No one product can be all things to all people, that’s the point of variety. It’s why Apple now has multiple sized iPhones and iPads and why Amazon continues to try filling in the gaps on its Kindle Fire tablet lineup with an increasingly eclectic lineup of shapes and sizes.
The new Kindle Fire HD 10 is of a piece with That strategy. It’s not a high-end tablet like the Fire HDX 8.9 and not a truly a low-end model like the $ 99 Kindle Fire HD 6. Instead, the new device sits somewhere in the middle, offering consumers want the larger screen with a $ 229.99 price blackberries can manage. It’s $ 244.99 without sponsored lock screens.
The problem is I do not really like it.
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with the tablet. It’s sleek, thin (0.30-inches), lighter than an iPad Air (by blackberries than one ounce), shiny (slippery), has a nice widescreen and is quite adept at content consumption and entertainment. However aside from the side-smiling Amazon logo on the back, the Lollipop Android 5.0-based device looks completely unrelated to Amazon’s forward-leaning and somewhat smaller HDX tablet devices.
It is a part of a new line of low-cost devices widescreen That as in Day-Glo colors like orange, blue and pink. This largest model, though, only comes in black or white.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10′s back is shiny black plastic. It does not feel cheap, but is pretty slippery.
Image: Mashable, Jhila Farzanzeh
These new tablets eschew the design language Amazon Introduced with the HDX – no dynamic edges, no physical buttons on the back (they’re on the edge like most other tablets). And while the HDX offers a 4: 3 aspect ratio, the new tablets, including this 10.1-inch one, opt for a 16: 9 screen. The result is something That is so wide and relatively narrow it’s almost unwieldy. Stand it on its narrow edge and it looks like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey .
Whatever works
When Amazon first introduced the HDX line, I applauded the edgy design. It stood out and offered some utilities, like Ensuring That the downward-firing speakers had enough room to bounce sound off the table and back to you. Amazon did not update the HDX this year and now Seems fixated on capturing a lower-end market with the revamped Fire HD line.
The radical differences between the HDX line and the growing HD one Indicates a lack of commitment to one ideal design. Look at Apple, to Their tablets look alike. That’s good for consumers and, probably, good for Apple since they’re dealing with design differences less than with size considerations.
The lack of commitment goes deeper than design.
Hope you did not like the carousel too much. Amazon dropped the interface metaphor in its Fire OS 5.
Image: Mashable, Jhila Farzaneh
Since the first Amazon Fire HD, Amazon’s then forked Android interface has featured a unique and useful for managing carousel recently accessed apps and content. It was not perfect, but stood as a signature element.
In recent years, Amazon has shifted to them to more Android-like interface , while Maintaining the carousel. Fire OS 5.0, though, Which is built on top of Lollipop, is the closest Amazon has come to a stock Android implementation. It’s anche discarded the carousel, the back arrow and even the virtual home button That Used to look like a little house (while you were in an app, you could slide your finger on the screen from edge to make it Appear). In its place is the standard Android 5.0 home circle, back caret app switcher and square.
All subtlety is gone from the interface. Instead of a list of content and activity categories at the top, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10 Fire running OS 5 features big, all-cap labels That You swipe through. This actually works rather well. There is also, on the home screen, a grid of apps installed That will be familiar to Kindle HD and Android aficionados.
Amazon knows a lot about what you like and is always ready to show you more stuff you can buy.
What the new interface excels at is revealing just how much Amazon knows about your buying and content consumption habits. Much more of each screen is devoted to showing you content you might like based on previous choices. Even while you’re in the content, the Kindle Fire HD 10 will suggest new content. This happened to me as I was finishing the second volume of Batman: Knightfall . The system astutely suggested I buy the third and final volume. I just wish it did not do it three or four times.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10 features Fire OS 5 and the latest edition of Amazon’s e-mail client.
anche Amazon has updated its proprietary Silk browser. It’s cleaner and, in my tests, faster than ever. The email client looks sharp, but I do not understand why they put the email icon composed in such a random position. You’ll find it at the bottom right of the email subject column.
