Amazon quietly upgrades Fire HD 10 tablet — make sure you buy the right one
Amazon released its most recent update to the Fire HD 10 tablet in 2023, and it was starting to feel pretty dated with only 3GB of RAM under the hood. Amazon, deciding to forgo the fanfare, has quietly released a new version of the tablet with an extra 1GB of RAM, bringing it more in line with modern budget-friendly tablets.
Of course, with a new model and more memory comes a slightly higher price tag. Instead of $139.99, Amazon has pushed the price to $154.99. While $15 isn’t necessarily enough to break the bank, for an affordable tablet like this, it could be the difference between being within someone’s budget and not.
There’s a bit of confusion on Amazon’s website. You can see the new Fire HD 10 on the company’s website, and everything looks normal there. But if you go to the older model, it says, “You’re viewing the newest model of this product — see what’s new” right on the front page.
Lots of potential buyers aren’t looking at the latest tech news to see when Amazon quietly launches upgraded tablets, so they might just search for Fire HD 10 (or even a cheap tablet) on Amazon and stumble on the three-year-old version and think it’s the newest one. That extra 1GB of RAM could significantly improve overall performance.
It’s possible Amazon still considers the 2023 version to be the newest model, since it’s the only one that offers 3GB of RAM, and it’s showing the 4GB version as a separate model, not a replacement, but that would be an odd distinction to have between models, and I have to assume the 3GB version will be phased out.
Both tablets have 32GB of storage, and the 64GB upgrade is only available on the older model. Perhaps Amazon has decided that the extra space isn’t needed in a tablet at this low price point.
If you’re in the market for an affordable Amazon device, and you think you’ll benefit from the extra memory (and I’m pretty sure you will), be sure to get the actual latest version. Hopefully, Amazon removes the “newest model” tag from the 2023 Fire HD 10 to avoid confusion, as I’m sure this was just an error and not an attempt to trick shoppers. But even if it’s a mistake, it could still lead to confusion and wasted money.
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