Amazon launches three Android Alexa tablets with Google Play from $229.99

Amazon on Thursday unveiled three Alexa Tablets that run Android with full Google Play Store access and built-in Alexa+ assistance, priced from $229.99 to $549.99. The lineup — the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Alexa Tablet 11, and Alexa Tablet 8 — goes on sale in the United States on 14 October 2026, with preorders open now.theverge.com+1

The launch marks Amazon's first tablets to run official Android rather than its own Fire OS, a forked version of Android with a much more limited app library. Amazon said the tablets are an all-new product line with new hardware and a new operating system, not a rebrand of Fire Tablets. The company will stop shipping Fire tablets within the next month or two and support them for four years from the last ship date.

Why the switch from Fire OS matters

For years, developers complained about having to build a third version of apps for the Fire OS store, separate from Google Play and Apple's App Store. With Android, Alexa Tablet customers can download millions of apps including YouTube, Netflix, and Gmail. Amazon's spokesperson said the company did not say whether it will continue to maintain Fire OS or its app store.techcrunch.com+1

Panos Panay, Amazon's senior vice president in charge of hardware and Alexa, said Google Play was essential to the product. "Google Play was a necessity, end of story," Panay said. He said the Alexa Tablet took two and a half years to build and directed the team to start completely fresh: "Start from zero, don't use any components we've ever used."

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at $499.99, with the Nanomatte anti-glare model starting at $549.99. It has a 12-inch, 2800 x 1840 display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 500 nits of brightness, and a 3:2 aspect ratio. Amazon says it delivers nearly three times the processing performance and nine times the graphics performance of any tablet it has shipped before.

Prices and specs across the lineup

The Alexa Tablet 11 starts at $329.99 with an 11-inch 2.5K display at 276 pixels per inch and 90Hz scrolling. The Alexa Tablet 8 starts at $229.99 with an 8.7-inch display and weighs 329 grams. The 12 Pro runs a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 chip; the two smaller models use a Dimensity 8189. The Pro Pen costs $90 and the Pro Keyboard $150.

Alexa+ features prominently, letting users ask about anything on screen for contextual help. Accessing Alexa+ on the tablets requires a Prime membership or Alexa+ subscription. Amazon has spent billions overhauling Alexa with generative AI, and the service, free with Prime, is unprofitable. The tablets also launch with a new Kindle reading experience that silences notifications and reduces blue light.

The tablets arrive as worldwide tablet sales fell 12% in the second quarter from the year before to 33.6 million units, according to IDC data. US sales plunged 32% in the second quarter year over year, hurt by a shortage of memory chips. Amazon held just 1.9% of the global tablet market in this year's second quarter, down from 8% a year earlier.

A shrinking tablet market

Apple leads the global tablet market with 34%, followed by Samsung at 17.5%, according to IDC. The top Alexa tablet at $550 compares with an Apple iPad at $450 and Samsung's Galaxy tablet at $550. Prices do not include a one-time $20 fee to remove lockscreen ads, up from $15 on Fire OS tablets; the highest-priced Alexa Tablet will not have ads.

All three Alexa Tablets and the new Amazon Kids Tablets go on sale 14 October 2026 in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, then on 19 October in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. The tablets launch with Android 16 and will receive Android 17 early in 2027, backed by at least four years of software updates.