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#625298">In reply to brduffy:</a></em></blockquote><p>the Lenovo tab m10 fhd plus has a dock w/ pogo pins that leaves the USB-C connector free. About same price+specs, vanilla Android.</p>

      • MikeCerm

        27 April, 2021 - 6:43 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#625321">In reply to obarthelemy:</a></em></blockquote><p>The Lenovo Tab M10 FHD Plus is not the worst tablet in the world, and I'd certainly much rather have "vanilla" Android than the Amazon software experience, but the CPU in Amazon Fire HD 10 has almost the double the single-threaded performance of the Lenovo tablet, and a much more powerful GPU as well. Don't get me wrong, both of these tablets are not fast. The CPU in the Fire HD 10 has four Cortex A73 "big" cores (in addition to four "little" A53 cores), basically the same kind of configuration found in high-end phones… in 2016. The Lenovo is all A53 cores — around the same performance as mid-range phones, also from 5 years ago. Having used one, I can say that the performance of the Fire 10 HD is passable for basic tasks. I'm not sure the performance of the Lenovo tablet is acceptable in 2021. For context, both of these tablets are much slower than the iPad Air 2 from 2014. Maybe just pick up one of those.</p>

        • Paul Thurrott

          Premium Member
          28 April, 2021 - 9:22 am

          “Not the worst tablet in the world” isn’t great marketing vs. “literally the best tablet in the world,” which is how anyone would describe the iPad. 🙂

          • MikeCerm

            28 April, 2021 - 12:18 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#625385">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>Wouldn't disagree with you about the iPad being "literally the best," but it still has too many dealbreakers for me, and isn't the right choice for a lot of people. iPad OS is still too locked down, and the lack of multiple user profiles — meaning it can't be shared with family members unless you want to give them full access to your email and other info — that's a total dealbreaker. Even with all the other limitations of iPad OS, I wouldn't mind spending $600+ on a nice iPad Air or Pro if I could share it with the family, like you can with even the cheapest, crappiest Android tablets. </p>

  • Patrick3D

    27 April, 2021 - 5:51 pm

    <p>I'd like to trade in a 9th generation Fire HD 10 to get the new HD 10 Plus but it isn't listed under available devices to trade in, only upto the 7th generation. They give 20% off plus ~$30 trade in credit which is better than dealing with the hassle of ebay.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    27 April, 2021 - 6:15 pm

    <p>My wife went through 5 Kindle Fires (1st one a present, next 4 replacements when things went wrong) before I got her an iPad. Far fewer problems with the iPad.</p><p>My impression of Kindle Fires is that ANYTHING which COULD go wrong WILL go wrong, sooner rather than later.</p>

    • winner

      27 April, 2021 - 11:49 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#625335">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Conversely, I've had a Kindle Fire 8 that I bought maybe 5 years ago. It's nothing special but is fine for web browsing, and it has never given me a bit of trouble.</p>

  • txag

    02 May, 2021 - 7:39 pm

    I have a Fire that I use as a backup book reader. It’s cheap (if you buy it on sale) and it has pretty good battery life, better than my iPad. But the non-book functions are awful, and the book management software is also not great.

    It’s main advantage is that if I lose it on a trip, I won’t mourn.

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