Did Amazon just release one of the best Android tablets you can buy? Perhaps, based on my colleague Axel Metz’s handiwork with the new Alexa tablet, which he thinks could give even some of the best iPads a run for their money.
It’s been two years since Amazon last released a Fire tablet, and 15 years since the first model came out — and I thought 2011 would be the first and last time I’d ever buy one of Amazon’s touchscreen tablets.
That could be about to change with the release of this new product range, which drops FireOS for Android, packs Alexa + intelligence, and offers some pretty impressive specs at an accessible price point across its three sizes.
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A Kindle, yes, but not Fire
Now, to its credit, the original Kindle Fire was designed to straddle the line between Amazon’s successful Kindle product range and general-purpose tablets, but it didn’t succeed greatly at the latter. While many Amazon devices lean heavily into the world’s biggest retailer… well, retail, it sometimes misled itself into being a dedicated Amazon shopfront, which wasn’t incredibly useful to 15-year-old me.
Media playback was good across platforms, e-reading was decent, but the soft app support, clunky FireOS, and painful Silk web browser experience quickly relegated the slate to the pubs of my personal e-waste landfill. With little meaningful change to address these woes in the 13 years of Kindle Fires (later rebranded as Fire tablets) that followed, I’ve never quite forgiven Amazon for its failure in mobile computing.
Times have changed though, and now I’ve set my sights on the new range of Amazon Alexa tablets.
We discussed the Amazon Alexa tablet in our latest episode of the TechRadar podcast, which you can watch below.
Look up
For one thing, I use Alexa + services every day, and if I find the system far from perfect, it is the user-friendly in terms of smart home device compatibility and accessibility. Plus, on these tablets you can activate Alexa + to see your screen and offer services in context, which offers a seamless interaction with the rest of Amazon’s devices; If you find a recipe on your tablet, you can ask Alexa+ to save it, send it to your Echo Show device, and prepare the steps for you to follow while you cook.
There is a lingering question about how much functionality you lose if you don’t have an Alexa+ subscription ($19.99 / £19.99 / AU$29.99 per month, but free for Prime members); However, as I noted in the last episode of the TechRadar podcast (which you can watch above), I imagine that many of the target audience for the product, like me, are already quite integrated with Amazon’s services.
Regardless, the devices are all the more compelling when you see their prices. The largest and most powerful Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at just $499.99 / £449.99 with a 120Hz display, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. There’s also an optional nanomatte display model (like the internal screen on Apple’s new iPhone Duo), starting at $549.99 / £599.99, which is where I’d set my sights on a more comfortable reading experience.
That’s before we get to the optional keyboard attachment and Pro Pen, which open doors for productivity use cases, especially now that software like G Suite runs much better natively. Plus, the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8400 chipset; Amazon says “with up to 16GB of RAM, Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro delivers nearly three times faster processing and nine times faster graphics than any tablet we’ve ever shipped.”
You can read the full range of prices and more insights in Axel’s above hands-on with the slates, but suffice it to say they’re coming hot, and as an Apple device user with an Alexa Smart Home, I find myself at a real crossroads when it comes to choosing my next device.
The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Alexa Tablet 11, and Alexa Tablet 8 — plus the new Amazon Kids tablets — are now available for pre-order and will begin shipping on October 19.
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