AMAZON KILLED THE FIRE TABLET: And Its Replacement Is a Full-Blown AI Tablet

Amazon spent October rolling out new devices piecemeal rather than holding one big fall hardware event, and one of the biggest changes was the end of its long-running Fire tablet line.

The replacement is a new, more premium lineup of Alexa tablets, available in the US, Mexico, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Unlike the old Fire devices, they run Android 16 with Amazon's custom software layer, giving users direct access to the Google Play Store without workarounds.

The lineup comes in three sizes. The Alexa Tablet 8 starts at $230, with an 8.7-inch display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of storage, and Amazon claims up to 14 hours of video playback on a charge.

The Alexa Tablet 11 starts at $330, with a 2.5K, 11-inch display with a 90Hz refresh rate, 8GB of RAM and dual Dolby Atmos speakers. Amazon claims up to 15 hours of video playback, and the tablet has an on-device AI processor for AI tasks.

At the top sits the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, priced from $500. Amazon says it is its most powerful tablet yet, with three times faster processing and nine times faster graphics than its previous tablets, a 12-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate, and accessories including a $90 Pro Pen and a $150 magnetic keyboard. All three tablets have Alexa+ built in, including an opt-in feature that lets users ask the assistant about whatever is displayed on screen. An anti-glare Nanomatte display option costs $50 extra, and Kids versions of the 8- and 11-inch models are also available.