Amazon announced the Amazon Fire Max 11 today, which is their largest tablet to date. This is an 11-inch tablet where Amazon introduces digitizer pen support for the first time. The release date for Fire Max 11 is June 14, with the price starting from $229: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1VQ1ZQY/

With this tablet, Amazon is sharpening their largest tablet to a multi-purpose tablet. It’s thinner, has a long battery life, better specs and performance, and features an optional keyboard and pen too. So the Fire Max 11 is a tablet that can be enjoyed and used by a lot of people for a lot of purposes.

The 11-inch screen is protected by the very durable alumino-silicate glass technology, and the display features a Full HD display resolution of 2000 x 1200, and there are 8MP front and rear cameras on the Fire Max 11 too, for Full HD video chats or recordings. Like all better tablets these days, the screen is TÜV Rheinland low blue light certified.

Fire Max 11 is powered by an octa-core 2.2 GHz MediaTek MT8188J processor and a ARM G57 MC2 GPU, together with 4GB of RAM, and 64GB or 128GB storage options, both supporting 1TB microSD cards, and of course free Amazon cloud storage for Amazon content.

With this chipset and motherboard, I can see that the Fire Max 11 is just above twice as fast and powerful as the Fire HD 10 (which was the most powerful Fire tablet until today), so that’s a huge upgrade.

And this has improved battery life too, as we can now expect a 14 hour battery life, which charges from any USB C cable, but is delivered with a 9W power adapter that can charge the new tablet in 4.2 hours, or it can be used with an optional 15W charger, that will charge it in 3.5 hours instead.

It’s launching with Amazon’s Android 11 based Fire OS 8, which with its huge and still growing ecosystem of apps, media content, services, and easy of use, has made the Fire tablets one of the bestsellling tablets in the world.

Amazon has given the Fire Max 11 many other specs too that are higher then on their other Fire tablets. It has a longer range and faster dual-band a/b/g/n/ac/ax Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 BLE, and a USB C 2.0 port. The only thing it lacks is a 3.5mm audio jack, but a small USB C to 3.5mm a audio jack converter takes care of that. Most new headphones and earbuds usually have Bluetooth connection nowadays anyway, so as an option people can also connect to the music and audio from the tablet wirelessly.

Other specs includes a fingerprint reader for quick and secure ways of logging into the tablet, more powerful Dolby Atmos stereo speakers, dual microphones, tablet sensors such as accelerometer, ambient light sensor, hall effect sensor, and location-based services via Wi-Fi.

The optional digitizer pen is interesting, since the pen, called ‘The Made for Amazon Stylus Pen’ uses the Universal Stylus Interface 2.0 (USI2.0) standard, which means that theoretically, all USI2.0 standard stylus can be used with this tablet, though the pencil shaped The Made for Amazon Stylus Pen is sure to be guaranteed the most compatible. The pen also attaches magnetically to the tablet, so it can always be at hand.

So now we get conversions of handwritten notes to text, the ability to use illustration and drawing apps, and access to even more features that makes the Fire Max 11 a more productive tablet.

Of course, people can also connect things like a mouse or a keyboard into the USB C port or through a USB C hub for additional peripherals.

Amazon has also created a new keyboard for this tablet which is simply called the Fire Max 11 Keyboard Case. This is a 2 part case, where the keyboard part attaches magnetically to the pogo pins on the tablet, and has either flat or tilted typing angles. The keyboard also has a trackpad with gesture support, as well as customizable shortcut keys and a various keyboard adjustment options. When closed, it functions as a protective cover for the tablet.

The other part of the keyboard case is the back cover which can be attached and detached, but adds a multi-angle kickstand, as well as padding and protection for the back of the tablet when the tablet is carried around.

And people can use Microsoft’s Office/365 Personal with this tablet, so it can be used as a very productive 2-in-1 tablet or mini-laptop, as well as an entertainment, games, and web browsing tablet.

Services and and features is of course a huge part of what the Fire tablets are about, so naturally it can be used as a voice commanded smart home controller with Alexa and all of those features, together with easy access to millions of books, magazines, movies, songs, apps, games, and the always available customer services with live assistance on how to use the tablet.

In terms of design, it has more of an upscale look and design, which also means that it’s a thin tablet with a thickness of 7.5mm, and a weight of 490 grams.

The Fire Max 11 is a very likeable tablet which is sure to attract new Fire tablet users too since the usefulness of this tablet has gone up two notches as it just managed to hit that sweet spot.

All thing considered, the closest alternative would be the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro (2nd Gen), but that means going up in price, so the Fire Max 11 is in some ways in a league of its own right now.

– Tom Bowen