This 7th-generation model (finally) has a full HD screen, a noticeably faster processor, more RAM, better speakers and hands-free Alexa.

If your only experience of Alexa was on a device where you have to press a button before you can speak then the difference in convenience is huge. Even if the tablet is locked you can still say “Alexa, add washing-up liquid to my shopping list”.

There’s a 64GB version which costs £179.99 and both are available in black, red and blue. For some reason, there’s no yellow option as with the other sizes.

There’s a dedicated Kids Edition and we’ve reviewed this separately.

Design-wise the tablet looks much like its predecessor. It’s a couple of millimetres thicker and 68g heavier, which isn’t ideal, but most people will be happy with the extra two hours of battery life.

When held portrait the power button is top right and the volume top left, with the speakers on the left-hand side.

The unashamedly plastic build might turn some off, but the HD 10 doesn’t feel flimsy at all. If you really don’t like it, stick it in a case and the plastic goes away.

Although screens on Fire tablets have been decent for a while now, this one is clearly the best. The Full HD resolution means it’s sharper and more detailed than any other Fire Tablet, and it has great colours and wide viewing angles. If there’s any weakness it’s that it isn’t hugely bright, but in most conditions it’s perfectly fine.

Performance

You can’t expect iPad-like performance for £149 but the HD 10 holds up well for general use. The quad-core processor is 30 percent quicker than last year’s model, but a better comparison is to the Fire HD 7, if only to illustrate that it’s not merely the same innards and a bigger screen.

Those scores are when using all four cores. Not all apps are written to do that and it’s when an app uses only one core that the HD 10 feels a lot quicker than the 7. In Geekbench 3’s single-core test, the scores 1503 (higher than the HD 7’s multicore score) and the 7 manages a paltry 360.

Graphics prowess isn’t so great. Running GFXBench revealed that the HD 10 can’t even manage 30 frames per second in the old T-Rex test (it scores 21fps) and fell below 5fps on average in the Manhattan 3.1 test.

It means that you’re not going to see stunning graphics in the most demanding games. However, there’s more than enough power for casual games such as Jetpack Joyride and Monument Valley.

Overall, performance is fair for the price – just don’t expect the snappy, lag-free experience you’ll get with the latest flagship tablets.

Cameras

Aside from the woeful quality, they’re close to useless in low light and have a very narrow field of view. This is as much of St Pancras as fits into the frame – most cameras have a lens that allows the whole building to fit.

It’s similar with the selfie camera – you’ll have to be further back that you think for a Skype call. Here’s what you can expect in terms of selfie quality:

Alexa

Alexa’s capabilities are constantly improving and on the Fire HD 10, she can do useful things such as opening apps, searching for videos, changing the volume and playing music.

However, unlike Google’s Assistant, she’s not great at answering more general questions such as “Did England qualify for the world cup this year?”. Also, it’s a shame she can’t adjust the screen brightness on the tablet as well as volume.

There is a lot she can do but it helps to know what she can and can’t do and how best to phrase questions. It’s easy to control video playback, including skipping forward or backwards by a certain number of seconds or minutes, or jumping to a certain point by saying “Alexa, skip to 23 minutes”.

And like the Echo devices, you can set volume by saying “Alexa, volume six”. However, we noticed a slightly longer delay in responding to requests than with the Echo.

This could have been down to a patchy internet connection, but it merely highlights that some on-screen or spoken response is needed to tell you that she’s dealing with your request instead of continuing to show the ‘I’m listening’ blue bar at the bottom of the screen.

It’s useful having the option to enable or disable Alexa when the tablet is locked, and we also like the toggle control that’s shown when you drag down from the top of the screen – handy if you want to mute Alexa quickly to stop her listening for the wake word.

With the big screen, it’s also nice that Alexa will respond to some requests with full-screen ‘cards’. When you ask about the weather, for example, you’ll see the forecast on screen for the next week. For some reason, these showed temperature in Fahrenheit on our tablet, even though Alexa’s spoken response is in Celcius. 

We’d like to see the range of sports scores expanded as the only UK-specific things you can ask about are football and cricket.

Software

Fire OS, which is based on Android 5.1.1, continues to improve. The HD 10 obviously runs the latest version of Fire OS and it can now do things such as restoring your apps and home screen layout from a previous Fire tablet.

Replacing the ‘Recent’ screen is ‘For you’. This is essentially an improved Recent screen where you’ll see recently used apps, app suggestions and also the ability to resume a video you’re halfway through.

Verdict

There are two ways to look at the HD 10. One is that it’s £70 more expensive than the HD 8, which itself costs only £79.99.

Sure, that tablet that doesn’t have a full-HD screen but you could almost buy two for the price of one HD 10.

The other is that it’s good value for a 10in tablet with a full HD screen. It’s hard to think of another 10in tablet at this price that offers a decent 1920 x 1080 screen.

Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.