Amazon's new Alexa Tablets drop Fire for Android, add Alexa+, and only watch your screen if you let them

Amazon stops selling a cheap tablet and starts selling an assistant

For more than a decade Amazon's tablet pitch was simple: a Fire tablet was the cheap one, locked to Amazon's own app store, built to funnel you toward Prime Video and the Kindle store. On 8 October 2026 that pitch ended. The company announced three new tablets, dropped the Fire name, switched them to Android with the full Google Play Store, and put its Alexa+ assistant at the center of the sell.

The lineup is the Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro from $499.99, the Alexa Tablet 11 from $329.99, and the Alexa Tablet 8 from $229.99. A Nanomatte version of the 12 Pro starts at $549.99. Those are not Fire-tablet prices. The old line existed to be the budget option; this one is priced to compete with mainstream Android tablets, which tells you Amazon no longer wants to win on cost.

The company was blunt about the break. "These are an all-new product line with new hardware and a new OS, rather than a rebrand of Fire Tablets," an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch. The clearest proof is the software: Fire OS and the Amazon Appstore are gone, and the tablets run Android with Google Play. Apps Amazon used to make awkward to install, including YouTube, Netflix, Gmail and Google Docs, now work directly.

What Alexa+ actually does on the tablet

Amazon's framing is that intelligence, not price, is the reason to buy. Alexa+ is "built into the core of every tablet," and you can call on it from nearly anywhere on the device to ask questions, manage a calendar, control compatible smart-home gadgets, or get help with something on a webpage, without opening a separate app.

The more interesting, and more sensitive, piece is a feature Amazon calls On-Screen Intelligence. It lets you ask Alexa to "look at what's on screen for real-time, in-context help," so a question like "which of these hikes is best for me?" can be answered about whatever you are actually looking at. That is the kind of capability that sounds convenient and reads as invasive, and Amazon seems to know it.

So the controls matter. On-Screen Intelligence is disabled by default. Turning it on is a deliberate opt-in, and when Alexa can see the screen the tablet shows a visual indicator. That is a more careful default than "on and hidden," and it echoes a wider shift in how on-device assistants are being gated. The same tension runs through Apple's rules for what an AI agent is allowed to see on your Mac: the capability is only as trustworthy as the permission wall around it.

The hardware, in Amazon's numbers

The 12 Pro is the flagship. Amazon lists a 12-inch display at 280 pixels per inch, a 120Hz refresh rate, a 3:2 aspect ratio, and a 6.5mm-thick body with Dolby Atmos speakers, Wi-Fi 6E and up to 16 hours of video playback. It ships with 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage, and the Nanomatte version can go up to 16GB of memory. Amazon says it delivers "nearly three times faster processing and nine times faster graphics than any tablet we've ever shipped."

The Tablet 11 sits in the middle with an 11-inch 2.5K display at 276 pixels per inch, a 90Hz refresh rate, dual Dolby Atmos speakers, and 8GB of memory with 64GB of storage. The Tablet 8 is the small, cheap one: an 8.7-inch screen, an all-aluminum body at 329 grams, and 4GB of memory with 64GB of storage.

Every one of those figures comes from Amazon, and every performance comparison is against Amazon's own previous tablets, not against an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy Tab. "Nearly three times faster" is a real claim only once someone outside Amazon measures it. As of 11 October 2026 no independent reviews of the new tablets have published.

Who else is in the box

Alongside the main three, Amazon announced new Amazon Kids Tablets in 8.7-inch and 11-inch sizes, with separate versions for pre-K children aged three and up and for kids aged six and up. Those come with bundled cases and a year of Amazon Kids+ included, which keeps the family-tablet business that Fire tablets were quietly good at.

Availability is staged. All three Alexa Tablets and the Kids Tablets go on sale 14 October 2026 in the US, Canada and Mexico, and 19 October 2026 in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Orders opened at the announcement.

The bet, and the risk

Putting Google's app store on an Amazon tablet is a concession. For years the point of Fire OS was to keep you inside Amazon's services; handing that control to Android and Google Play means Amazon is betting it can win attention back through the assistant rather than through a locked store. If Alexa+ is good enough that people reach for it daily, the open app store is a price worth paying. If it is not, Amazon has given up its main lock-in and is left selling a mid-priced Android tablet in a crowded market.

That is the same bet playing out across Amazon's hardware. Its camera-equipped Ray-Ban style ambitions and smart-home push all rest on an assistant people trust enough to let into their day. A tablet is a lower-stakes place to make that bet than glasses on your face, but the logic is identical: the device is a shell, and the assistant is the product.

Our take

The honest read is that the strategy is more interesting than the tablets. Moving to Android with the full Google Play Store is a genuine, verifiable change that makes these devices more useful on day one, and the decision to ship On-Screen Intelligence off by default, with a visible indicator, is the right call for a screen-reading feature.

Everything about the assistant itself is still Amazon's word. The performance multiples are internal, the "intelligence" is undemonstrated outside controlled examples, and the prices have climbed into territory where buyers will compare against an iPad rather than a bargain slate. Buy one for the hardware and the open app store if those suit you. Treat Alexa+ as a promise to be tested, and leave On-Screen Intelligence off until you have a reason to turn it on.