It’s been a great couple of months for the tablet, between Apple bringing Final Cut Pro to the iPad, OnePlus’ surprisingly polished tablet, Lenovo’s super-sized work machine with the best keyboard case around, and the imminent launch of the Pixel Tablet. Now Amazon is jumping into the fray with its most ambitious tablet yet.
To be clear, the e-commerce giant is no stranger to tablets, but previous ones were low-budget fare. The Fire Max 11, as the name suggests, aims a bit higher. In fact, it’s being billed as “Amazon’s biggest and most powerful tablet yet.”
I’ve been using the tablet for a week, and there’s a lot to like, including a good keyboard accessory, a good screen, and, perhaps most importantly, a low price for a tablet of this size. But there are some questionable choices, like Amazon’s insistence on using its own OS that seems to have beef with Google services even though the software itself is based on Android. Unless you’re a diehard fan of Amazon’s entire suite of products and services, it’s hard to make the case that Amazon’s Fire OS is better than Android.
Amazon Fire Max 11
Powerful by Amazon standards
The Fire Max 11 is Amazon’s most powerful tablet yet, with a good 11-inch screen and access to all of Amazon’s services. But Fire OS continues to suffer from not being connected with Google services.
- Brand
- Amazon
- Storage
- 64GB/128GB
- CPU
- MediaTek MT8188J 2.2GHz octa-core
- Memory
- 4GB RAM
- Operating System
- Fire OS
- Battery
- 10,000mAh
- Ports
- USB-C
- Camera (Rear, Front)
- 8MP front, 8MP rear
- Display (Size, Resolution)
- 11-inch LCD, 2000×1200
- Price
- Starting at $230
- Size
- 17.28 ounces (490g)
- Connectivity
- Dual-band Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 ax)
- Measurements
- 10.2 x 6.44 x 0.3 inches (259.1 x 163.7 x 7.5mm)
- Colors
- Gray
Pros
- Great battery life, good screen
- Really affordable by North American standards
- The keyboard case is great, but an extra purchase
Cons
- Fire OS doesn’t come with Google apps
- The OS is full of ads
- Rear camera is not good
Amazon Fire Max 11: Pricing and availability
The Amazon Fire Max 11 is available now on Amazon, priced starting at $230 for the 64GB storage model with ads on the lockscreen. There is another 64GB model without lockscreen ads priced at $245. You can double the storage to 128GB for $280, and this model will not have lockscreen ads. The keyboard case and stylus can be purchased separately for $90 and $35, respectively. Amazon is also selling various bundles that include either a keyboard case or also with a stylus at various prices that are lower than if you buy them separately.
Design and hardware
Good keyboard, poor stylus
Having covered the Shenzhen tech scene closely, I’ve tested my fair share of budget tablets from obscure Chinese OEMs — with names like Teclast, Doogee and Chuwi — and the Amazon Fire Max 11’s outer shell immediately reminds me of those. From the way the tablet base has two small holes for the keyboard nub to the not-quite-seamless edges where the display panel meets the aluminum chassis, this outer shell is clearly the work of those manufacturing lines. To be clear, almost all tablets are made in China, even the priciest iPads, but there are levels to the hardware production.
The Amazon Fire Max 11’s 11-inch, 2000×1200 screen looks perfectly fine to my eyes. The bezels that wrap around it are acceptable, and maximum brightness is enough for outdoor use. It’s a 60Hz LCD panel, as expected at this price range, but color representation is accurate with no noticeable color shift even from off-angle viewing.
The tablet comes with either 64GB or 128GB of storage, but it has SD card support up to 1TB. There are a pair of 8GB cameras on the front and back, and there’s a large 7500mAh battery that has given this machine excellent endurance, and the addition of a fingerprint scanner embedded into the power button is a nice bonus for a budget tablet.
Amazon is using a MediaTek MTK8188J, an entry-level SoC, with a 2.2GHz octa-core processor and 4GB of RAM. Considering this tablet’s more modest goal of being “just” a machine for reading and typing, this processor is fine. I had no issues during my testing period. XDA’s content management system isn’t the most tablet-friendly, but it’s running fine so far.
I’m doing all the typing with Amazon’s keyboard accessory and not via the on-screen keyboard, of course. Amazon’s keyboard case is very similar to Microsoft’s Surface keyboard accessory: it’s a two-piece kit with a magnetic back flap that acts as a kickstand and a keyboard that attaches to the base of the tablet. Even the fabric-like material feels like Microsoft’s Alcantara material.
I like the keyboard, which is sturdy and offers a wider range of angles, unlike most other Android tablet keyboard accessories. The kickstand style does make it harder to use on a lap than say the Apple’s Magic Keyboard or OnePlus Pad keyboard, but it works well with the tablet. The keyboard itself is slightly smaller than a full-sized option, so the keys do feel a bit cramped, but I got used to it after an hour and was pounding away at my usual fast typing speed of around 105 words per minute.
The trackpad is tiny, but the material has enough friction to not feel slippery, and I can accurately move around the mouse cursor. It can be clicked or tapped too. I know this sounds like a lazy thing to say, but at its price point, I really can’t find anything to fault here.
I do have problems with the stylus, though, named the Amazon Pen. First, it requires a AAAA battery. I haven’t had to use a conventional dry-cell battery in years. Out of the box, there are no notepad or sketch apps for the stylus, so you must download some via the Amazon Appstore, and the options are lacking compared to Google’s Play Store. Once I installed a sketch app, there was noticeable latency between my hand movement and when the stroke actually shows up on the screen. Other than using the tip to tap small on-screen buttons, I wouldn’t bother using the stylus.
