There’s a new tablet in town, and it isn’t a new iPad. Instead, Amazon is launching a new line of slabs, replacing the Fire Tablet with the Alexa Tablet. Coming in three sizes, the top-of-the-range model is definitely after a slice of the iPad Pro’s pie.
Arriving with the option of a matte display, the Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is built from aluminium, moving away from the cheaper look of the company’s plastic Fire Tablets. It has a 12-inch display sitting between the iPad Pro and iPad Air sizes, with a Pro Pen and Pro Keyboard available for anyone looking to dabble in a few emails or spreadsheet sessions.
IMAGE CREDIT: THE DISCONNEKT
The tablet is 6.5mm thick, which isn’t quite as slim as the iPad Pro at 6.1mm, but it’s hardly what you would call thick. Amazon hasn’t detailed which processor it runs, only highlighting that it’s the most powerful tablet the company has built. For anyone considering the standard iPad, though, you get quite a bit more for your money here.
The matte display is the highlight, and while it is only available on the top-of-the-range Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, pricing starts at £500 including that finish. To get a matte finish on an iPad, you need to buy the iPad Pro, and it needs to be the 1TB model at least, and the finish costs £100 extra, so you’re looking at over three times as much by the time you’re done.
IMAGE CREDIT: THE DISCONNEKT
Amazon calls that matte finish Nanomatte (Apple calls its version Nano Texture), an etched anti-glare layer that’s claimed to retain 82 per cent of its contrast in bright conditions. Alexa+ is baked in and can be summoned by voice or via a dedicated “Ask Alexa” button, with the display’s outer edge glowing in its recognisable blue. Alexa’s party trick here is On-Screen Intelligence, which lets the assistant look at whatever you’re viewing and help out, for example by dropping a fixture list straight into your calendar. Amazon says it only peeks when asked, with an indicator showing when it can see the screen.
Arguably bigger news, though, is that Google Play is on board. Fire tablets were always held back by Amazon’s own Appstore, so access to the Android catalogue removes one of the biggest pain points of Amazon’s previous slabs.
IMAGE CREDIT: THE DISCONNEKT
Bookworms get some love too. Opening the Kindle app switches the tablet to a distraction-free mode, silencing notifications, reducing blue light and extending battery life to 20 hours. Kindle Scribe’s annotation tools also work with the Pro Pen, while the page-turning animation is almost as satisfying as the one on Apple’s iPhone Duo when you open and close it.
Further down the range are the Alexa Tablet 11 and Alexa Tablet 8, both aluminium and available in a couple of fun colours. The 11 is built for streaming and gaming, with an 8-core processor, 8GB of RAM, Dolby Atmos speakers and up to 15 hours of battery life. The 8.7-inch Alexa Tablet 8 weighs just 329g and is designed for one-handed use, much like an e-reader.
Families haven’t been forgotten, either. Thank god, because Amazon’s Kids tablets have been a godsend over the last 5 years. They now come in 8.7-inch and 11-inch sizes, bundled with a kid-proof case and a year of Kids+ for age-appropriate apps, games, videos and books, as before. They also have an aluminium casing, and Amazon has recently redesigned the accompanying parent app.
IMAGE CREDIT: THE DISCONNEKT
Price and availability
The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at £449.99 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, or £499.99 for the Nanomatte version. If you want the Pro Keyboard, you’ll need to pay an extra £129.99, and the Pro Pen costs a further £79.99.
Meanwhile, the Alexa Tablet 11 starts at £289.99, and the Alexa Tablet 8 at £199.99. All three models, along with the Kids tablets, are available to pre-order now and will start shipping on 19 October.
