Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro review: A warning shot for Android tablets

The tablet world is in the middle of a slow shakeup, if you ask me. Where a decade ago it felt like Apple's iPad was the only game in town, Android tablets have been making slow but steady gains in recent years – and crucially have been getting better and better along the way.

Now, Amazon has clearly decided that the time is right for its own tablet strategy to change. Whereas it's long stuck to the entry-level bracket with its Fire tablets, it's now going premium with new Alexa Tablets – and ditching Fire OS for a fuller Android software experience in the process.

That new position brings a new price structure, too. So I've been using the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro – which is the flagship model in the range – for a week to see whether it can truly be an iPad- and Samsung Galaxy-killer, or whether it's just another also-ran entry in the increasingly busy space.

Price and Availability

T3 was at the event in early October 2026 when Amazon unveiled its Alexa Tablet lineup, and now those tablets are available to buy.

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro comes in a couple of flavours, but I've been sent the version with a "nanomatte" display coating, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. This version costs £499.99 here in the UK; it's $549.99 in the USA, and €559.99 in Europe.

The tablet can also be grabbed in a non-matte version for £449.99 / $499.99 / €499.99, but you can further upgrade to 16GB RAM and 256GB of storage – with that most expensive version (also with nanomatte) costing £599.99 / $679.99 / €669.99.

Those are pretty high prices under the lens of Fire HD tablets of old, so they put the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro in contention with the likes of the Honor MagicPad 4 in the Android market. That said, it's crucially cheaper than the £749 / $749 M4 iPad Air from Apple, after its recent price hikes, which is what Amazon seems to be aiming at.

Design and Features

Amazon's Fire tablets have long been pretty functional in their designs, so it clearly knew that to push into a new price category it would have to up its game in terms of materials.

As a result, the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is a really nice slab of metal that basically looks like every other high-end tablet on the market – which is a good thing. It's made almost entirely out of aluminium, in a unibody design that's sleek and cool to the touch.

Its frame offers a USB-C charging port, a power button, volume buttons, a recessed niche along one side for the Pro Pen accessory, and some magnetic pins for keyboard cases.

The back of the tablet is largely just a big empty expanse, with the cursive Alexa logo in the middle (which isn't at all to my taste, although it's thankfully subtle).

There's a camera in one top corner, and that's it. The separate webcam is situated on one of the longer sides on the front, making video calls more natural in landscape mode, which is a good choice.

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The front of the tablet holds that 12-inch screen, which, in my test unit's case, is covered with Amazon's nanomatte anti-glare coating. This was co-developed with Corning (makers of super-tough Gorilla Glass) and you won't find it anywhere else at the moment.

The bezels are even on all four sides, while the corners are tastefully rounded in a way that's extremely reminiscent of an iPad, which is no surprise. The display is really the standout feature in this version of the tablet.

The whole thing is also really nice and thin – at 6.5mm (apart from the camera bump), in fact. That's not quite as impressive as Honor's MagicPad 4 (at 4.8mm), but it's close enough to still feel great. That said, you'll probably have it in a case to reduce the wonder.

Specs-wise, Amazon delivers a mixed bag. The chipset at this tablet's heart isn't something that it's shouting about much, other than clarifying that it's an eight-core one built on the 4nm process, which stays the same whether you get 8GB or 16GB of RAM.

The base model here comes with 128GB of storage, though, which I can't pretend is much. With 30GB of my device already taken up by the OS and pre-installed apps, it's not a particularly generous allocation all in all.

Most people will probably use this as a streaming and web browsing device, which mitigates that criticism somewhat, but as there's no microSD slot here for expansion purposes, what you get at launch is all you'll ever have.

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Obviously, memory is the key factor in pricing right now, so that's why the limits are disappointingly low, but that doesn't change the fact that I'd like to see more.

Things are more impressive where the display is concerned. It's a 2.8K resolution panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, so you'll get buttery smooth scrolling. The tablet's not really aimed at gaming, but it means smooth results are also possible in that area.

It also has some nice Kindle features that shine on the nanomatte version. You can tune it to automatically switch to a reading mode that greyscales the display, or even simulate the Kindle Colorsoft display, and the settings are genuinely easier on the eyes. Shockingly, though, they're locked to the Kindle app for now – they absolutely need to be available whenever you want them.

