Review of Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021): an affordable tablet for multimedia

Amazon Fire HD 10 (2021): tablets from Amazon are simple yet high-quality devices designed for consuming multimedia content, known for their incredible durability and even “indestructibility.” Like workhorses, they perform their daily tasks, entertaining both kids and adults, all while being reasonably priced. This is precisely why users have grown to love them.

Today, I’ll showcase the latest generation of the largest tablet in the Fire HD lineup – the Amazon Fire HD 10, released in 2021. The review includes performance and battery life tests, stress tests, as well as a brief guide for quick and easy setup to ensure maximum convenience.

Let’s start by looking at the technical specifications of the Amazon Fire HD 10 and Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus tablets:

• Display: IPS with a 10.1″ diagonal, Full HD+ resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. Protected by hardened glass.
• Chipset: 8-core Mediatek MT8183 (Helio P60T) – 4 Cortex-A73 cores at 2GHz + 4 Cortex-A53 cores at 2GHz, 12nm process.
• Graphics: Mali-G72 MP3.
• RAM: 3GB or 4GB (for Fire HD 10 Plus).
• Storage: eMMC 5.1 with 32GB or 64GB, expandable via a microSD card slot.
• Cameras: Rear 5MP + front 2MP.
• Audio: Stereo speakers + 3.5mm headphone jack.
• Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with 2.4GHz/5GHz support + Bluetooth 5.0.
• Battery: Li-ion (capacity not specified, but according to Antutu – 6500mAh).
• Operating system: Android 9 with Fire OS interface.
• Dimensions: 247mm x 166mm x 9.2mm.
• Weight: 465g.

As you can see, the Amazon Fire HD 10 and Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus tablets differ only in terms of RAM capacity. As for pricing, the regular price of the Amazon Fire HD 10 is $150, while the Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus costs $200. However, approximately 2–3 times a year, major sales events like Amazon Prime Day or Christmas sales occur, during which discounts reach a real 50%. For example, I purchased my unit for $75.

What’s in the box?

The tablet arrived in a bright orange box with the model name clearly displayed.

It’s important to note that Amazon products are not officially sold in our region, which means the Russian language will not be available on the tablet upon first boot (I’ll show you how to add it). Additionally, you’ll need an adapter for the European plug if you want to use the included charger. The box itself lists the main specifications and features, as well as the contents of the package.

Aside from the tablet, inside I found: a charger, a cable, and a couple of colorful brochures.

The first brochure describes the controls and interfaces, as well as the basics of usage and charging. The second one is an advertisement for the internal app store and its features. However, we won’t need it, as we’ll be installing the familiar Play Market instead.

Charger and Charging Speed

The tablet does not support fast charging and comes with a standard 9W adapter, providing up to 1.8A at 5V.

At the initial stage, the current reaches the maximum 1.8A, and the charging power stays at around 8.5W. For most of the charging process, this rate remains consistent, with a gradual decrease in current during the final stage. Because of this, the full charging process takes a lengthy 4 hours and 5 minutes. In the first 30 minutes, the tablet gains only 15%, and after an hour, 30%. Using other, more powerful chargers does not improve the situation, indicating that the tablet itself has a built-in charging power limitation.

Incidentally, a tester confirmed that the battery capacity is indeed 6500mAh.

Design, Ergonomics, and Usability

This is a standard tablet with a practical plastic body and a large screen surrounded by noticeable bezels, protected by hardened glass.

Due to the thick bezels, the tablet looks somewhat dated, but in real-life use, it’s very convenient. The bezels make it easy to hold the tablet without accidentally touching the edges of the screen.

The front-facing camera for video calls is located on the longer side of the device.

The body is highly practical—it’s not prone to smudges and offers excellent grip thanks to its slightly textured plastic surface. The material “sticks” well to the skin, preventing slips. At the center of the back, there’s the Amazon logo, which is the only decorative element.

In the corner, there’s a small camera lens.

The tablet can be used in both landscape and portrait orientations. However, the controls, speakers, and front-facing camera are optimized for landscape orientation. In this setup, the volume buttons and the power button are positioned under your right hand.

On the same side, you’ll also find the headphone jack and USB-C port for charging and data transfer.

This arrangement isn’t always convenient, as playing games or watching videos with headphones can result in your right hand blocking the jack. Fortunately, the auto-rotate function works flawlessly, allowing you to flip the tablet so the headphone jack ends up on top, keeping it unobstructed.

The tablet is equipped with high-quality stereo speakers that deliver rich and loud sound. This is particularly noticeable when watching movies or playing games, where you can sense both depth and directional audio. The sound in headphones is even more enjoyable, thanks to Dolby Atmos surround sound support.

Additionally, there’s a small cover on the body.

Underneath it is the microSD card slot for memory expansion. This is particularly important for a multimedia tablet, as it allows you to pre-load a couple of seasons of a TV show or several movies onto a card, eliminating reliance on Wi-Fi availability and speed. Given the limited built-in storage, it’s best to reserve it for apps and games.

