The 2021 version of Amazon’s Fire HD 10 packs all the performance you need for web browsing, content consumption, and smart-home management. Amazon’s limited app selection keeps it from broadly competing with general-purpose tablets such as Apple’s iPad, but if you don’t mind the Fire’s limits, you’ll find the new model very satisfying.
This review covers the core feature set and capabilities of the Fire HD 10, 2021 edition. We also have separate reviews of the Fire HD 10 Kids and Kids Pro, the Fire HD 10 Plus, and the Fire HD 10 Productivity Bundle and Plus Productivity Bundle, all of which add features and accessories to the base model. One of those may be a better option for you if you need its specialized assets, but the $150 Fire HD 10 is our overall top pick of the bunch and our Editors’ Choice among sub-$200 tablets.
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 only slightly; you can certainly play games and join Zoom calls on these tablets, but Amazon will drive you, again and again, to the videos and books it wants you to buy.
This year’s Fire lineup has a bewildering array of options, but they’re all the Fire HD 10 at heart. Here’s what you’ll get with the various versions:
As with any bundle of features and accessories, whether it makes sense to get one of the variant models depends on whether you want everything it contains. The Kids and Kids Pro also get an Editors’ Choice nod from us; we think they’re the best kids’ tablets you can get for less than $200, with sturdy cases and excellent parental controls. The Plus is terrific if you need an Alexa smart display as well as a tablet and are willing to shell out for a wireless dock. On the other hand, the Productivity and Plus Productivity are unlikely to make anyone very productive; there are just too 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 matte plastic, and you can get it in black, blue, green, or pink. It has dual stereo speakers on top, a USB-C port for charging and transferring files, and a microSD memory card slot behind a little door. The battery is not removable. 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 storage, and ads on the lock screen. There are two mix-and-match ways to upgrade it right off the bat: pay $15 to get rid of the ads, and pay $40 for an additional 32GB of storage. Doing both just breaks the $200 barrier, but even among $200 tablets, the Fire HD 10’s features are about as good as you’re doing to get, and for the base price of $150, they’re impressive. Just don’t expect them to stack up against what a fancier tablet or phone can do.
Amazon describes the 10.1-inch, 1920-by-1200, 224ppi screen as “brilliant.” That’s overstating the case; it doesn’t get tremendously bright, and the viewing angle is limited. However, the display has nicely deep colors when you look at it straight on.
Photos taken with the 5MP rear camera are poor, with washed-out colors, poor dynamic range, and digital noise. But the 2MP selfie camera isn’t bad, especially when compared with cameras on similar tablets. It delivers perfectly acceptable image quality for video conferences and even functions a bit in low light. The Fire HD 10 automatically syncs your pics with Amazon Photos.
The dual stereo speakers are acceptably loud, giving a 96.3dB reading at six inches from the tablet. Music also has a bit of a space-filling sound to it because of the physical separation of the two speakers, though it’s really tinny; when I was listening to the Killers’ “All The Things That I’ve Done,” for example, the high-hat and organ were almost inaudible. If you’re listening to music, watching videos, or taking a long video call, take advantage of the standard 3.5mm headphone jack or Bluetooth headset support, both of which deliver nice 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 launcher with types of content across the top—books, video, etc.—there are now three main tabs: For You, Home, and Library. Unlike on other tablets, you can’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 content you’ve downloaded from Amazon: Kindle books, audiobooks, apps, Prime Video, Amazon Music playlists. For You is a slightly 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 little house icon. Press it and you get a device dashboard with all of your Alexa-enabled smart home gadgets and Alexa routines. Hands-free Alexa usage is supported, and a toggle will put the tablet into Show mode, which turns it into an Alexa smart display that shows timers, song lyrics, and recipes. (Of course, if a smart 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 support for multiple user profiles and parental controls. You can create different adult and child profiles. You can assign only specific content to kids’ profiles; restrict the hours they use the tablet, the amount they use it, and what kind of content they use for how long; and look over their web history. A subscription service, Amazon Kids+, delivers a steady stream 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 same 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 model, according to the Basemark Web benchmark—a significant, noticeable improvement. (I didn’t run comparisons with the Fire 7 because it’s very slow, has only 1GB of RAM, and couldn’t complete any of our benchmark tests.)
On the overall PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark, the HD 10 scored 5376, far better than the HD 8’s 4290. It also 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, especially if you’re using productivity apps such as Microsoft Office. This is the first Amazon tablet on which I never experienced a slowdown or stutter.
See How We Test TabletsSee How We Test Tablets
More RAM enables a new split-screen feature. It’s relatively easy to pop two apps onto the screen at once, something I found very helpful when I was writing my Fire HD 10 Productivity review.
The P60T provides enough power to play videos and audiobooks, display Kindle books, do Alexa stuff, make Zoom calls, and run some basic games. It doesn’t have a gaming GPU, but stick to older, casual, or lower-res games and you’ll be fine. 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.
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 maximum speeds are limited by the chipset. On a 500Mbps symmetrical connection with excellent signal strength, it managed no higher than 275Mbps down. I saw 143Mbps down on an iPad and 134Mbps down on the Fire at one location with middling signal, and 44.6Mbps down on the iPad and 12Mbps down on the Fire in a very weak-signal location.
The App Gap
Right now, Amazon’s limited app store is most of what holds its tablets back. Amazon tablets don’t have Google Play or any other Google apps, because Amazon is trying to position itself as a Google competitor. That means Android developers have to separately submit their applications to Amazon’s store, and many haven’t done that.
The Appstore isn’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 TV.
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 won’t do it here.
It is certainly possible to get other Android apps onto this tablet. You can download the APK files from APKMirror.com or transfer them over from another Android phone. There are dozens of web pages about how to hack the Google Play store onto Amazon tablets; they don’t work right now because of a new version of the Fire OS, but I’m sure they’ll be updated soon. But all of these solutions are kludgey and bad, and you shouldn’t have to live with them. The Google Play ones, especially, are unsupported and can break with OS upgrades.
This is why I think of Amazon’s tablets as media consumption and Alexa devices rather 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 away.
Tablet or Kindle? Both Is Good
A 10-inch tablet isn’t an ideal ebook reader. If you’re reading standard, black-on-white text books, you’ll be much better served with the restful screen and lighter weight of an E Ink reader 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 tablet is just a little too small for a two-page spread in a comic book. On a 10-inch, 1080p tablet, that spread is nice and readable. Magazine pages are also readable at this size.
Amazon’s Fire tablets put Audible’s audiobooks front and center. They also support a feature called immersion reading: As you listen to the audiobook, the text of the book is displayed and highlighted in sync with the audio so you can follow along. Think of it as subtitles for an audiobook. This is particularly useful for beginning readers, language students, and people with auditory disabilities.
Amazon wants you to get your media through its built-in store, but it also supports Overdrive and Comixology, as well as various PDF and CBR readers that work with sideloaded or downloaded 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 zippy processor and capacious amount of RAM. Amazon tablets have a reputation for sluggishness, but that isn’t the case any more. This tablet has the same chip as the Lenovo Chromebook Duet; it’s the best you’re going to get at this price.
But this is still an Amazon tablet, not a general-purpose Android or Apple slate. The user interface is great for easily getting to Amazon content, and the multiple user profiles and parental controls are terrific. You just have to contend with Amazon quirks like the limited Appstore.
The best tablet is still 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 screen and full Google Play support, but it costs $220. Meanwhile, most tablets in the $150 range are clunky and slow. The 2021 edition 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.
