Amazon put out a new line of Android tablets on Sunday, pricing the entry model at $230 and building Alexa and a Kindle reading feature straight into the software, according to a report from 9to5Toys that rounded up the week's tech releases.
The tablets are described as iPad-like in design, a notable shift in tone for a company that has spent more than a decade selling budget Fire tablets running a heavily modified, forked version of Android rather than anything resembling Apple's own hardware. Amazon has not detailed the full lineup, screen sizes or storage tiers beyond the $230 starting price, and 9to5Toys did not list specs beyond the Android base, the Alexa integration and the built-in Kindle function.
That Kindle integration is the detail worth sitting with. Amazon has long sold Kindle as a separate app on its tablets, alongside the Kindle e-readers it still makes. Folding it into the tablet experience directly suggests Amazon wants the new devices to double as reading machines out of the box, not just video and app slates that happen to run a Kindle app somewhere in the drawer.
Alexa, meanwhile, has been standard on Fire tablets for years. Its presence here isn't new so much as a sign Amazon is keeping its voice assistant central even as it pushes toward a more mainstream, iPad-adjacent look.
$230 puts the new tablets well under Apple's cheapest iPad, which starts well north of $300 in the US, and in roughly the same territory Amazon has occupied for years with its budget Fire tablets. Whether this lineup replaces Fire tablets outright or sits alongside them is something Amazon hasn't clarified, and 9to5Toys' report did not specify a product name beyond calling them Android Alexa Tablets.
The tablets arrived in the same week as a string of other hardware news that 9to5Toys tracked: Anker's 5kWh portable power station, pitched as the longest-lasting in its category, a 45W charger from UGREEN, new Ring indoor and pan-tilt cameras, and a batch of Copilot+ PCs built around NVIDIA's RTX Spark chips now up for pre-order through Microsoft, Dell and HP. None of those share hardware or software with Amazon's new tablets, but the timing underlines how much is landing in the run-up to the holiday shopping season.
Amazon has not said when international availability, including India, might follow, or whether pricing there will track the $230 US starting point. For now the only confirmed numbers are the ones already public: a $230 floor, Android underneath, Alexa built in, and Kindle reading folded into the core experience rather than bolted on as an app.
DDFiled by The Deals Desk
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