Display

The tablet features a 10.1″ IPS display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The color reproduction is pleasant, without leaning excessively toward warm or cool tones.

The pixel density of 224 ppi is sufficient to ensure that individual pixels are not noticeable, resulting in a sharp and detailed image. Overall, the screen is of good quality and is well-suited for consuming multimedia content.

The brightness level is adequate for indoor use, even in well-lit conditions. Typically, I keep the brightness set between 70% and 80%. However, outdoors on a sunny day, the brightness falls short, and the screen becomes “washed out.”

A white background test revealed no anomalies such as dark or yellow spots, nor were there any dead pixels. The backlight uniformity isn’t perfect, with the central portion of the screen being about 25% brighter than the edges. Surprisingly, this discrepancy isn’t visually noticeable during regular use.

The uniformity of the black field is average, with noticeable backlight bleed around the edges and corners.

Despite these issues, the screen offers decent contrast, and black appears truly black when viewed straight on.

However, as is typical for IPS panels, viewing angles introduce a “glowing” effect on black areas, making them look more grayish.

On the positive side, the display is free of flicker, even at the lowest brightness levels, making it ideal for reading and watching videos in the dark.

Initial Setup

The tablet runs on the Fire OS operating system, which, to put it mildly, is overloaded with Amazon’s advertising software and content, lacks Google services (including the Play Store), and doesn’t support the Russian language. In short, an unprepared user might initially feel a bit overwhelmed and unsure how to use it. After calming down, you’ll realize that most popular apps are available in Amazon’s local app store, and anything missing can be installed as APK files via a memory card.

Of course, you’ll still be left with a bunch of annoying clutter—ads and English as the system language, which many might find frustrating. However, fixing this only takes a few minutes, and I’ll explain how to do it.

First, you need to download a desktop application called Fire Toolbox. This is a universal app that works with all Fire tablets and is available on the forum forum.xda-developers.

Next, you need to enable Developer Mode on the tablet. To do this, go to Settings (click the gear icon), navigate to the “Device Options” section, click on “About Fire Tablet,” and tap repeatedly on the “Serial Number” line. After this, you’ll see a notification indicating that Developer Mode has been enabled, and a corresponding section will appear in the settings.

Then, enable “USB Debugging,” install ADB on your computer (if necessary), launch Fire Toolbox, and connect the tablet to your computer using a cable.

You’ll then see the program’s interface, which allows you to do a lot of interesting and useful things with your tablet.

For example, you can install a proper launcher. You can choose one of the offered options or install your own, which you’ve downloaded to your PC beforehand. I chose Nova Launcher because I’m familiar with it and am generally satisfied with its features.

The next thing I did was install the familiar Google Keyboard.

Then I installed Google Services.

And replaced Amazon’s assistant with Google Assistant.

I also cleaned up the system by removing ads and unnecessary apps. If needed, everything can be restored later.

Additionally, I disabled automatic OTA updates (to prevent anything from breaking) and allowed installation from unknown sources.

There are extra perks, such as the ability to install popular streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, as well as a custom YouTube client, such as YouTube Vanced.

Finally, the last step: adding Russian language support using the MoreLocale 2 app, which can now be downloaded from the Play Store. Here’s how: open ADB Shell in Fire Toolbox and enter the command pm grant jp.co.c_lis.ccl.morelocale android.permission.CHANGE_CONFIGURATION (without quotes). Then, in MoreLocale 2, select Russian. The language will appear in most settings and system interfaces, as well as in apps that support it. The system takes on a familiar look, and the tablet becomes comfortable to use.

Performance Tests and Benchmarks

The tablet is based on a Mediatek chipset labeled MT8183. According to online sources, this is the Helio P60T—a slightly overclocked version of the Helio P60, which essentially marked the beginning of Mediatek’s renaissance. It is powerful enough for multimedia tasks, doesn’t overheat, and uses power efficiently. Nowadays, MTK has become a leader, even surpassing Snapdragon, but before the P60, MTK mainly produced low-end chipsets like the infamous MT6580, which were only used in budget-tier smartphones from brands like Doogee or Oukitel. In general, the Helio P60T is a decent option for a budget tablet: 8 cores with a maximum clock speed of 2GHz and a Mali-G72 MP3 GPU. My version is the base model with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, but for those who need more, the Plus version offers 4GB/64GB.

In Antutu, the tablet scores 184,000 points, and in Geekbench 5, it achieves 302 points in single-core mode and 1,352 points in multi-core mode.

In the combined PCMark test, the tablet scored 5,230 points. In the 3DMark graphics benchmark, the powerful Wild Life test is unavailable since it requires Android 10 or higher. Instead, I ran the Sling Shot test, where the result was 1,568 points. Overall, the tablet’s performance can be described as average: it’s more than enough for browsing and media consumption, but there may be limitations in gaming.

Apart from peak performance, it’s important to know how well and for how long the tablet can sustain a high workload. To test this, I conducted a 15-minute stress test. It showed that performance dropped slightly at the start but then remained relatively stable until the end of the test. Under load, the processor delivered 91% of its maximum possible performance, which is quite good.

