The Amazon Fire HD 10 is one of those tablets that always pops up during Black Friday, usually with a price tag that makes even seasoned artists wonder: could this actually work for drawing? At $69.99, reduced from $139.99, it feels almost too good to be true, and in some ways, it is. But depending on what kind of art you’re making, this cut-price tablet and others in the Amazon Fire range might surprise you.
On paper, the latest Fire HD 10 has enough going for it to make it a decent digital sketching tablet, with some caveats. The 10.1-inch full HD screen is bright and roomy, and Amazon has finally improved stylus support – though it remains 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, while 8,192 is now the norm, and even 16K is offered on dedicated art tablets.
But let’s keep expectations grounded. Fire OS, even as a skew from Android, doesn’t have the breadth of creative apps you’ll find on iPad or a full Android drawing tablet, like the XPPen Magic Drawing Pad or Wacom MovinkPad 11, and some favourites, like Procreate or Krita, simply aren’t available. ArtRage, for instance, isn’t officially supported, so you’re limited to lighter Android paint apps such as ArtFlow, MediBang, or simple doodle tools.
The hardware, which boasts an octa-core processor but only offers a borderline 3GB RAM, can also struggle with large canvases, heavy layers, or painterly brushes, so this isn’t a tablet to build professional workflows around. (The newer Amazon Fire Max 11 at $279.99 $189.99 fares slightly better with 4GB, but we're still in the low end for art apps.
So is the $70 Fire HD 10 okay for digital art? For beginners, kids, hobbyists, and anyone who wants a portable sketchbook without spending hundreds, and you don't mind a (very) limited app selection, absolutely. For artists producing finished illustrations or relying on a broad selection of professional apps, it’s a harder sell. As ever, you get what you pay for, but in this case, you get just enough to make it tempting.
For artist-first tablets, read my round up of the best drawing tablets, but these do cost a lot more.
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