Amazon Kills Fire Brand, Launches Alexa Tablets From $229.99

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is the flagship of the new family. Amazon says it is built around a "perfect screen": a 12.5-inch, 2800 x 1840 panel with a refresh rate up to 120Hz, 500 nits of brightness and a 3:2 aspect ratio that Panay says is ideal for running two Android apps side by side.

Inside, Amazon uses an 8-core MediaTek Dimensity 8400 processor paired with 8GB or 16GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage. The company claims nearly three times the processing performance and nine times the graphics performance of any tablet it has shipped before, with Dolby Atmos speakers, Wi-Fi 6E and 16 hours of video playback.

The top $549.99 model adds what Amazon calls a Nanomatte display, developed with Corning. Amazon says the glass is etched with a texture aligned to the pixel grid to cut glare while keeping contrast and sharpness. The Verge notes the approach sounds similar to Apple's nano-texture finishes, and that its reviewer has seen the device but has not yet tested it.

For anyone who avoided Fire tablets because of missing Google apps, the Alexa Tablets remove that obstacle: YouTube, Netflix, Gmail and millions of other Play Store apps now work natively. The entry price of $229.99 sits close to the iPad Mini and base iPad, and Amazon is clearly aiming at that fight.

Amazon will keep sending security updates to existing Fire tablets. "We won't leave any customer behind," Panay said, but he confirmed there will be no more hardware refreshes for the line, and no Amazon-branded laptop is coming. Panay also said more hardware announcements are due this fall.

Availability in Tunisia has not been announced. The tablets launch October 14 in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, then October 19 in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Local pricing, import availability and TND conversion are still unknown, so Tunisian buyers should wait for official regional details before planning a purchase.