Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love my new Fire HD 10 Plus, far more than I would have thought. I'm a longtime Android user who, when it comes to tablets, gravitates to flagship devices from the big companies. I actually had my eyes set on the new Lenovo Tab P11 Pro. But my husband managed to convince me to go with the Fire HD largely because, even with the Memorial Day discount of 25% one P11 costs more than two Fire HDs. And there was a lot to like in these tablets: wireless charging and the fancy new keyboard case. And if you aren't going to pay for a family plan, the Office 365 deal is really good. In your hands, its positive attributes really shine, and the corners they cut are either manageable or sort of charming. The build quality is quite good, given the materials. You can't use a metal body with wireless charging, so plastic makes sense. Higher end tablets use glass, but I don't mind the plastic here, especially the soft-touch finish on the Plus model. It feels well put-together and sturdy (I recently tried a cheap Windows tablet that was made of similar materials and felt like it would come apart in my hands.) The processor is old and underpowered, but it feels quite snappy to me. Granted, I'm not much of a mobile gamer, so the most taxing thing I ask it to do is play a podcast or music while I work on a Word document. There is an occasional stutter, but it's hard to know when it's the tablet showing its weakness or an internet bottleneck. The swiftness of the interface is almost certainly the result of the on board 4gb of ram, which give the processor space to maneuver. The screen resolution is HD, technically, but not very high. I have had older tablets with higher pixel density, and that's a shame. But I'm very impressed with the screen otherwise, and the low density is easy to ignore after some time. But where it really shines is consistency—none of the light bleeding, weird bright spots, or dead or bad pixels that you would expect on a cheap LCD. Indeed, the colors are vivid, and the blacks almost shockingly deep for a non-OLED display. You will certainly find better on a more expensive tablet, but not that much better. The low pixel density and older CPU, it turns out, give the HD 10 excellent battery life. I charged it last evening and today, after a morning of near constant use, it's only down to 75%. This is with the screen brightness set to a reasonable 50% (I will never understand how people can have it set to full brightness—it's like looking at the sun). My two biggest gripes are to do with the software. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful. Amazon did a great job adapting Android's core to fit their needs and, for the most part, it's perfectly consistent. For the most part, you won't notice that the Android core they're using is based on Android 9, which in a few months will be a full three generations behind with the release of Android 12. It makes sense for Fire OS to lag a bit, but sheesh. Amazon services really shine here. Kindle books, Audible audio books, Amazon Movies, Amazon Music and, of course, Alexa are all great and modern, as you would expect. I do find the occasional issue with the operating system or an Amazon app that requires the tablet to switch to portrait mode, for reasons that beggar the imagination. I understand that (super irritating) behavior in third party apps, but you would think Amazon would be able to make their software work better for their own device. Why must it switch to portrait mode to change the wallpaper, of all things? Or the Fire TV app only work in portrait like it's a phone? It must come as no surprise that third party apps is by far the weakest part of the Kindle Fire experience. When Amazon first released its Appstore it did so with the ethos that it would be known for quality over quantity, and their app catalog seemed to have almost all the apps I used regularly on my phone. I haven't used the Appstore until getting this tablet so I'm kind of shocked at the state of things. If you read a review of any Amazon device you will almost certainly read about the paucity of apps available. But what no one seems to mention is the decline in quality, and just how out of date everything is. It feels like walking around a store in a mall as it's going out of business. The apps that are available are sometimes *years* behind their Google Play equivalents. It seems the developers added their app to Amazon's Appstore then just abandoned it. I guess I get it. Google's Play Services provide a lot of great tools for developers and it's probably irritating to try to develop two different versions of the same Android app (to say nothing of then developing for iOS). My concern is that the Appstore will continue to atrophy, and even newer apps will fade away. Microsoft recently added their Office apps, and that's great, but I can already see them falling behind. Moreover, for reasons that I can't understand, they didn't include everything: no Microsoft To Do app (as a side note, it works great if you sideload it). This evaluation is just of the apps that are okay from reputable developers. There is now a LOT of app detritus: terrible, poorly made, amateurish apps, the kind that Google and Apple seemed to allow just so they could brag about how many apps they had in their respective stores. What happened to the Appstore?? Amazon, one of the wealthiest companies in the world, can, and should, do better. I suppose the bottom line is hardware is good; Amazon apps are great; the state of third party apps are alarming. But it's a great tablet that is well worth the money.