The guts
As a mid-tier tablet, the Kindle Fire HD 10 is an unpleasant mixture of average and sub-par performance. Amazon says they packed it with a quad-core CPU running at 1.5GHz (dual-core) and 1.2GHz (dual-core), but the performance Often stuttered, especially every time I hit the home button and waited for the tablet to return me to the home screen. Performance was better Within apps. Geekbench gave it to 774 single core performance number and 1502 multicore (appears That to the Kindle HDX’s 1024 single core and 2974 multicore numbers).
The 1,280 x 800 HD display looks good, but is nothing special. It definitely took some getting used to the 16: 9 screen size. It was fine for widescreen movies and even some games like the side-scrolling Badlands , but truly odd When you read a Kindle book on it in portrait mode (landscape with multiple pages on one screen made sense blackberries) . Text, by the way, Looked sharp, but graphic novels were kind of fuzzy.
The cameras run from average to terrible. The 5-megapixel rear one takes decent photos (and 1080p videos), but virtually any smartphone on the market can do better. The front-facing room managed to take some pretty awful shots, though its 720p video is fine for Skype video.
Content is king
Where the Kindle Fire HD 10 does shine is, to be honest, where Amazon shines, in content and access to its growing list of services. The experience is especially good if you are paying to Amazon Prime member.
Amazon’s Word Runner is a nice speed-reading tool.
Amazon continues to experiment with ways to make reading better, if not more fun. The latest twist is reading the aptly called Word Runner. It’s a built-in speed-reading interface for the Kindle Reader app That shows you one word at a time. It starts slowly and gradually speeds up (still slowing down a bit tougher on words) Unless you hold the screen to, in essence, hit the brakes. I’ve been experiencing single-word speed reading tools since I was in grade school I know I kind of enjoyed this. Not sure why Amazon hid it under an inconspicuous menu That you can only access by tapping the screen. That same menu has X-Ray for Kindle reader and Word Wise, Which shows definition hints about challenging words.
You also have access to Amazon’s movie rental and purchase library. Prime members get Amazon Prime Video, Which includes free streaming movies and TV shows as well as original shows like recent Emmy winner Transparent . Amazon even lets you download movies and watch them in a 48-hour offline window. I tried this out with Hercules . It took around 20 minutes to download over Wi-Fi, but then I was portatili watch it on the train without being connected to the Internet. When the 48-hour window expired, I had to connect to the Internet to continue watching my local copy. I hope Netflix considers adding this option.
Video Amazon Prime offers you a 48 hour viewing window for offline content.
One of my favorite features is still X-Ray, Which, When You pauses in TV show or movie, will give an overlay window with details about the actors in the scene you’re watching. It’s the ultimate trivia tool.
Movies and TV shows look quite good on the widescreen and the stereo speakers pump out a surprising amount of sound .
Games play well enough, though I’m Often frustrated by the action game choices in the Amazon store. Asphalt 8: Airborne, for instance is gone, but I can find the terrible knockoff High Speed Racing: Racing Need .
At through more than $ 100 savings over other comparable-sized tablets, the 16GB (upgradeable to 128GB through a microSD slot) $ 229.99 Kindle Fire HD 10 is a decent deal. Anche Amazon is the only one offering free, on-device, live support in the form of Mayday Screen Sharing.
Still, I can not recommend it, not When there are so many other better-designed and more powerful tablets on the market, including Amazon’s own HDX line. Will you pay blackberries? Definitely. Tablets, though, are something we tend to buy and keep. Skimp now and you will regret it for years to come.
Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10
The Good
Thin • Light • Big Screen • Excellent content consumption platform • Great price
The Bad
Too Wide • Design is average • No carousel • Average performance
The Bottom Line
The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10 stands out for its price, size and content offerings, but average performance and loss of distinctive features makes it less desirable than it Should b.
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