Amazon's Alexa tablet line has a new flagship, and according to a review published by Tom's Guide on Sunday, the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is good enough to sit alongside some of the best Android tablets on the market. The device starts at $499 and runs full Android with Google Play services built in, a first for an Amazon tablet and a clear break from the Fire OS devices it replaces.
That shift matters. Fire tablets have long been boxed in by Amazon's own app store and a fork of Android that kept Google's apps out. The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro drops that wall, while still leaning hard into Amazon's ecosystem through Alexa+ integration and Kindle-style reading features, per Tom's Guide.
Hardware built to compete with the iPad
Tom's Guide's reviewer singled out the design as the standout, describing an aluminum unibody that feels premium, thin and comfortable to hold for long stretches. The 12-inch display runs at 2800 x 1840 resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 3:2 aspect ratio, and while it is not OLED, the review says colors come through vivid and contrast holds up well.
An optional Nanomatte anti-glare finish was called out specifically for making the screen feel closer to paper, which the reviewer found ideal for reading comics and e-books. Speakers sit on both sides of the tablet and, per the review, handle dialogue and movie audio well, even if music can come up short on bass.
Cameras are an 8-megapixel front sensor and a 13-megapixel rear sensor, both capped at 1080p video, numbers that put this squarely in tablet territory rather than phone-camera territory.
Under the hood sits a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 paired with 8GB of RAM. Tom's Guide ran the tablet through Geekbench 6 and 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited and reported CPU scores landing close to Apple's iPad 11 in both single-core and multi-core results. The reviewer noted performance held up for browsing and streaming but started to slow once several Chrome tabs and apps ran at the same time, which tracks with a mid-range chip rather than a flagship one.
Battery life was described as long-lasting in the review, though no specific runtime figure was given.
Caveats, and what's still unknown
Tom's Guide was clear that the Alexa integration is only as useful as a reader's existing commitment to Amazon's ecosystem, and the review flagged that Android, in general, isn't always the most dependable operating system on tablets. Optional peripherals can add productivity features, but the review stops short of calling this a laptop replacement.
Amazon has not said whether the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, or other models in the lineup, will launch outside the US. Until that changes, the $499 starting price and the Tom's Guide verdict apply strictly to the American market.
RRFiled by The Reviews Roundup Desk
What the reviews are saying: verdicts on new devices from the outlets that tested them, summarised and credited to each. This desk does not test products itself.
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