The Fireplace Max 11 is Amazon’s latest, largest, and strongest pill. It’s additionally a pill nobody needs or wants. Amazon has departed from its ultra-budget hardware to churn out a tool that will be a good mid-level Android pill if it ran the newest model. But it surely doesn’t run Android in any respect; it runs Amazon’s Fireplace OS, a crippled, almost ineffective fork of Android that’s now over two full years’ value of options behind Google’s cell working system.
Take mid-level {hardware}, slap on an OS that’s good for little greater than consuming Amazon content material, cost almost as a lot as you’ll for an iPad, and you’ve got a pill that simply can’t sustain with the competition. Even at half the value, as Amazon’s Fireplace tablets normally are throughout Prime Day and different gross sales, the Fireplace Max 11 is a tricky promote.
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Out of the field, that is the most effective Fireplace pill Amazon has ever made for consuming Amazon content material. The issue comes while you need to do something aside from eat Amazon content material.
Amazon sells the Fireplace Max 11 for $230. For an additional $100, you will get what Amazon calls the Productivity Bundle, which provides a keyboard, cowl, and stylus. However you’re now within the value vary of a number of a lot nicer tablets that provide a superior software program expertise.
{Photograph}: Amazon
Lest you suppose I’ve some pretentious dislike for Amazon’s {hardware}, I’m typing this assessment on a Fire 10 with a Finite keyboard. It’s my principal writing device after I go away the home (or RV in my case) and half the time after I’m at dwelling. I’ve modified the Fireplace pill’s software program, utilizing the ADB developer tool to show off all of Amazon’s apps and set up these I must work (Vivaldi and Termux), however the Fireplace 10 is actually in a position to deal with my wants as a author. That’s to say, for $100 on sale, with some slight modifications, the Fireplace 10 is certainly able to being helpful for work, which is a fairly nice deal.
For that cause, I used to be excited to strive the Fireplace Max 11—what’s to not like a few extra highly effective mannequin, this one made from actual steel as an alternative of low cost plastic? The Fireplace Max 11 delivers what Amazon is promising, which is to say it’s by far the most effective Fireplace pill the corporate has ever made.
The 11-inch LCD display screen has a pleasant 2,000 x 1,200-pixel decision that’s fairly glare-prone, however no worse than different tablets. The 16:9 format indicators that the primary precedence right here is consuming films (and studying, if you happen to rotate to portrait mode), nevertheless it’s not nice for productiveness. It may very well be if Amazon up to date Fireplace OS to entry a number of the instruments in Android 12L, which is optimized for tablets, however Fireplace OS is predicated on an outdated model of Android that lacks any tablet-friendly options. Extra on that in a minute.
There’s a fingerprint reader on the facet energy button, which is a primary for a Fireplace pill. A microSD slot helps you to increase your media storage, and the keyboard now connects through pogo pins, which permit it to cost and talk. Earlier Fireplace tablets—like mine—want to connect with keyboards through Bluetooth, which is inconsistent and sluggish on the most effective of days and should be charged individually. The Fireplace Max 11 additionally helps Wi-Fi 6 and has entrance and rear 8-megapixel cameras, making it higher for video chats as properly.
Beneath the display screen sit 4 gigabytes of RAM and both a 64-gigabyte or 128-gigabyte SSD (the bigger storage provides one other $50). The Max 11 is powered by a MediaTek MT8188J chip, which makes use of an 8-core processor. These specs put the Fireplace Max 11 in the course of most Android tablets—extra highly effective than its Fireplace siblings, however actually not near any OnePlus or Pixel Tablet. For Amazon although, this qualifies as a high-end slate, relative to the remainder of the Fireplace lineup.
