As expected, Amazon is launching an updated Fire HD 10 tablet. What’s a little unexpected though, is that the new model has a higher-resolution display, a faster processor, more memory, and new features… and it’s still cheaper than the model it replaces.

The new Amazon Fire HD 10 is up for pre-order for $150 and up, and it should begin shipping October 11th.

Amazon’s new tablet sports a 10.1 inch, 1920 x 1200 pixel display, a 1.8 GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and it comes with either 32GB or 64GB of storage (you pay $40 more for the extra storage).

It supports 802.11ac WiFi, has stereo speakers, features a microSD card slot with support for up to 256GB of removable storage, and features 2MP rear and 0.3MP front cameras.

Amazon says it’s 30 percent faster and has twice as much RAM as its predecessor, but still offers up to 10 hours of battery life.

Basically, it’s a big new tablet that does everything the company’s 7 and 8 inch Fire tablets can do… but it has a display with 224 pixels per inch, compared with 189 ppi for the Fire HD 8 and 171 ppi for the entry-level Fire tablet with a 7 inch screen.

Oh, and there’s one other thing that makes the 10 inch model different: it’s basically an Amazon Echo, thanks to “Alexa hands-free” support.

You can use Amazon’s Alexa voice service with any of Amazon’s recent tablets. But the new hands-free mode is exclusively available on the 7th-gen Fire HD 10 with Fire OS software version 5.5.0.0 or later. Interestingly, the tablet will ship with an earlier version of Fire OS, but the v5.5 update will begin rolling out on October 11th (the same day the tablet ships).

The tablet doesn’t have the multi-microphone array found in Echo products, so you’ll need to be relatively close to the tablet to use Alexa hands-free. But it has a chipset designed for energy-efficient always-listening mode.

Hands-free mode lets you interact with Alexa using just your voice to get answers to questions, play music or videos, view calendar appointments, or control smart home products like light bulbs, locks, and thermostats. Just start a query with the “Alexa” hotword.

You can also disable hands-free mode if you’d prefer not to use it.

The new 7th-gen Fire HD 10 will be available in black, blue, and red color options.

press release

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12 replies on “Amazon’s new $150 Fire HD 10 has full HD display, Alexa voice controls”

  1. fyi: Amazon says this “Full HD display (1920 x 1200)”. You have it at 1920×1080. It didn’t make sense to me to see a 16:9 on a 10″ tablet. Seems too thin.

  2. I hope some decent keyboards will be available for this tab eventually. Seems at times, they only get made for IPADs.

  3. You should also be able to install any android app without google play just by finding the apk and grabbing it from the web. It’s pretty simple actually – that’s what I end up doing.

    I’m excited for this as I think it’ll be a great comic reader as well. What app do you recommend to read comics? I never know what to choose 🙁

    1. When it comes to comics, I haven’t used anything outside of Adobe Reader or the Amazon Kindle App for years. Never cared for the CBR format – I usually unzip those in 7-Zip and merge the contents directly to a PDF file. What would concern me about this tablet as a viable reader is the weight. From what the Amazon website is showing now, this is actually a couple ounces heavier than the previous generation.

      Now, if this had an available keyboard/battery dock similar to the older Asus Transformer pads, I’d buy one in a heartbeat. I still think my Asus TF300T was an ideal form factor – it just suffered from the poor performance of the Tegra 3 chip.

  4. 10″ and 1080p with removable storage for only $150. I’ve never found the comic readers on FireOS to be satisfactory, but if this thing can have the Play store loaded on it this would be a fantastic comic reader!

  5. Google Play is still installable I take it? I’ve never had a Amazon fire product but Christmas is coming and they can be cheap enough to hand out as gifts..

    1. I’ve tried installing google play on my fire tablet several times. Never worked right. If you must have google play I would say this is not the tablet for you.

    2. Unclear. If it ships with Fire OS 5.4 out of the box, then you can probably install Google Play the same way you do on the Fire 7/Fire HD 8. But since Fire OS 5.5 isn’t available yet, there’s no way to know if you’ll be able to install Google Play on that.

      So… I guess it might be a good idea to disable WiFi immediately if you don’t want to get that day one OTA update… at least until we know how hackable v5.5 is.

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