[djfergus]

Curious, what was the failure mode on the broken kindles?

I have a Kindle Keyboard (k3w) and k4 both going strong (including decent battery life) after a decade of use and abuse by my kids and I.

The jailbreak on kindles that support it (don’t connect your new device to the internet until you have checked) is simple and painless - I prefer koreader to plato but they are both great and an embarrassment to the locked down systems these devices ship with.

Kobo is great but Amazon has better bang for buck (due to subsidy and access to the best eink screens first).

[erikw]

1st Kindle DX: Screen cracked, not sure why. Maybe thermal stress? Amazon replaced for free. 2nd Kindle DX: Stopped booting, no physical damage. Kindle: Rolled on it after falling asleep, screen cracked. Kindle Oasis: Dropped directly on its face, screen cracked. This weird anti-bezel obsession means there is nothing to protect the screen. But you need a bezel to hold onto, so not having a bezel makes the device worse in most ways.

The Kobo that I have has large plastic bezels, so it is easy to hold, lightweight, less likely to be dropped, and when dropped, unlikely to suffer direct impact to the glass surface.