With the Alexa Tablets, Amazon Steps Decisively in the Right Direction ⭐

Amazon announced a new family of Alexa Tablets last week and they started shipping to customers this past week. These tablets replace the woeful Fire Tablets that Amazon had been foisting on customers since 2011 with their poor performance, lackluster hardware, terrible app store, and deep integration with Amazon's various products and services.

Fortunately, the Alexa Tablet family, which consists of four models in three screen sizes, is much more premium than their predecessors, and they run real Android with access to the Google Play Store. And that is very interesting to me. As is the timing: I excitedly purchased a Googlebook laptop at great personal expense just days before the Amazon announcement, hoping that this Android-based platform would deliver a similar productivity experience to an iPad with a Magic Keyboard.

But it does not: Googlebook is deeply flawed as a personal computing platform, at least for now, and it's almost unusual in its current form. I was still reeling from my Googlebook disappointment when Amazon announced its new Alexa Tablets. Had this been a new generation of Fire Tablets, I would have mostly ignored it, given my past experiences with Amazon hardware.

But the rebranding hinted that there was more going on here than a simple upgrade. And the more I looked, the more I became intrigued. Amazon sells four Alexa Tablet models: Alexa Tablet 8.

This is an 8.7-inch Android tablet with a low resolution 1340 x 800 display, 4 GB/64 GB, 4 GB/128 GB, and 8 GB/128 GB RAM/storage configurations and a starting price of $229. The Apple iPad Mini ($599 and up) is the obvious competition. Alexa Tablet 11.

This is an 11-inch Android tablet with a 2.5K (2560 x 1600) display, 8 GB of RAM, and 64 GB or 128 GB of storage with a starting price of $329. The base iPad ($449 and up) is the competition. Alexa Tablet 12 Pro.

This is where things get interesting. The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro has a 12-inch 2.8K (2800 x 1840) display, 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB or 256 GB of storage, and a faster 5 Gbps USB-C port, and it comes in a more premium looking unibody design than the lower-end Alexa Tablets. It starts at $499 and competes with the Apple iPad Air ($749/$949 and up in 11- and 13-inch models).

Alexa Tablet 12 Pro with Nanomatte Display. And this is the Alexa Tablet that caught my eye, triggering my There is Another ⭐ editorial. The specs are mostly identical to that of the normal Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, but the 256 GB configuration comes with 16 GB of RAM and the display has a Nanomatte coating with anti-glare that helps it emulate e-ink and color e-ink displays.

Prices start at $549, and the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro with Nanomatte Display competes with the iPad Pro ($1199/$1499 and up in 11- and 13-inch models). That these are in a different league from Amazon's Fire Tablet predecessors is obvious enough. And it's worth pointing out that while the mid-level MediaTek Dimensity processors that grace these tablets ensure...