Amazon quietly sneaks a RAM upgrade into the aging Fire HD 10

Amazon has quietly added a meaningful upgrade to one of its most affordable Android tablets, and most people have likely overlooked it.

Without making a big announcement or launching a new model, the company has quietly refreshed the Fire HD 10, boosting its memory (via Engadget). The tablet has been in Amazon’s lineup since its 2023 refresh, which brought with it a faster processor, a lighter design, a sharper 10.1-inch Full HD display, a 5MP front-facing camera for landscape video calls, and support for an optional stylus and keyboard. Those upgrades gave the tablet a new lease on life, but its RAM configuration remained the same until now.

The main difference is that the base 32GB model now ships with 4GB of RAM instead of 3GB. Storage capacities, prices, processors, battery life, cameras, and all other hardware specs are identical.

The underlying chipset remains the same, so don’t expect a massive leap in gaming or processing power. But for streaming video, reading Kindle books, browsing the web, joining video calls or doing light productivity work, the extra RAM should make the Fire HD 10 feel less constricted.

Because hardware upgrades rarely come free, that extra memory is part of the tablet’s $155 price tag. That’s a $15 hike from the last generation. You also have less control over your display, as this 4GB model throws Amazon’s lockscreen ads at you and there’s no way to buy an ad-free version up front.

Amazon did something similar two years ago with the Fire HD 8, quietly upgrading its RAM while leaving pretty much everything else the same. That could mean the company is extending the lifespan of its existing tablet lineup, with incremental hardware upgrades, rather than releasing new models every year.