Today Amazon announced the upcoming release of a new 10-inch tablet to add to their lineup, and it actually looks like a pretty nice tablet for the price. They managed to shave a sizeable chunk off the price tag while still upgrading the specs—nice!
The new Fire HD 10 gets released on October 11th, 2017. They’re accepting pre-orders for it right now.
It starts at $149 for the 32GB model and $189 for the 64GB version. Plus it has a microSD card slot for further expansion up to 256GB.
I like the fact that they upgraded the screen resolution on this model to support 1080p full HD. It has a resolution of 1920 x 1200 with 224 ppi—that’s the highest ppi of any current Fire tablet (the previous Fire HD 10 only had 149 ppi).
They’ve also upgraded the processor to a quad-core 1.8GHz chip and they doubled the RAM to 2GB. It has twice as much storage space as the previous model too.
Battery life has been improved as well, up to 10 hours now, up from 8.
Other features include hands-free Alexa support, it has Bluetooth, dual-band Wi-Fi, it has dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos audio, and it comes with a full 1 year warranty unlike the other Fire tablets that only come with 90 days.
The only downside is the cameras have been downgraded (VGA front, 2MP rear) and the new model is heavier and thicker than the older version.
On a side note, the fact that a new Kindle still hasn’t been announced is a little disconcerting, but there’s still time…
The Fire HD6 has a PPI of 252.
That’s because of the smaller screen. 1080p is perfectly fine and this is the resolution of most 13 – 15″ laptops; meaning that this device will have more density than what most are used to in a larger-than-phone sized screen
Indeed. And the HDX models have higher than that. That’s why I said current Fire tablets. The HD 6 was 3 generations ago.
I don’t wish to nitpick but the HD6 is still part of the current lineup and sold on Amazon.
Nitpick all you want because I’ll just nitpick right back. 😀 Amazon hasn’t advertised it alongside the current lineup for a long time. Just because they sell some leftover stock doesn’t make it a current model. Most of the variations are only available used or not at all.
Yeah, where’s the new Kindle?
I guess November 19th is the real 10th anniversary of the Kindle, although that’s a pretty tight window for the Christmas shopping season. (Not for me. I shop in mid December.)
The way I see it is they have basically one month left to announce a new Kindle. Pre-orders are usually set about 3 weeks before release, and like you said with the busy shopping season it would need to get released the second week of November at the latest.
And the two new Fire TV products that were leaked haven’t been officially announced. So there’s likely an event coming soon.
Looks like really good hardware and a reasonable price.
My ipad1 is about ready for the dust heap. Not sure if I should get this or one of the new 300 dollar ipads.
I really need a good pdf reader. Goodreader does the job for me on ipad. Works well. Lets me annotate/highlight. And I really like having 2 page book view for text book pdfs.
Looks like the big pdf app for fires is the official Adobe one. Maybe there is a good android equivalent (assuming side loading on this tablet does not prove too hard)
Guess I’ll have to wait and see after this thing comes out (and comes back into stock after xmas)
The free Foxit PDF app is excellent on Android. The iPads do have the advantage with the 4:3 screen ratio being more suited for PDFs than 16:10 though.
The Oasis has stock issues again…possible release…Who knows?
Very nice specs on the new Kindle Fire HD 10, especially for the price!
Glad they pushed the ppi up to 224. That’s fairly close to Apple’s 9.7″ iPad models that have a ppi of 264.
Awesome tablet specs for $150 — and expandable storage, which is a deal breaker for me when it comes to tablets.
Might pick one up.
You should also point out that Amazon offers an interest-free “ez pay” for this device … $30/month for 5 months.
I am waiting for the next Kindle announcement. I am planning to get a Kobo Aura One, but I still want to see if Amazon has any surprise to convince me to flip my coin.