Amazon’s new Alexa Tablets are an iPad-inspired reboot, complete with the Play Store

Amazon has an all-new lineup of tablets ready to tempt you this holiday season, and for once, you might actually want to buy them. While the company has tried in previous years to make an upmarket play for relevancy in the tablet space, these new Alexa Tablets — RIP “Fire” — have the one thing everyone’s wanted for years: actual Play Store support. Yes, a decade after ditching the “Kindle” branding in its tablet lineup, Amazon is ditching the Fire brand entirely for its new lineup of iPad competitors. That’s not me trying to write off its Android-powered rivals; rather, the sizes and designs all make for devices that, frankly, look like iPad knock-offs. Alexa Tablets come in three sizes: an 8-inch entry-level iPad Mini competitor, an 11-inch base iPad-esque slate, and a 12-inch “Pro” model that looks to be the most unique of the bunch. They’re all designed with aluminum bodies and, despite being much more expensive than the Fire tablets they’re replacing, still manage to undercut most of the market. The 8.7-inch 60Hz Alexa Tablet 8 features 4GB of RAM, up to 128GB of storage, and comes in graphite, rosette, and teal, while the 90Hz 11-inch Alexa Tablet 11 features 8GB of RAM, up to 128GB of storage, and adds matcha and amethyst to the mix. Both run on a MediaTek 8189 8-core processor, a relatively recent chipset that appeared in a handful of seemingly-unreleased ChromeOS devices over the past year or so, before landing in these budget tablets. While I wouldn’t say there’s much to write home here about the specs — and again, the design is just absolutely a blatant copy of the iPad — it certainly sounds like a big upgrade over their predecessors. And really, that comes down to the software. Despite Amazon’s current Android-less strategy on its Fire TV devices, the company seems to be doubling down on Android with its tablets. While it does have a unique launcher designed to push Alexa+, these things run proper Android, complete with the Play Store front and center on the device. YouTube is one of the highlighted apps on their store listings, and as someone who maintained Play Store sideloading guides at two different tech websites over the past decade, I can certainly say I never saw it coming. I have no idea how the actual software experience will feel day-to-day, but in terms of app support, it’s one problem that’s finally solved. The star of the show, of course, is the 12-inch Alexa Tablet 12 Pro. This is, bar none, the most premium tablet Amazon has ever shipped, with a price that matches. It combines a 2.8K 3:2 120Hz display with quad speakers, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 processor. That’s a real processor, and while I wouldn’t say it’s worthy of being called a flagship chipset, it’s undoubtedly the most powerful chip Amazon’s ever used. It’s a good sign when you’re using the same processor that a budget gaming-focused brand like Poco used just a year or two ago. The 12-inch model also comes in an optional “nanomatte” version for an anti-glare experience, which also allows you to upgrade your RAM and storage to 16GB and 256GB, respectively. 16GB of RAM in an Amazon tablet — it’s a new day after all. And like its last attempt to go full-premium, the company does offer optional stylus and keyboard accessories for road warriors on a budget. The Alexa Tablet 8 starts at $230 for the base 64GB model with lockscreen ads, or $250 without, while the Alexa Tablet 11 starts at $330 for its base model, or $350 for the ad-free version. Both feature a 128GB upgrade for $50 more. The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at $500 for the base 128GB model; the nanomatte upgrade will run you $50 more. Meanwhile, that high-end 16/256 variant costs a whopping $680, and while that might sound pretty expensive on paper, it comes in well under Samsung’s latest 12-inch tablet for anyone who doesn’t need that level of processing power. Oh, and absolutely no ads on any of the 12 Pro models — the price you see is the price you pay, no upgrades necessary. Pre-order Amazon’s Alexa Tablet 8 Pre-order Amazon’s Alexa Tablet 11 Pre-order Amazon’s Alexa Tablet 12 Pro FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.