The Latest Technology Product Reviews, News, Tips, and Deals - Review 2022

The Burn down Hd 10 fulfills Amazon'due south simple plan for its tablets: Like other Fires, it'due south an inexpensive ($149.99 with lock screen ads) way to consume your Amazon content. At starting time glance, information technology doesn't appear to be the barn-burning bargain that the Fire HD 8 is, simply it however offers plenty of bang for your buck. You lot get a precipitous 1080p display, solid overall operation, and an easy-to-use UI that includes parental controls and Alexa vocalism assistant integration. The Burn down HD ten is simply the best ten-inch tablet for the price, earning it our Editors' Choice.

Design and Features

The Fire Hard disk drive 10 looks and feels like a larger Fire HD 8. It's a solidly congenital tablet with a blackness, bluish, or orange plastic body. The slate measures 10.3 by vi.3 by 0.iv (HWD) and weighs 17.four ounces. That's bigger than the 8-inch HD 8 (8.iv by 5.0 by 0.4 inches, 13 ounces), but similar to other ten-inch tablets like the Lenovo Tab 4 ten (ix.7 by 6.seven by 0.three inches, 17.7 ounces). It's a sturdy slab that'll survive some knocks and dings, simply it isn't officially rugged or waterproof. If you desire to use information technology as a kid's tablet, pick up a case.

At that place are loud dual speakers on the left side (or the bottom if you're holding it in landscape orientation), along with a standard headphone jack, a USB port, and a microSD carte du jour slot to supplement the 32GB of internal storage; it worked fine with a 256GB card.

The HD 10 has a ten.i-inch, 1,920-by-one,200-pixel screen, which is meliorate than the 1,280-past-800 screens most of the competition come with. The resolution works out to 224 pixels per inch, which is good enough to bear witness real 1080p video with solid viewing angles. Alas, information technology looks a fiddling dim, overcast past a protective plastic layer. Under Brandish settings you tin can enable Blue Shade, letting you lot reduce blueish light during nighttime hours, something that'southward reputed to allow for better sleep.

The Burn down Hd ten supports dual-band Wi-Fi, different the Lenovo Tab 4 10. Connected to the 5GHz network at PC Labs and 30 feet from the router, we drew top speeds of 149Mbps down and 138Mbps up. Speeds dropped further away, simply remained in the high double digits throughout testing. The tablet too has Bluetooth 4.ii for wireless audio.

Processor, Battery, and Camera

Inside, the Fire Hard disk ten runs Amazon's latest Fire Os five.5 (a heavily modified version of Google's Android) on a one.8GHz MT8173B MediaTek processor. In Geekbench's single core and multicore performance tests, the Hard disk drive x scored 1500 and 3000 respectively, more than double the Hard disk drive 8 (629/1687). Information technology also outperformed the Tab 4 10 by a similar margin (680/1898).

The HD 10's more powerful processor and 2GB of RAM make for a more responsive UI, smoother overall functioning, and amend multitasking than the Hard disk viii. Web browsing using the default Silk browser is fast, and the slate had no trouble streaming 1080p video and opening multiple tabs. The only time I encountered whatever stuttering was when scrolling through my extensive Kindle library collection.

Ultimately, it'southward no match for Apple'southward nine.7-inch iPad, which has a faster Apple A9 processor, not to mention a sharper screen. But information technology costs less than half as much, so these differences are easy to get past.

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Battery life is solid. When streaming full-screen video over Wi-Fi at maximum brightness, the tablet clocked half-dozen hours, fourteen minutes. That'due south a couple of hours curt of the Tab 4 ten (8 hours, 11 minutes), but over an hour longer than the Hd eight (four hours, 42 minutes). It should be enough juice to keep kids entertained during a long auto ride, and you tin always supplement it with a portable charger. Enabling Low Power mode and Automated Smart Suspend helps extend runtime by tamping down screen effulgence and turning off wireless connectivity when it'south not in use.

The tablet'south cameras are almost an afterthought: VGA on the front end and 2MP on the back, they're primarily for video chatting. They're fine for that, just render muddy, blurry images in whatever mildly challenging circumstances.

Software and Ecosystem

Amazon'southward Fire OS is based on Android Lollipop and runs Android apps, but you tin can't access the Google Play store—you tin can simply utilise Amazon's. Amazon'south store has a lot of competing media services (Netflix and Hulu are no problem), but there are nevertheless a few gaps, notably the Marvel Unlimited comics reader, near Google apps, and most banking and mobile payment apps. It's possible to sideload many Android apps by downloading the apk file, loading it on a microSD card, and installing information technology via a file manager, but it requires some piece of work.

Amazon'southward OS looks nothing like Android; rather, it'south a carousel of your downloadable Amazon content and apps. The tablet includes a new screen on the carousel, For Y'all, that shows what you were most recently reading or watching and encourages you to become back to information technology. Under that, of form, there are plenty of promotions for other things to purchase from Amazon that yous might like.

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Hands-free Alexa is new here. You can yell out "Alexa!" and have the tablet respond to any Alexa-uniform query even when the screen is off, like an Amazon Echo. If you're more than interested in answers than music quality, a Fire Hd 10 propped up in a stand up is less expensive and more portable than an Repeat Show speaker, providing you with a bigger screen (and YouTube admission).

That said, I wouldn't supplant your one-time Echo with an HD 10 only yet. While the tablet's microphone is pretty responsive when you're shut by, altitude and background noise can throw things off. A conversation taking identify in the background while I was issuing commands confused Alexa, while the Echo Dot had no problem picking upwards on my voice. And while audio quality is about on par with the Dot, it doesn't come up close to whatsoever of the other Echos.

Parental controls allow you to prepare multiple accounts for kids, each with dissever passwords, with a curated ready of apps, restrictions on in-app purchases, time limits, and web browsing limitations. There's also a child-friendly groundwork and a simplified interface. Access to Alexa is blocked when parental controls are enabled, preventing any attempt to circumvent the restrictions.

When information technology comes to preloaded software, naturally you have Amazon's entire app suite onboard, forth with some default apps and utilities like Contacts and Calendar. Out of 32GB of internal storage, y'all have 24.3GB bachelor for use. Information technology's plenty for your Kindle library and a off-white amount of video. If you lot programme to download a lot of apps and multimedia, you can always pop in a microSD carte.

Comparisons and Conclusions

At $149.99, the Fire HD 10 undercuts about entry-level Android tablets past $xxx to $50. You pay for the discount with lock screen ads (which you lot can get rid of by paying $15) and a tablet that's completely tuned to brandish Amazon content, with no Google Play store.

As is typical with Amazon, you're getting the best hardware value per dollar here, as the Fire HD 10 costs less than the Lenovo Tab 4 ten, for instance, has more RAM and storage than the Acer Iconia One 10, and has a higher-resolution screen than either. If y'all can alive without Google Play, the choice is articulate.

Among Amazon's own tablets, deciding which to buy is a bit harder. For half the price, the smaller Fire Hard disk eight and Burn vii get you access to the same ecosystem of apps and content for even less money. The HD 8 is our Editors' Option for affordable mid-size slates. The HD 10, while more expensive, boasts a bigger, sharper screen, a more powerful processor, and more RAM. We call up that makes it a justifiable upgrade if you want the larger display. Information technology also makes it our Editors' Pick for depression-toll, big-screen tablets.