I also tested the speed of the built-in storage. Write speeds ranged from 95 MB/s to 125 MB/s, while read speeds were between 200 MB/s and 260 MB/s.

The RAM copy speed was 6,264 MB/s.

Gaming Capabilities

The tablet is not designed for gaming and definitely shouldn’t be purchased solely for this purpose. However, that doesn’t mean gaming is impossible—it just means you won’t be able to play every game or use the highest graphics settings. To evaluate its capabilities, I tested 2–3 popular games, as usual, using the Gamebench gaming benchmark.

First, I played Roblox, a game popular with both kids and adults since it allows not only playing but also creating your own games.

Because Roblox features numerous “rooms” with varying numbers of players and different complexities of game worlds, the FPS can fluctuate significantly. I spent about 20 minutes playing several popular projects, and the FPS ranged from 30 to 50. On average, the game delivered 42 FPS (80% of the gaming time) and consumed 18% of the battery per hour, meaning a full charge would last more than 5 hours.

Next, I tried something more graphically demanding: Call of Duty Mobile. This is a fairly resource-intensive game, so only low graphics settings with medium frame rates were available.

While the level of detail is far from impressive, it’s still playable if you don’t mind the low-resolution textures.

The average FPS settled at 30 (98% of the gaming time) with very rare dips to 20 FPS during map loading.

Finally, I attempted to play Apex Legends Mobile, but the game stuttered significantly even on the lowest graphics settings.

Multimedia Capabilities

The good news is that the tablet supports Widevine L1, allowing you to watch licensed content in maximum quality. For example, in Netflix, you can watch videos in Full HD resolution.

In “community” movie platforms, there are no quality restrictions at all, and you can even watch films in 4K, though on a Full HD screen, this won’t offer any noticeable advantage over 1080p. I tested several popular streaming services for watching movies directly from the internet, and the tablet handled the task perfectly.

These apps typically offer two fundamentally different ways to watch movies: directly from servers or via torrents using TorrServe.

In the first case, video quality may be lower, but the streaming doesn’t require a fast internet connection. In the second case, when watching directly from torrents, files can be much larger, requiring better internet speeds. Of course, there’s no point in playing a 60GB movie on such a small screen (that’s more suitable for TVs), but 10GB–20GB files in true 1080p are quite common.

In both scenarios, the tablet performs excellently. It has often been a lifesaver for me during travel, allowing me to watch something in a hotel before bed. Both the picture and sound quality are impressive.

The tablet also handles IPTV perfectly, smoothly playing HD channels.

Even during extended viewing sessions, the back of the device doesn’t heat up significantly—it only gets slightly warm to the touch.

For YouTube, I installed the Vanced client (via Fire Toolbox).

It supports playback up to 1080p/60fps.

The playback is smooth, with no stuttering or dropped frames.

Camera

The cameras here are basic and are included more for functional purposes. For example, you might use them to quickly photograph something as a reminder or make a video call via messengers. However, they are definitely not intended for creative or artistic photography.

The rear camera features a 5MP sensor, while the front camera has a 2MP sensor. In both cases, the focus is fixed.

Battery Life

The tablet offers excellent battery life. With active daily usage (about 2–3 hours per day), I charge it once every 3–4 days. Typically, I leave it to charge overnight, as it recharges slowly (a full charge from 0% to 100% takes 4 hours and 5 minutes).

In a continuous YouTube playback test at Full HD resolution with maximum screen brightness, the tablet lasted 10 hours and 20 minutes. When the brightness was reduced to 50%, the same video played for 19 hours and 52 minutes. This is an impressive result.

The Work 3.0 battery life test, simulating mixed usage (browsing, image editing, video playback, etc.) at approximately 70% screen brightness, lasted 15 hours and 5 minutes.

Conclusion

The Amazon Fire HD 10 is an excellent home tablet, as long as you don’t expect too much from it. It’s primarily designed for “sofa” use at home: browsing web pages, watching YouTube videos, checking social media, streaming movies, and online TV. It can take the load off your smartphone by handling most of its tasks while offering a better experience thanks to its larger display.

The Fire HD 10 is also a handy companion for travel, business trips, or vacations. With expandable storage, you can pre-load movies and watch them where there’s no internet. Its practical and nearly indestructible body easily withstands rough handling by kids—in my case, it has already survived several drops to the floor without issue. The screen is decent, and the sound quality is outstanding. What more could you want from a device like this? Great battery life—and it delivers! Power consumption is very efficient, and even if you use it all day, the charge will last. In my opinion, for its price, this is the best choice.

Are there downsides? Of course, and I’ve mentioned them. The lack of fast charging is the biggest drawback—four hours for a full charge is very long, and you can’t quickly recharge it during the day (though you can use the tablet while it’s plugged in). The second issue is the limited performance. The Helio P60T struggles to handle modern, demanding games.

To summarize: if you’re looking for an affordable tablet for reading, web browsing, and watching videos, the Amazon Fire HD 10 is the one. However, if you’re after a gaming tablet, you’re better off considering other options.