Amazon Fire HD 10 Kids Edition (2019) review

With its protecting case surrounding it, there’s no mistaking who the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition is aimed toward: it’s an enormous, daring and rubbery affair that appears faintly ridiculous within the palms of anybody over the age of about 12. It works brilliantly, although, cushioning the pill from even a hefty fall onto a tough kitchen flooring.

The case has had a few modifications for 2019, with the primary one being the addition of the kick-stand. The stand itself is fairly properly carried out: it rotates by means of 270 levels, so you possibly can prop up the pill to observe movies with the display leaning both barely forwards or barely backwards, and it’s sufficiently big to supply loads of stability on this mode.

Amazon’s needed to make the case greater in an effort to match the stand on, however that basically doesn’t matter, as a result of the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition is already far too giant for use one-handed – notably if these palms are little chocolate-covered ones.

But one additional profit from the dimensions improve is that there’s now area for the speaker cutouts to be positioned on the entrance of the case, going through in direction of you, quite than on the underside the place they had been earlier than. This was clearly a necessary change for it for use standing as much as watch movies, however as a pleasant bonus it now sounds a lot better when being held, too.

The different large bodily change is that there’s now a USB-C port on the highest for charging the Fire HD 10, quite than microUSB. This is usually an excellent factor, providing sooner charging as long as you’re cautious to additionally use the included 9W charger. Amazon reckons it’ll now juice up from flat in 4hrs, which is a minimum of an hour faster than the earlier model, and in my testing that proved correct. USB-C can be simpler to plug in and lots of telephones and laptops now use it too.

Against that, keep in mind that in case your children are something like mine they’ll now spend roughly 30% of on daily basis shouting that they will’t plug of their tablets as a result of they’ve picked up the flawed cable, and failing to understand lectures concerning the general advantages of shifting to a brand new USB customary. Idiots.

Otherwise, the Fire HD 10 is nearly unchanged in design phrases. There are quantity and energy buttons on the highest, plus a mic and headphone port – all accessible by way of deep holes within the case and due to this fact slightly fiddly to achieve – plus (horrible) 2MP entrance and rear cameras. If you take away the pill from the case, which is way simpler than placing the rattling factor again in, you’ll additionally discover a microSD card slot, which you should use to increase the built-in 32GB of storage.

Lastly, there’s lastly a 3rd color choice to keep away from the dreaded pink/blue dichotomy, with the addition of a pleasant purple model. This may be very a lot appreciated, even when my children would have most popular “purple” and “blue”. There’s no pleasing some folks.

If the Fire HD 10 Kids Edition’s {hardware} is first rate quite than class-leading, its software program is a special matter.

Every Kids Edition comes with a 12 months’s free subscription to Amazon’s Fire for Kids service – a type of Netflix for hobbit-sized folks, providing video games, movies, books and extra on a secure and safe platform. Once that 12 months is over you’ll be charged the complete value: £3.99/month for one youngster or £1.99 when you have a Prime account, with varied different choices for households.

You’ll nearly actually wish to proceed paying, as a result of there’s actually lots to love about it. First and foremost, it’s a wholly risk-free setting through which to let your children run (digitally) free. There are not any advertisements, no in-app purchases, no hazard that they’ll by chance click on on one thing they shouldn’t.

So, whereas YouTube is right here, it’s solely accessible in a stripped-back type. It’s an analogous cope with the net browser – there are a handful of pre-approved web sites, however in any other case it’s as much as you so as to add extra by way of a ‘secure checklist’.

Mostly, children shall be completely pleased with the video games, books and movies accessible without spending a dime from the Amazon Fire for Kids ‘retailer’. This is all filtered by age, so if you happen to’ve set your children to solely view stuff for 6-Eight year-olds, that’s all they’ll see.

There’s loads of alternative on provide, too, together with big-name titles from Disney and the BBC, well-liked characters similar to Peppa Pig and Spider-Man and tried-and-tested fare from Lego and the superb Toca collection.

Not all of them are academic, by any means, however you possibly can simply arrange the pill in order that your children must devour a specific amount of ‘good’ stuff earlier than they get to the ‘unhealthy’ stuff – as an illustration forcing them to learn books for 30 minutes earlier than they will watch any movies.

The video fare is much more blended than the video games, truly, with a excessive proportion of trash, however there’s good content material in there ought to your children defy the percentages and search it out. Books-wise, you get a number of big-hitters – Harry Potter, Goth Girl and Big Nate, as an illustration – however there are many gaps, too.

Overall it’s finest suited to the youthful age of the spectrum and though Amazon says it caters for 3-12 year-olds, I believe most tweens will begin hankering after an iPad earlier than they hit 12.

Still, you possibly can simply add paid-for books, video games or movies from your individual library with a few clicks – which implies you can provide them the likes of Minecraft and Netflix (not accessible within the Fire for Kids library) and doubtless lengthen the pill’s lifespan by a few years within the course of.