love/hate delicate machinery

December 19, 2012 8:52 PM

How fragile are kindles nowadays? I had a kindle keyboard and... it died.

Not a question about replacing or warranty or anything, just, how sturdy are they nowadays? I went through Stepped On, Sat On, and Fell From Bed, all in a nice lil leather case (though, not always a closed leather case....) but I love Kindles enough to get a new one.... I just dont want it to die painfully. Plausible?

posted by Jacen to Technology (6 answers total)

They're pretty slender machines, mostly made of plastic. They're decently durable, and they do better with a good case. But they do break, if hit just wrong. The good news? Amazon is pretty kind about giving you a good discount on a replacement Kindle, if you tell them about your broken Kindle. My wife's Kindle broke and she called Amazon. It cost $40 or so for a new one, as long as she sent the broken one back. I think Amazon even gave her a box to ship it back.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:08 PM on December 19, 2012

I have broken keyboards on two of them, one fairly recently. Unclear how but they probably got banged around during travel. Amazon replaced both for a discount if I sent the old one back, as filthy light thief says.
posted by Cocodrillo at 9:57 PM on December 19, 2012

I have a Kindle touch - I had the first one for almost a year and dropped it a lot, and kept it in my (filthy) purse with no cover on it, and probably sat on it (but not really hard and not on a hard surface). Just short of the 1-year mark the menu button (one of the two buttons on the thing) stopped working (I think there was some kind of grit or goo in there, from the way it felt). It was still usable (using on-screen buttons) but I called Amazon and they sent me a new one, no charge (not even for shipping).

I don't think Amazon emphasizes sturdiness for Kindles, it's more about replaceability. That said, if you got a hard case or something, I bet you could make it damn-near indestructible if that's what you wanted.
posted by mskyle at 7:07 AM on December 20, 2012

I've had two, my partner has one, and they have all seemed reasonably sturdy for ~100-150 dollar device that we both travel with constantly and routinely beat up. The biggest point of failure for them seems to be the screen from what I can tell - too much pressure and the magnetic field lines get distorted and the display gets unreadable, so hard cases seem to help them quite a bit as filthy light thief says.

My old kindle keyboard was gifted to me after ~1 year of use when a family member got an ipad and found herself no longer using it, and I had it for ~1.5 years before the screen went wonky last year as I mentioned above. An easy enough fix if you can find a screen, but I couldn't find one for much less than a new one so I upgraded (lots of functioning kindle keyboards with broken screens for cheap on ebay, but not vice versa). How did yours fail? My last gen non-touch and my partners paper-white have been treating us well, otherwise, for the last year or so and few months respectively.
posted by McSwaggers at 8:50 AM on December 20, 2012

My Kindle DX broke last year -- the part where the case (which Amazon sells for it) pokes into the device itself, warped and eventually cracked and last year the button used for selecting things and moving inexplicably broke in two and one part fell off. It's still fairly functional but it was strange that it broke so suddenly without my dropping it or mishandling it in any way. I haven't tried getting a replacement from Amazon because I bought it when the Kindle DX first came out, which was a few years ago.
posted by peacheater at 10:05 AM on December 20, 2012

I've had 4 Kindles: a II, a DX, a black keyboard, and the most recent simple "Kindle". The latest model of the "basic" kindle (no keyboard, no touch screen) seems to be the most durable of the bunch. It has a metal frame around the outside which has withstood a lot of dropping. I also like that the screen bezel is flush with the screen so no more dirt getting in there. It's still vulnerable to being sat on, though I've forgotten it in my back pocket for a 2-hour car ride and it's still fine.

Only one of my previous kindles actually broke, the black keyboard version when someone sat on the bag it was in. I dropped the DX and cracked the bezel but it always functioned. Still does in fact.
posted by Ookseer at 2:43 PM on December 20, 2012