Wowzer, I didn’t think the new Amazon Fire HD 10″ 1080p tablet + Alexa would get lower than the standard £150 UK retail, but it is! £109 and free delivery. Nice. It’s included in Black Friday on both Amazon UK and USA.
Amazon must have decided they want to take a big loss on the hardware, to get the eventual income from ongoing content sales.
Things to bear in mind:
* It’s not really going to be the sort of ‘digital painting tablet’ that a 10″ iPad + Apple Pen can be. But then… it’s a fifth of the price.
* Amazon has their own equivalent of Google Play. The Fire 10″ can’t access Google Play without some workarounds, and even when it can it runs an older streamlined version of Android and thus may not play nicely with some Google Play apps.
* If you find you really don’t like Amazon’s mis-targetted ads and “your tasteless friends also brought…” on the lock-screen, you can do a unofficial workaround to remove them. Or just pay Amazon £10 later on their website, to have them removed.
* It has a 16:10 screen, eminently suitable for movies and showing your widescreen artwork — because no “black bars” above and below such content. Also good for comics and graphic novels and magazines. Shows 104% of the sRGB range, and has good blacks.
* Alexa hands-free voice assistant. Apparently it works well, and it always listening.
* Mediocre camera.
* Apparently it’s going to be rubbish in sunlight, re: reflections etc. It’s an indoor tablet for lower lighting situations.
* Reviews say it’s ugly. But I checked out a model on display in my local Tesco store and it looks fine to me. It looks even better at £109. 🙂