Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro Review

With excellent parental controls, tonnes of content, a slick case and worry-free guarantee the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro is a great choice for kids that want a larger tablet. The only downsides are that it’s a fair bit more expensive than the 8-inch version and Amazon’s app store is quite limited.

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Introduction

Another year, another set of Amazon Fire HD 10 tablets for kids, but this year there are two versions, the Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Pro (reviewed here) and the standard Fire HD 10 Kids. Both cost the same, and the only real difference between them is the case they use.

Here, you get the Slim case, which is a thinner, slightly more grown-up version. It doesn’t offer as much protection as the Bumper cover on the regular model but is better suited to slightly older kids (8+). As both products cost the same, it’s all about how old (or clumsy) your kids are. In both cases, quality software, a no-quibble warranty, excellent parental controls and a year-long subscription to Kids+ make either a good choice.

Design

• Neat protective case with stand
• Fairly slim tablet
• Relatively light, still

As the Pro edition of the new line-up, the big difference between this and the regular Fire HD 10 Kids is that here you get the Slim case included. Available in Black or Sky Blue for solid colours, or the more adventurous Intergalactic (pictured here) and Doodle patterns, there’s enough choice to suit most children. 

While the case doesn’t offer as much protection as the regular Bumper case on the standard tablet, you still get a decent amount of rubber between the tablet and any hard surfaces a child may drop it on. Amazon recommends this tablet for school-age children, but really you’re probably looking at it for kids eight years old and up.

With the Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus, our review found that the thin tablet flexed a little bit too much. That’s true if you take the tablet out of its case, but inside the case, you don’t have that problem. Even pushing hard on the back of the case didn’t make the screen flex.

Inside the case, the tablet is a bit cheap feeling, but the case largely masks this. Not that the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro looks particularly expensive, more that it’s good enough for kids and for the price.

Built into the case is a handy stand, so kids can stick the tablet down and watch something (or tap away at the screen) without it falling over. If you’ve ever watched one of your kids precariously balance a tablet on a table, you’ll be very thankful for the stand here.

Should the tablet get damaged, then there’s a 2-year worry-free guarantee: Amazon will replace the tablet without question. That’s great news if you’ve kids that aren’t very delicate.

From the front, the screen has fairly large borders for a 10.1-inch screen but that’s to be expected given the price.

Turn the tablet on and any misgivings you may have about build quality go away as you start to use the tablet. You get a fair amount of volume and quality out of the dual speakers, with a wide soundscape and even a bit of bass – good enough for games and films for sure. While the iPad Air 4 may sound far better, with impressive amounts of bass, it’s also a lot more expensive.

Screen

• Nice and bright
• Handy auto-brightness
• Decent sharpness and colours

If you buy an iPad, you’ll get more resolution and sharper images. Of course, you pay a lot more, too. What Amazon has done for the Fire TV HD 10 Kids Pro is focus on the core elements that get you a quality display without upping the price.

The resolution of 1920 x 1200 isn’t the highest you get, but it’s more than good enough. Text looks sharp enough, there’s enough resolution to watch TV shows and films at Full HD. Kids, quite simply, aren’t going to complain.

Colours are rich and vibrant and contrast ratios are pretty good, too. Sure, get a tablet with an OLED display, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus, and you’ll get better contrast with proper blacks, but for brighter content, typical for kids, you’d be hard-pressed to spot much of a difference.

I measured the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro at 444 nits, which is nice and bright. That’s bright enough to use this tablet outside, although not in direct sunlight. And, there’s a useful auto-brightness setting that will adapt screen brightness to ambient light.

Without an oleophobic coating, the screen picks up fingerprints, so you’ll need to regularly clean it, particularly with kids constantly tapping away at it.

Software and performance

• Excellent parental controls
• Different interfaces for different ages
• Average processor

Running Fire OS (Amazon’s version of Android) is often seen as the Fire tablet’s greatest weakness. Here, on the Kids tablets, Fire OS is actually one of its strengths. The key thing is the quality parental controls that sit behind it.

Before we get into that, first I have to take issue with the way that the Kids Pro and Kids tablets are marketed. On Amazon’s site, you’d think that there were big differences between the two editions, with the Kids edition offering a filtered web browser and a customisable home screen, while the regular one doesn’t have this.

