Amazon is making quite the splash with their latest Fire tablet, its new flagship model, the Fire Max 11. This is a powerful, multipurpose tablet, and it comes with an optional keyboard to turn it into a productivity device and a stylus to draw, make notes or edit PDF files. Should you buy this tablet? If so, you can purchase it from Amazon, and it ships out soon and only costs a few hundred bucks, certainly not iPad money.
The latest addition to the Amazon Fire tablet series boasts an impressive 11-inch screen with a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels and 213 PPI, in addition to a 5:3 aspect ratio. Since it has an Android tablet, it has a full back lite. However, Amazon said it is certified for low blue light. The design is piano black on the front and back, adhering to the same design sensibilities as previous Fire tablets.
Underneath the hood is a MediaTek Arm Cortex-A78 up to 2.2Ghz and 6xArm Cortex A55 up to 2Ghz , 4 GB of RAM, and choose from 64 GB or 128 GB of storage for your movies, games, books, and pictures or check your email, organize notes, or doodle anywhere. The tablet also offers a micro SD card slot with 1TB of storage. It has WIFI, USB-C for charging, 8 MP front and back-facing with 1080p HD video recording and rear auto-focus. 2 microphones will be ideal for making audio notes or talking to people via social media apps. On the sides, there’s a pair of Dolby Atmos speakers. Another first on a Fire Tablet: a fingerprint reader built into the power button.
Amazon said the Fire Max tablet offers a “14-hour battery life” without specifying the battery size. Plus, the company ships a slow 9W USB 2.0 charger in the box, which fully charges the device in 4.2 hours. You can buy a 15W charger separately and reduce the charging time to 3.5 hours.
Amazon is also launching a keyboard case that magnetically attaches to the device through pogo pins and a stylus. If users buy both devices with the Fire Max tablet, the package will cost them $329.99. Amazon has priced this tablet for folks who might want a machine for productivity or family but don’t want to spend iPad money.
The Fire Max 11 runs FireOS 8, which is a fork of Android 11. If you’ve used a Fire Tablet, you already know what to expect: It’s a storefront for Amazon’s entertainment content such as Kindle Books, Audible Audiobooks, Prime Video, App Store, Prime Music and much more. What I like about this tablet is Show Mode, which turns the tablet into an Echo Show display with hands-free Alexa mode.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.