It does a surprisingly good job of being a little laptop if you don’t need to go beyond reasonably basic tasks.
Design & Build
For starters, it’s a reasonable amount lighter at 465g as opposed to 504g making it more comfortable to use. I like the soft-feel matt finish and the Fire HD 10 is available in Black, Denim, Lavender and Olive.
Note that the Plus model I was sent only comes in a grey called Slate.
It’s quite reminiscent of the Tesco Hudl 2 from 2014, showing how much budget tablet design has come on over the years.
Usefully, the tablet can be detached from it thanks to magnets, but when attached doesn’t angle backwards very far. As well as the keyboard, the Productivity bundle also comes with a 12-month Microsoft 365 Personal subscription.
Specs & Features
In general use, both the Fire HD 10 and Plus models are nippy and can swap between apps without much hesitation. Do remember this is a budget tablet, so don’t set your hopes too high: performance isn’t iPad-smooth.
We use Microsoft 365 for work and I was able to log into my account just like I would on a laptop and instantly access all my files. We have an epically large spreadsheet used for planning and the Fire HD 10 handles it surprisingly well.
What isn’t so good, if you are going to use the tablet for a company account, is that you may be asked to encrypt the storage in order to use Outlook. A pop-up message warns this may result in ‘significantly slower device performance’. However, this isn’t aimed at corporate use, and is designed for Microsoft 365 Personal.
The rear camera has been bumped from 2- to 5Mp but remains mediocre in terms of quality, performing badly in low light. The front camera is arguably more useful and is still 2Mp. It’s good enough for video calls with better detail than some laptops we’ve tested recently.
Connectivity comprises USB-C for charging and a headphone jack. Internally, there’s no upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 but that’s acceptable at this price but you do get an upgrade Bluetooth 5.0 LE.
Stereo speakers sit on top when you have the tablet in landscape mode and sound reasonably good, although nothing special. You get the usual lack of bass and there’s distortion at higher volumes. They support Dolby Atmos but this seems to be a tick-box exercise only and doesn’t really do much in terms of a spacious sound field.
Battery life is still quoted at 12 hours and I think you’ll get that with varied usage. For video playback, I found it to match the previous model at around 10 hours.
Sadly, that USB-C port doesn’t offer any kind of fast charging and the supplied 9W charger will take around four hours to fully charge the Fire HD 10’s battery. The Plus model I’ve tested comes with wireless charging; a little odd for a tablet having to balance it on a charging pad but it works and is faster than wired at 15W.
Software
There are plenty of popular ones including Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Facebook, Spotify, TikTok, Sonos, Disney+ and many more. But you can’t get Google Chrome (or other Google apps officially), Slack, Fortnite or banking apps such as Monzo.
Alexa is, of course, here in hands-free guise, so you can ask her questions even when the tablet is locked and with the screen turned off.
Price
The 2021 Fire HD 10 is still amazingly cheap, starting at £149.99 if you’re ok with 32GB of storage and ads on the lockscreen. You can jump to 64GB at £189.99 but there is a microSD card slot as an alternative way of adding more space.
The Plus model I’ve tested starts at £179.99 so is only with the upgrade if you really want 30% more RAM and wireless charging. As usual, if you don’t want ads you need to add £10/US$15 to the price.
In the US, the Fire HD 10 starts at US$149 at 32GB although is ‘Temporarily out of stock’ at at the time of writing. The Productivity bundle starts at US $269.97.
Verdict
The Fire HD 10 is still one of the best budget tablets you can buy, offering a lot for not much money.
It has an improved design, slightly better performance and other small upgrades – even if a higher resolution rear camera and Bluetooth 5.0 won’t matter to many.
If you want a 10in tablet to access popular entertainment and social media apps then it will do the job very well indeed, as long as there is support for the apps you use the most. In 2021 there typically will be, although some of the most popular mobile games are not available.
What about as a productivity device? The Fire HD 10 Plus does a surprisingly good job, so long as your definition of productivity is using a word processor, spreadsheet and sending emails: using Microsoft 365, essentially.
Of course, working on a small keyboard and display could be a sacrifice you’re not willing to make. Ultimately the experience is a compromise and well behind what you can expect from a budget Google Chromebook, let alone a laptop or Microsoft Surface.
But that’s not the biggest problem: it’s that there just aren’t enough productivity apps here: you’ll have to use Google, Slack and others via the web browser, which is far from ideal.
Tech Advisor’s Reviews Editor, Chris has been reviewing all kinds of tech for over 10 years and specialises in audio. He also covers a range of topics including home entertainment, phones, laptops, tablets and more.
