Amazon is releasing a new line of tablets on October 14th, and they’re not called “Fire Tablets” anymore. Amazon is rebranding them as “Alexa Tablets” moving forward, and they include some interesting Kindle-related enhancements, and one variant has an outdoor-readable matte display that supports writing on Kindle ebooks using a stylus. Alexa Tablets also support Google Play so that’s a big plus.
There are three distinct models, with various confusing sub-versions like Amazon always offers, with different colors and storage capacities, with ads or without ads, there are kids bundles and productivity bundles, and accessories galore.
It’s a lot to take in at once so let’s just focus on the Kindle stuff. Here’s a quote from the press release that’s interesting:
With Amazon Alexa Tablets, the best of that experience comes to tablets for the first time—open a book in the Kindle app and the device transforms into a distraction-free reading sanctuary. Notifications go silent, blue light is reduced, and battery life stretches up to 20 hours. Three display themes let you choose your look—from subtle warmth with natural color, to a softened paper tone, to pure grayscale. The Nanomatte display takes it further: razor-sharp text, a paper-like feel, and readability in any light. Plus, you can highlight, underline, write notes, and markup pages directly with the Pro Pen. Annotations in your books also sync across Kindle apps on pen-supported devices and on Kindle Scribe.
It’s sounds like they’re going to place more of an emphasis on the Kindle reading experience on Alexa Tablets, and the Nanomatte Alexa 12 Pro looks like it could be a possible alternative to the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft.
That part about being able to markup pages directly with the Pro Pen opens up some possibilities. And Amazon claims the anti-glare Nanomatte display “reads beautifully indoors and outdoors, at any angle, in any light.”
It’ll be interesting to see if that turns out to be true or not. I have a NXTPAPAER phone with an anti-glare screen that’s decently readable outdoors, but the screen has a weird quality to it that’s, frankly, unpleasant. It’s like the viewing angles are off even when viewing the screen head-on, and it’s not anywhere close to the experience of reading on an E Ink screen.
The Nanomatte version is only being offered with a 12″ screen, and it isn’t cheap. The 128GB model is $549.99 and the 256GB version is $679.99 (the same price as the 64GB Kindle Scribe Colorsoft). The Pro Pen stylus is sold separately (or as part of a bundle) and it sells for $89.99. The smaller models are less expensive, but they certainly aren’t budget Fire Tablets anymore. The Alexa Tablet 8 starts at $229.99, and the Alexa Tablet 11 starts at $329.99. The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro without a matte screen starts at $499.99.
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