Fire HD 10: Best 10-inch Tablet For The Price

The Fire HD 10 fulfills Amazon’s simple plan for its tablets: Like other Fire tablets, it’s an inexpensive way to consume your Amazon content.

- Ajay Kumar and Sascha Segan

At first glance, the new device doesn’t appear to be the barn-burning deal that the Fire HD 8 is, but the HD 10 offers plenty of bang for your buck. You get a sharp 1080p display, solid performance, and an easy-to-use UI that includes parental controls and Alexa voice assistant integration. The Fire HD 10 is simply the best 10-inch tablet for the price, earning it our Editors’ Choice.

DESIGN AND FEATURES

The Fire HD 10 looks and feels like a larger Fire HD 8. It’s a solidly built tablet with a black, blue, or orange plastic body, measuring 10.3 by 6.3 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighing 17.4 ounces. That’s bigger than the 8-inch HD 8 (8.4 by 5.0 by 0.4 inches, 13 ounces), but similar to other 10-inch tablets such as the Lenovo Tab 4 10 (9.7 by 6.7 by 0.3 inches, 17.7 ounces). It’s a sturdy slab that’ll survive some knocks and dings, but it isn’t officially rugged or waterproof. If you want to use it as a kid’s tablet, pick up a case.

The HD 10 has a 10.1-inch, 1,920-by-1,200-pixel screen, which is better than the 1,280-by-800 screens most of the competition come with. The resolution works out to 224 pixels per inch, which is good enough to show real 1080p video with solid viewing angles. Alas, it looks a little dim, as it’s clouded by a protective plastic layer. Under Display settings, you can enable Blue Shade, which reduces blue light during nighttime hours, something that’s reported to allow for better sleep.

The Fire HD 10 supports dual-band Wi-Fi, unlike 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 farther away but remained in the high double digits throughout testing. The tablet also has Bluetooth 4.2 for wireless audio.

You can enable Blue Shade, which reduces blue light during nighttime hours, something that’s reported to allow for better sleep.