That’s not strictly true. Options and interface depend on the child’s profile: older children get an interface that’s close to the standard Fire OS interface, with tiles for apps and videos; young children get a simplified web interface with larger shortcuts. This is true across all Amazon tablets: buy the Fire HD 10 Plus and stick a kid’s profile on it, and you’ll get the same effect.

With all Kids Fire tablets, you get a free year’s subscription to Kids+, with support for up to four children. That normally costs £79 a year (£49 a year for Prime subscribers). With this subscription, you get a load of apps, games, books and videos (available for download to suit a long car journey). Everything is age-rated and categorised, so your kids can browse without you worrying they’ll stumble across something dangerous.

Yet, as everything is powered by the Amazon App Store, there’s less choice here than with an Android tablet that has the Google Play Store on it. Search for your favourite games and you’ll often find a load of guides instead.

Likewise, search for books and you’ll find that the range isn’t as good as with a Kindle Unlimited subscription. Still, there’s plenty to keep most kids occupied and entertained but as they grow up and want the bigger apps and games, they may grow out of their Fire tablet.

Amazon also has excellent parental controls with this tablet. For each child you can set Bedtimes, where the tablet will be unavailable to them (handy if your kids might try and sneak in some nighttime tablet use). 

You can also limit use by type, setting how long kids can use apps, read books, listen to audiobooks, watch videos and browse the web. And, you can even set goals for them, and even block entertainment content if educational goals are met.

If you do allow web browsing, this can be fully locked down, too: a selection of handpicked sites for young kids, filtered browsing for older children. Given how bad the internet can be, Fire OS really does feel like a safe place for kids.

Even better, while you can manage profiles on the tablet, you can also do it online through the Amazon Parent Dashboard.

One problem with Fire tablets has been how quickly they fill up with apps and games, particularly with kids tapping everything that they see. Here, you get 32GB of internal memory, which is a good-enough starting point, and you can add up to 1TB microSD card to expand this, although not all apps will install to external storage.

Inside, there’s a MediaTek MT8183 processor, which has eight CPU cores and a triple-core Mali-G72 graphics chipset, and 3GB of RAM. Running Geekbench 5, I got a score of 897. That’s middling: the similarly-priced Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 scores around 1400.

In practice, the processor’s speed doesn’t matter too much, as the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro feels smooth and responsive enough. And, for the typical games that kids will play, I didn’t run into any problems.

There’s a 5MP camera at the rear, which is alright but hardly a rival to a decent smartphone. That said, for kids, the camera means they can take some of their own photos and videos. The front-facing 2MP camera gives Full HD video calling, if you allow it, so could be handy if kids want to talk to their grandparents.

Battery life

• USB-C Charging
• Excellent endurance
• Not the fastest charger

Inside there’s a 6500mAh battery, which Amazon says will last for 12 hours. I tested the battery by streaming video to it. After one hour, the tablet had lost 6%, after two hours it lost 11% and it lost 18% after three hours. That would suggest somewhere around 16 hours of battery life.

Using the tablet in earnest, it performed well and only needed charging every three or four days with normal usage from the kids. This is good news for anyone going on a long journey, as the tablet has enough battery life to stop children from getting bored.

There’s a 9W charger in the box, which takes around four hours to top up the battery. That’s not so good news if the tablet’s dead and your kids want you to quickly top it up.

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Final Thoughts

At £199.99 this tablet is £50 more expensive than the regular Fire HD 10. For that extra cash, you get the case, one-year of Kids+ and a two-year worry-free warranty (its one year standard warranty on the regular model). That’s still very good value, although the Fire HD 8 Kids (based on the regular Fire HD 8) is cheaper still and comes with the same Kids+ subscription and parental controls. 

The larger display here is a bit nicer to use, and even though this tablet is larger than its 8-inch stablemate, the case and stand don’t make it any harder for kids to use.

As to whether to buy this or the standard Fire HD 10 Kids, it’s all about how old your kids are. The hardware and features are the same, as is the price, but the standard version has a tougher (and bulkier case) that will particularly suit younger children. If you’re after something else, check out the guide to the best tablets.

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