Software and performance
Fine performance, but the software is spammy
Confession time: This is my first time reviewing Amazon hardware. Even though I knew of Fire OS’ existence, I was still surprised when I set up the tablet and noticed there were no Google apps, and that I had to rely on Amazon’s app store. There are workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Fire OS, but it’s a complicated process no one buying budget tablets would naturally know to do.
Fire OS is based on Android, so there are some traces of Android here, but it’s very outdated. Navigation is still done via the old-school trio of on-screen buttons, and worse, there’s no way to hide the buttons when they’re not in use, so you lose a small part of the display to what is effectively a digital bezel housing navigation buttons. You can access the notification shade with a swipe from the top just like on Android phones, but the panel is blocky with sharp corners, seemingly pulled out of Android circa 2015.
Fire OS is built like a giant marketing platform for Amazon and its services. There are ads galore, including a non-removable homescreen widget that shows you a rotation of “interesting apps” and content, the latter of which leads to streaming content produced by Amazon. It’s really jarring for me to be typing this article on Amazon’s web browser and exiting out to a homescreen with an icon for the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie starring Chris Pine. Some of these Amazon movies can be trashy lowbrow fares too, with provocative posters that look like soft porn.
That’s not all. During the initial setup, Amazon tried to get me to sign up for an Audible subscription. Because Amazon had my credit card information from my Amazon Prime account, it even pre-filled in the payment information. All I needed to do was tap a button. I could see how someone who isn’t paying attention and zipping their way through the setup could accidentally subscribe without knowing. This is nasty.
Let’s go back to that homescreen widget that displays a rotating series of icons. Thankfully it doesn’t only suggest things for you to buy. It’ll show you existing content you own if you already use an Amazon service. I have a digital Kindle subscription, so it was nice to see some of my e-book covers displayed on the same widget. While this LCD panel can’t show deep blacks, reading e-books and comics on it is still enjoyable.
I do like that Fire OS features a multi-user system, so several members of the family can share the tablet and have their own profiles, apps, and files. And overall performance is fine — I am still writing this review on the tablet itself, and I haven’t encountered stutters or crashes that would force me to stop the experiment and switch to a laptop. Battery life, as mentioned, is good. Even with typing in Amazon’s Silk browser and the screen brightness near 80%, the Fire Max 11 is only losing about 10-12% of battery per hour. For less intensive tasks like reading e-books on the Kindle app, an hour drains about 8%. So this is a tablet that you can use for at least 9-11 hours on a single charge.
But ultimately, I just miss Google services. For example, I only make sure to remember my password for super important apps like my banking Google accounts. For secondary services like Instagram or Airbnb, I just let Google or iOS autofill my login information. So trying to log into Instagram on the Fire tablet took 15 minutes because I don’t remember the password and the software didn’t have Google autofill.
Not having access to apps I use often like Google Docs and Google Maps is also annoying. And while there is a YouTube app, it looks hilariously outdated, looking like the YouTube web interface from 2006.
Fire OS’ YouTube app
Why is Amazon jumping through hoops to avoid using Google services when its software is based on Android? Even the Amazon Silk web browser defaults to Microsoft Bing search. I understand why Apple wants to steer its users away from Google — they are direct competitors with many similar products — but I don’t think Amazon and Google’s businesses and products overlap much.
Otherwise, using the tablet as a portable entertainment device is enjoyable. Thankfully, Amazon’s app store has proper apps for rival streaming services like Disney Plus. Hulu and NetFlix. The speakers are fine for a budget device, but the locations are not ideal: there are just two speaker grills, both on the top side of the tablet in landscape mode. If you hold the device in portrait orientation, both speakers face the same direction.
The Fire Max 11 has front-facing and rear-facing cameras, and they snap photos that are on par with a sub-$250, U.S.-focused device — they’re grainy, soft on details, and have poor dynamic range. The camera app is also terribly designed, requiring two taps to switch between lenses or modes. By default, the camera app doesn’t show on-screen buttons. You have to tap the screen once to bring the buttons into view, then tap again to make the change you want.
The front-facing camera is, however, fine for video calls, because the standards for image quality in video calls are much lower. The Fire Max 11 can shoot 720p videos with solid audio pickup.
Should you buy the Amazon Fire Max 11?
You should buy the Amazon Fire Max 11 if:
- You want a low-priced tablet
- You’ll use Amazon’s suite of apps like Kindle, Amazon Prime, and Audible
- You just need a way to write words on the go
You should not buy the Amazon Fire Max 11 if:
- You rely on Google apps
- You want a good stylus experience
- You don’t mind paying a couple hundred dollars more
Ultimately, the Amazon Fire Max 11 is a fine tablet for what it is. It’s an affordable device built for users of Amazon services. I like the keyboard case that works well, and the tablet is lightweight enough to carry around the house with one hand. And I suppose at $230 price, it’s a perfectly good purchase for someone who uses it solely as a home Kindle device or on-the-go typing machine. But if you can afford to pay a bit more, the OnePlus Pad is a huge improvement, with a better screen, better processor, better stylus, better cameras, and better software.
Amazon Fire Max 11
A decent tablet held back
The Fire Max 11 is Amazon’s most powerful tablet yet, with a good 11-inch screen and access to all of Amazon’s services. But Fire OS continues to suffer from not being connected with Google services.