Review: Amazon Fire Max 11

The Fire Max 11 is Amazon’s newest, largest, and most powerful tablet. It’s also a tablet no one wants or needs. Amazon has departed from its ultra-budget hardware to churn out a device that would be a decent mid-level Android tablet if it ran the latest version. But it doesn’t run Android at all; it runs Amazon’s Fire OS, a crippled, nearly useless fork of Android that’s now over two full years’ worth of features behind Google’s mobile operating system.

Take mid-level hardware, slap on an OS that’s good for little more than consuming Amazon content, charge nearly as much as you would for an iPad, and you have a tablet that just can’t keep up with the competition. Even at half the price, as Amazon’s Fire tablets usually are during Prime Day and other sales, the Fire Max 11 is a tough sell.

Out of the box, this is the best Fire tablet Amazon has ever made for consuming Amazon content. The problem comes when you want to do anything other than consume Amazon content.

Amazon sells the Fire Max 11 for $230. For another $100, you can get what Amazon calls the Productivity Bundle, which adds a keyboard, cover, and stylus. But you’re now in the price range of several much nicer tablets that offer a superior software experience.

Photograph: Amazon

Lest you think I have some pretentious dislike for Amazon’s hardware, I am typing this review on a Fire 10 with a Finite keyboard. It’s my main writing tool when I leave the house (or RV in my case) and half the time when I’m at home. I have modified the Fire tablet’s software, using the ADB developer tool to turn off all of Amazon’s apps and install those I need to work (Vivaldi and Termux), but the Fire 10 is certainly able to handle my needs as a writer. That is to say, for $100 on sale, with some slight modifications, the Fire 10 is indeed capable of being useful for work, which is a pretty great deal.

For that reason, I was excited to try the Fire Max 11—what’s not to like about a more powerful model, this one made of real metal instead of cheap plastic? The Fire Max 11 delivers what Amazon is promising, which is to say it’s by far the best Fire tablet the company has ever made.

The 11-inch LCD screen has a nice 2,000 x 1,200-pixel resolution that’s quite glare-prone, but no worse than other tablets. The 16:9 format signals that the first priority here is consuming movies (and reading, if you rotate to portrait mode), but it’s not great for productivity. It could be if Amazon updated Fire OS to access some of the tools in Android 12L, which is optimized for tablets, but Fire OS is based on an outdated version of Android that lacks any tablet-friendly features. More on that in a minute.

There’s a fingerprint reader on the side power button, which is a first for a Fire tablet. A microSD slot lets you expand your media storage, and the keyboard now connects via pogo pins, which allow it to charge and communicate. Previous Fire tablets—like mine—need to connect to keyboards via Bluetooth, which is inconsistent and slow on the best of days and must be charged separately. The Fire Max 11 also supports Wi-Fi 6 and has front and rear 8-megapixel cameras, making it better for video chats as well.

Under the screen sit 4 gigabytes of RAM and either a 64-gigabyte or 128-gigabyte SSD (the larger storage adds another $50). The Max 11 is powered by a MediaTek MT8188J chip, which uses an 8-core processor. Those specs put the Fire Max 11 in the middle of most Android tablets—more powerful than its Fire siblings, but certainly not close to any OnePlus or Pixel Tablet. For Amazon though, this qualifies as a high-end slate, relative to the rest of the Fire lineup.

It’s made of metal and feels much nicer than any other Fire device. After using it for several weeks, I was a little sad to go back to my plasticky Fire 10. The Fire Max 11 is also noticeably faster in performance, though not enough that I would feel compelled to upgrade. One potential deal-breaker is that the keyboard and case are not self-supporting. To be productive with the Productivity Bundle, you need to put the whole thing on a flat surface.

The keyboard, while usable, is on the small side. I had a lot of trouble with the trackpad, which kept clicking things when I accidentally brushed it with my palms while typing. It’s not an insurmountable issue, but it’s more annoying than it should be at this price. The stylus is laughably bad. Luckily for users, there are almost no apps in the Amazon App Store that would make you want to use the stylus.

Courtesy of Amazon

The core problem with the Fire Max 11 is that it’s just not good enough for the money Amazon is charging. If you want to use it for anything more than a firehose blasting your eyeballs with Prime content, you’ll have to spend $330. Given that you can get a 9th-generation iPad on Amazon for roughly $279 and a Bluetooth keyboard for $30 more, why would anyone buy a Fire Max 11? I don’t know.

It’s an OK tablet, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as even the base model iPad, the Pixel Tablet, the OnePlus Pad, or the second generation of Lenovo’s Tab P11 Pro. Most of these tablets cost more, yes, but they’re better investments for all but the most diehard Amazon fan (if such people exist).

The reason you should buy something else comes down to software. Fire OS, Amazon’s proprietary fork of Android, is terrible. It’s always been terrible, and as far as I can tell, it will always be terrible. Its sole purpose is to deliver your eyeballs to Amazon. It works well for that. You’ll have no trouble finding all your favorite Amazon Prime features and perks through Fire OS.

If you want to do anything else, you’ll find yourself fighting Fire OS to get it done. There are no Google apps and no Play Store, only the limited offerings of Amazon’s App Store. I did try to install the Play Store using my own instructions, but so far I have not been able to get it working. I will update that guide as soon as I figure it out, but Lenovo’s Tab P11 Pro is still a better investment for roughly the same price.