Amazon is retiring the Fire name on its new tablets and selling three Alexa Tablets that run full Android with the Google Play store, a break with 15 years of locked-down devices and a direct bid for the iPad’s price band.
The lineup goes on sale Oct. 14. The Tablet 8 has an 8.7-inch screen and starts at $229.99. The Tablet 11 has an 11-inch screen and starts at $329.99. The Tablet 12 Pro starts at $499, or $550 with a Nanomatte anti-glare screen. Kids’ editions of the two smaller models are offered at the same prices. Pre-orders are open. Amazon said it will ship Android 16, deliver Android 17 early in 2027, and support the devices for at least four years from the last ship date.
Panos Panay, Amazon’s senior vice president for hardware and Alexa, told The Verge the software choice was not optional. “Google Play was a necessity, end of story.” He ranked the hardware first. The tablet took two and a half years, he said, and he told the team to start over. “Start from zero, don’t use any components we’ve ever used. Just ask, what is it? What is a great piece of hardware and what is it supposed to do?” On the 12 Pro, the non-negotiable was the display. “And the one thing on this product was, let’s go make the perfect screen.”
That screen is 12.5 inches, 2,800 by 1,840, up to 120 hertz and 500 nits. The 12 Pro is 6.5 millimeters thick and weighs 550 grams, a little thicker and a little lighter than the latest 13-inch iPad Pro. It uses a MediaTek Dimensity 8400, with 8 or 16 gigabytes of memory and 128 or 256 gigabytes of storage. The smaller tablets use a Dimensity 8189. The 11-inch model is 2,560 by 1,600 at 90 hertz. The 8.7-inch is 1,340 by 800 at 60 hertz and 400 nits.
The point of the software, in Amazon’s account, is Alexa Plus at the center of the device, plus Prime Video and shopping a tap away. The point of Play is everything Fire never had: the apps people already use. A Fire tablet was cheap because it was a storefront. An Alexa Tablet at $230 to $550 is asking to be compared with an iPad mini and a base iPad, and the 12 Pro with a machine that costs more. Amazon did not publish a battery figure in the first specs. It did publish the processor class: a chip that was in high-end phones about a year ago.
Fifteen years of Fire taught buyers the limits. No Play store, a forked Android, a device that was fine for a video and a poor fit for anything else. Panay’s “end of story” is the admission. The hardware reset is the other half. Whether a $499 Amazon tablet with a matte option takes share from Apple depends on the screen he told the team not to trade off, and on whether Alexa Plus is a reason to buy or a layer on top of Android. The Fire name is the one thing the launch is sure it has ended.
