New Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus

Recently released is the updated range of 2021 edition Amazon Fire tablets.

For quick things, such as reading the news, buying from Amazon and reading magazines and books I've been using the previous 2019 Fire HD 8 tablet for over a year. The Fire range will never compete directly with iPads or premium Android tablets such as Samsung in terms of hardware spec or screen resolution, but then they are in completely different markets and at opposite ends of the price range because Amazon just want people using their ecosystem so pick hardware at very affordable levels.

I wasn't planning on buying a new Fire tablet but when looking through the Prime day deals at the start of this week I noticed the new 2021 range of Fire tablets were really reduced. The newer 8" tablets don't really offer much difference over my existing 2019 edition so if you already own one of those it's not worth that upgrade. Screen resolution is the same. I think the battery may be larger, but I've never had an issue with battery life. And it adds USBC and wireless charging. Plus the front facing camera has been relocated.

But the new 2021 10" tablets were more interesting and heavily reduced too. I was initially tempted by the HD 10 as it was only £79, but the new to range HD 10 Plus at £109 sold it to me in the end. Very similar spec to the HD10. Both have Octicore CPUs, but the Plus has 4GB ram vs 3GB. The plus it's only available in slate grey but has a nicer soft touch case, and you can buy official cases to add colour if needed. Both have USBC fast charging and come with a 9W charger, so that's an improvement over the 2019 micro usb chargers. The plus adds wireless charging support which was one of the things to sell it for me. My older HD8 has a wireless charging sleeve and docking charging stand. It automatically goes into Show more when docked, so like a visual Alexa. It does time,weather and latest new and articles whilst in this mode. The 10Plus adds the show mode and the is a docking charging stand available, so that's good. And as we also picked up a Ring doorbell in the prime same a tablet in air mode is very useful to quickly see who is at the door.

It arrived yesterday, the day after purchase and so far I'm impressed for the price. It's noticeably faster than the 2019 models. As a test I started Minecraft on both and it loaded to the menu screen a lot faster then the older version. And I was loaded into the game more than twice as fast. I will have to time it when I get a chance. The game is also much smoother, responsive and there was no lag in the quick test. It's probably the most taxing thing I will run on it. I have other systems for more dedicated gaming.

Only other thing I've so far done is add Google Play Store to have access to everything not directly supporter by the Amazon App Store. So for £109 you can't go wrong if you just want a general purpose tablet and are already using Amazon a lot. And if you are not bother about wireless charging or the extra 1GB ram then £79 for the non plus version when in a sale is hard to argue against. These Fire tablets are also great for kids as they are so cheap, are very robust, and for £1 a month you can subscribe to a Kids Fire account which provides a much more secure and restricted interface, and more free children's content. It also adds the ability to manage their screen time with time limits and hour settings. I subscribe to Amazon Prime and Kindle for magazines so utilise it a lot too.

Just don't expect the screen to be cutting edge. It's full HD, whereas the current Samsung tablets are 4K. And the colour vibrancy and viewing angles will never match an OLED display. But then it's £79-109 (in the sales) compared to £650+ so you can't expect it to. Plus Amazon offer some trade in deals to get them even cheaper. I will end up only paying about £49 for mine as I'm sending an older tablet back as a trade in. You really can't complain about that.

Come Christmas, if they have similar deals again I will consider upgrading Tom's 2019 Fire HD 8 too.

Dad also needs a new laptop or teller as his very old XP based 10" Samsung notebook is no longer sorted to run half the software he uses such as Dropbox. So I might get him one of these with the keyboard dock, because that includes Office 365 and that's all he will need. I think he will find touch control far easier than a mouse.