Amazon on Thursday unveiled a new lineup of premium Alexa tablets aimed at Apple and Samsung.
The flagship model is the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, priced at $499.99 for the 128-gigabyte version. Amazon also listed a pricier $549 version with a 'Nanomatte' display. The tablet is 6.5 millimeters thin, has a 12-inch display with 280 pixels per inch, and can be paired with a new Alexa Tablet Pro Pen and Pro Keyboard.
Amazon also introduced a $329.99 Alexa Tablet 11, an 11-inch device, plus an 8.7-inch Alexa Tablet 8 entry-point version. Two kids tablets were also announced. The new tablets go on sale Oct. 14 in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with a rollout to the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain starting Oct. 19.
The move puts Amazon in direct competition with Apple after years of offering lower-budget Fire tablets that mainly served as entertainment devices. The new lineup uses Android with full access to the Google Play Store, a different approach from Fire tablets, which are heavily optimized for Amazon services.
Amazon priced the new tablets below Apple’s, but Apple still leads in display technology, connectivity, thinness and storage options. Apple’s 11-inch iPad costs $449 for the 128-gigabyte version. The 11-inch iPad Pro, which has 264 pixels per inch and is 5.3 millimeters thin, starts at $1,199 for the 256-gigabyte version. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S12+ starts at $1,199.99 for the base 256-gigabyte model.
The market backdrop is weak. IDC reported that global tablet shipments fell 12.3 percent year-over-year in this year’s second quarter to 33.6 million units, with U.S. shipments down 31.6 percent, as surging memory costs pushed prices up.
One of Amazon’s main goals is to drive use of Alexa+, its updated AI-based virtual assistant. On the tablets, Alexa can read what is on the screen to help with tasks such as planning around a page of hiking trails, and 'live sessions' allow hands-free conversation. Alexa+ is free for Prime members and costs $19.99 per month as a standalone subscription.
Amazon has not said how many subscribers it has, and the update has been overshadowed by chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic. The company’s original strategy for Alexa was to sell underpriced Echo smart speakers and then get users to spend more across its ecosystem, but that did not work. When it became clear Alexa+ could not be profitable on its own, Amazon tied the new Alexa to Prime memberships.
The numbers come first. Amazon is not just selling a tablet; it is trying to turn a device into a subscription funnel. That is the real wager behind the premium push: better hardware, tighter software, and a higher-margin ecosystem.
The market has already voted on plain-vanilla tablets. With shipments falling and memory costs rising, only companies with pricing power and clear product focus can justify new capital. Amazon is trying to prove it belongs in that camp.
