Key Facts at a Glance

• Product: Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro
• Price: $549.99 for the 12 Pro; the Alexa Tablet lineup starts at $229.99 for an 8-inch model and tops out at $679.99 for a higher-RAM 12 Pro variant.
• Display: 12-inch, 2800 x 1840 LCD panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, 3:2 aspect ratio, and Amazon's Nanomatte anti-glare coating developed with Corning.
• Processor: MediaTek Dimensity 8400.
• Software: Full Android with Google Play Store access, Google Gemini support, and Amazon's Alexa Plus assistant.
• Accessories: $149.99 keyboard case and $89.99 stylus.
• Battery: Roughly eight hours of screen time in testing, less than Amazon advertises.
• Main trade-offs: Heavy Amazon bloatware, non-removable promotional widgets, middling performance versus iPads, and limited large-screen Android app support.

The Display Is the Star

The first thing anyone notices about the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is its screen. It is a 12-inch LCD with a resolution of 2800 x 1840, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 3:2 aspect ratio. Amazon calls the anti-glare treatment Nanomatte, and it was developed with Corning at a sub-pixel level. The goal is to reduce glare without the rainbow shimmer that can affect other matte displays. In practice, the effect is striking. Where an iPad can turn into a mirror outdoors, the 12 Pro reflects only a small sheen of light. It does this without sacrificing sharpness, and the viewing angles are excellent. The display is not perfect, but it is immediately impressive.

Nanomatte: What It Does and What It Does Not Do

Amazon's Nanomatte coating is the centerpiece of the tablet's marketing, and it mostly lives up to the hype. The anti-glare texture does introduce a slight shimmer, especially when viewing light text on a black background. The LCD panel also cannot match the deep blacks of an OLED iPad. When watching a movie, the letterbox bars above and below the image are still slightly lit on the Alexa Tablet, while they are completely off on an OLED screen. Some of these issues can be mitigated with display modes. The 12 Pro includes presets that adjust tone and color, and there are specific modes for reading. My review unit arrived with a Boosted mode enabled, which made colors too vivid. Switching to Natural improved the picture immediately. The reading modes are pleasant, but it is disappointing that they only work inside the Kindle app.

Hardware: Fine, Not Exceptional

All that display technology in a $549.99 device requires trade-offs elsewhere, and Amazon makes plenty of them. The hardware is generally fine, but rarely exciting. The four speakers are a little thin and muddy, though they get loud enough for casual use. The cameras wash out some colors, but they work for video calls. The $149.99 keyboard case is nice to type on, but it can be awkward to detach and reposition. The $89.99 pen is smooth and responsive, yet few Android apps support a stylus well. Battery life lasts about eight hours of screen time in testing, which is less than Amazon advertises and less than ideal for long trips. Nothing here is a deal-breaker, but it adds up to a lot of okay.

Performance: Enough for Now, Not Future-Proof

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 processor. In benchmarks, it lands somewhere between a flagship Android phone from last year and a flagship from two years ago. It is absolutely outpaced by almost every current iPad. In one graphics-heavy benchmark, the current 13-inch iPad Pro scored about nine times higher. That sounds alarming, but in day-to-day use the 12 Pro feels adequate. Games run, work gets done, and streaming video looks great. The only slowdowns I noticed were minor Android quirks, such as the app switcher stuttering when it loads. The bigger concern is longevity. Because the tablet lacks the iPad's enormous processing overhead, it may not age as gracefully. For now, it is fine.

Software: Full Android, But Amazon Everywhere

The software is where the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro becomes both exciting and frustrating. The good news is huge: these tablets run full Android, not the off-brand operating system Amazon used on Fire tablets for years. That means access to the Google Play Store, a much better interface, and support for Google's Gemini assistant. All by itself, that change makes this the most functional Amazon tablet ever. Unfortunately, Amazon also did what you might fear. It Amazon-ed the experience. There is a slide-over panel to the left of the homescreen filled with recommendations. That is tolerable because the overlap between tablet owners and Prime subscribers is likely high. Preloading Amazon's browser, photos, and music apps is also survivable, even though none of them beat the competition. What is not tolerable is the presence of two separate, non-removable homescreen widgets that exist only to advertise Amazon products. Borrowing the top left corner of a homescreen to show an ad is outrageous, especially for a company that claims to obsess over customers. The fix is simple: install a new launcher. On Android, that takes about 30 seconds, and it is the first thing anyone should do.

Alexa Plus: A Shopping Bot, Not a Great Assistant

Alexa's presence on the tablet would be less annoying if Alexa Plus were genuinely useful. It is not. If you are looking to buy something on your screen, Alexa can help. Invoke the assistant in any app, and it will usually assume your goal is

Source: The Verge News