The Amazon Fire Max 11 ($229) to start is the company's largest and fastest Fire tablet yet, one that's being pitched as a productivity tool if you splurge for the optional stylus and keyboard cover.
Announced today (May 23), the Fire Max 11 sports an 11-inch 2K display, an octa-core 2.2Ghz Mediatek CPU, 4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage, plus there's a microSD card reader that can support up to 1TB of additional storage.
This is Amazon's beefiest Fire tablet yet, and odds are good the Fire Max 11 will end up on our curated list of the best Amazon Fire tablets, based purely on size and utility. If it performs well in our testing lab it may even have a shot at landing on the best Android tablets list, but we'll have to wait and see.
Here's everything we know so far about the Amazon Fire Max 11 tablet.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Specs
Amazon Fire Max 11: Price and availability
The Amazon Fire Max 11 is available for pre-order today (May 23) via Amazon, where you can buy one for a starting price of $229. That entry-level model comes with the 2K display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage. If you want a bit more built-in storage, you can pay extra for an upgraded 128GB though, as noted, the microSD card reader gives you room to slot in up to 1 TB of additional storage.
Amazon is also selling a number of accessories for the Fire Max 11, including the afore-mentioned Keyboard Case ($89.99) and Made for Amazon stylus ($34.99), which Amazon is selling included with the Fire Max 11 at a slight discount, for a total bundle price of $329. There's also a Slim Cover ($49) that has no built-in keyboard, but it does have a stand that lets you prop the tablet up for watching videos on, say, an airplane tray table.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Design
The Amazon Fire Max 11 looks much akin to its smaller siblings in Amazon's lineup of Fire tablets, only larger. At 10.2 x 6.4 x 0.29 inches thick and just over a pound (1.08) in weight, it's the largest and heaviest Fire tablet to date.
That makes the Fire Max 11 slightly larger, heavier and thicker than both the base Amazon Fire HD 10 and Apple's base iPad 2022, serving up a bit more screen real estate along with added girth.
That said, the Amazon Fire Max 11's design sports a fingerprint reader built into the power button, a convenience Apple's iPad can't match.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Display
The Amazon Fire Max 11 is dominated by its 11-inch 2K (2,000 x 1,200 pixels) display, the largest we've yet seen on any Amazon tablet. The company claims it can deliver up to 410 nits of brightness, but we'll have to get one into our testing lab to see for ourselves how accurate that is under real-world conditions.
With a pixel density of 213 and a total of 2.4 million pixels on-screen, Amazon is leaning hard on the large screen of the Fire Max 11 as a must-have feature for getting work done, gaming and watching videos on the go. And if you like the idea of doing all that on a (relatively cheap) Android tablet running Amazon's FireOS, the Fire Max 11 could be a compelling proposition.
However, if screen quality is really what you care about you should know that the Fire Max 11's big screen can't compete with the displays on some of the best Android tablets, including the pricier Samsung Galaxy Tab S8, which has a similar 11-inch display with higher resolution (2,560 x 1,600 pixels) and refresh rate (120Hz). And if you love the idea of a big-screen Android tablet, it's hard to beat the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra ($1,099 to start) and its 14.6-inch (2960 x 1848) Super AMOLED display.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Performance
The Amazon Fire Max 11 has a 2.2Ghz octa-core Mediatek MT8188J SoC (System on Chip) and 4GB of RAM under the hood, which should be more than enough power to browse the web, you write and edit, play games and watch videos.
Don't expect much in the way of ports on this tablet. Like most slates, the Amazon Fire Max 11 has but a simple USB-C port for charging, though you can also use it as an audio connection for supported devices.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Ports
You also get a microSD card reader slot on the side which you can use to add up to 1TB of external storage, and there's also a pin connector along the edge of the tablet for use connecting the detachable keyboard.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Cameras
The Amazon Fire Max 11 sports a pair of 8MP cameras on front and rear. They're both capable of capturing video at up to 1080p, but we'll have to wait until we check them out in person to tell you how good they are.
Amazon Fire Max 11: Outlook
The Amazon Fire Max 11 is the biggest Fire tablet announce we've seen this year in a few ways. Not only is it physically the biggest FireOS tablet Amazon's yet fielded, it's also the biggest change we've seen to the company's lineup in years.
However, that's a bit of damning with faint praise if you consider how little of a difference this tablet appears to make over the slightly smaller, cheaper Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus which debuted not long ago. The Fire Max 11 is basically a bigger, more expensive Fire HD 10 with a better screen, better cameras and a better processor, all for less than $100 more.
It's a tempting proposition, but don't forget you're hamstrung by the limits of FireOS, which doesn't let you access the full range of apps available on Android tablets (including the Google Play Store) without a lot of extra effort.
That said, if you've been hoping for a bigger, beefier Fire tablet, looks like Amazon's got something right up your alley. Stay tuned for our full review of the Amazon Fire Max 11.
