Amazon Dropped the Fire Name, and Its New Tablets Finally Get the Google Play Store

For years, buying an Amazon tablet meant accepting a trade: a low price in exchange for Fire OS, Amazon’s Android fork without Google’s apps. You could sideload the Play Store if you were stubborn. Most people just lived without proper Gmail and YouTube apps.

That trade is over. On October 8, Amazon announced three Alexa Tablets, retired the Fire branding for the line, and gave them full Google Play Store access out of the box. Orders are open now at Amazon, Best Buy and Target, and the first units ship in the U.S. on October 14.

Three sizes, one big change

All three use aluminum unibody designs. The 12 Pro is 6.5mm thick, adds quad Dolby Atmos speakers and Wi-Fi 6E, and works with a $149.99 Pro Keyboard that attaches magnetically and an $89.99 Pro Pen with USI 2.0 support and 4,096 pressure levels. An optional Nanomatte anti-glare screen, developed with Corning, adds $50, bringing the 12 Pro to $549.99. The top Nanomatte model with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage costs $679.99.

Amazon claims the 12 Pro is nearly 3x faster at processing and 9x faster at graphics than any tablet it has shipped. That’s a low bar given how sluggish Fire tablets have been, but the 4nm Dimensity 8400 is a legitimate upper-midrange chip, not a budget part.

Why the Play Store changes everything

App support was always the real problem with Amazon tablets. The hardware was fine for the money; the Appstore was not. Now YouTube, Netflix, Gmail and Google Docs install straight from Google Play, the same way they do on a Samsung or Lenovo tablet. 9to5Google’s Will Sattelberg put it bluntly: these things run “proper Android.”

Two questions remain unanswered. Amazon hasn’t said which Android version the tablets run, and it hasn’t published an update promise. I’d want both answers before spending $500 on the Pro.

Alexa+ is front and center

The other half of the pitch is Amazon’s AI assistant. Every Alexa Tablet uses a custom launcher built around Alexa+, with an “Ask Alexa” button and a wake word. A feature called On-Screen Intelligence lets Alexa look at what’s on your screen to give contextual help. It’s off by default and requires you to opt in, which is the right call.

Kindle readers get a dedicated reading mode that silences notifications, cuts blue light and, per Amazon, stretches battery life to up to 20 hours of reading.

Watch the ads and the upcharges

The $229.99 and $329.99 starting prices for the Tablet 8 and Tablet 11 include lock-screen ads. 9to5Google reports that removing them costs $20 more, bringing the models to $250 and $350. Bumping either to 128GB adds another $50. The 12 Pro has no ads at any price.

That makes this line noticeably pricier than the Fire tablets it replaces. Amazon is aiming at the iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab range now, not the bargain bin. Even so, the 12 Pro costs well under half the $1,199 starting price of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S12.

Who should buy one

On paper, the Alexa Tablet 11 is the sweet spot: a 2.5K 90Hz screen, 8GB of RAM and the full Play Store for $329.99, or $350 without ads. That undercuts most Android tablets worth recommending.

The 12 Pro is the one to watch. With the Pixel Tablet gone, the middle of the Android tablet market has been thin. A $499.99 12-inch tablet with a 120Hz screen, a real keyboard and the Play Store could fill that gap, if Amazon’s launcher stays out of the way. If an assistant-first home screen sounds like a dealbreaker, wait for hands-on reviews after the October 14 ship date before you order.

Sources: Amazon, 9to5Google, Android Authority, TechCrunch. Photo by Hrushi Chavhan on Unsplash.