Wrapping things up, the tablet has four speakers, and is Dolby Atmos-capable, although really you'll want some good headphones to make that sing properly. It also comes with Alexa+, Amazon's upgraded and more intelligent version of Alexa – to the point where setting it up added the new version to my much older Echo Dot with Clock.

Water resistance is really low, sadly, at just IP52 (meaning droplets at some angles should be fine, but any big splashes or immersion could spell trouble). Battery life is rated at up to 16 hours in one go, though, which is more impressive.

Performance and Display

If you're going to shoot for the premium market when you're building a tablet, you have to be able to back that marketing up with actual performance, of course, so how does the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro fare?

Well, the immediate first impressions when booting it up are really positive, because unlike plenty of Fire tablets from recent years, you're actually greeted by a recognisably Android experience. The Play Store has been on previous Fire tablets, of course, but due to the ancient foundations of Fire OS, loads of apps have been incompatible.

That issue is banished here, and being able to access the full suite of streaming services and apps without any exceptions (that I found) was a huge boon compared to Amazon's older hardware. Of course, that will apply to cheaper tablets in the Alexa Tablet range, too.

Amazon has layered some of its own features on top of the Android experience, which I found a mixed bag. The default theme includes a corner cut-out widget with recommendations within the Amazon ecosystem, which is a bit overbearing.

There's also an Alexa-based query bar in the bottom-right when you're not in an app, one that I couldn't find a way to turn off. You can also turn that corner into a simple clock, but there's no disabling it entirely – it's built into the Android sleeve that Amazon has designed.

The heart of a tablet is its display, and the 2.8K (2800 x 1840) panel is really nice and vibrant, especially with the anti-glare coating that Amazon offers, per my review unit. It makes a massive difference in a range of viewing environments.

That said, this isn't an OLED panel, and you can tell, as black levels aren't near the inky pitch-black levels that such a display would bring. The display is really sharp and the colours are great, though, so it's not like you're being lumped with a huge step down.

In terms of performance, I found the tablet smooth and responsive, and never encountered any slowdown, but it's not going to match the power levels of an M4 iPad Air by any means. If you're a gamer, this also won't be the most natural fit, but for simple productivity and media viewing, it's more than capable.

Amazon sent my loan sample with a couple of interesting accessories. One, the Pro Pen, is an optional extra for those looking to make their tablet an artistic tool, and it seemed slick to a total amateur.

More essential was the Pro Keyboard case, which gives you a magnetic keyboard attachment that works super smoothly and turns the tablet into a far more capable laptop-like machine (now that Android has a pointer and everything for trackpad users).

It includes a back cover with a kickstand, but it's rather pricey at £129.99 in the UK. I can understand it's a "pro" extra, but even Amazon's simpler Folio Cover is still £65, which is steep for something most people will want for peace of mind.

In fact, I've ended up feeling like the cases sum something up about the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro – if it could just be a little cheaper, it would go from a great launch to an essential one. The price of memory feels like it might have upset long-gestating plans on Amazon's side.

Verdict

This isn't the first time I've reviewed a device in 2026 and thought it must have been intended to launch at a lower price – but it's another gently frustrating example. Amazon has nailed much of what it needed to with the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro. It's well-built, slim, light and plenty fast.

It also still manages to massively undercut the iPad Air, which is probably its chief competition. However, Apple's price hikes in the summer mean that its mid-tier tablet is really no longer living in Fire HD price territory of old.

The fact is that I think most people will be better off saving their cash and getting the less powerful Alexa Tablet 11 for a lower price, without really noticing the downsides much at all. Sure, it's a less capable option, but for streaming and downloaded media, it'll likely be a decent match.

Also consider

The best Android tablet I've personally ever used remains the Honor MagicPad 4, and it's still a banker for holiday streaming downloads. It's thinner than Amazon's flagship and has a better screen thanks to an OLED panel – but it's also pricier. I'm hoping it starts to get some discounts in sales soon, though.

As explored in this review at length, the other big competition is Apple's M4 iPad Air, which remains a total beauty. When we gave it 5-stars earlier this year, though, in its newest version, it was cheaper than its current, updated price – such is the nature of 2026!