Update December 2, 2024 (originally published Jan. 13, 2020):
On this cyber Monday, we’re republishing this expose of Amazon’s terrible disposable tech. Since 2020, things haven’t gotten any better—and in some ways, they’ve gotten worse.
Amazon’s own hardware has become increasingly dominant (having sold hundreds of millions of Kindles, Fire TVs, and Alexa-enabled devices), and they still just replace broken things, refurbishing some but trashing a lot. No authorized repair shops. No parts for sale. Just replacement, if your item’s under warranty.
A few more recent Amazon demerits:
- UK TV station ITV News investigated and found that Amazon destroys millions of products a year in the UK alone.
- Amazon cut out small-scale refurbishers (like long-time iFixit user John Bumstead, aka rdklinc) from their marketplace.
- Amazon shut down their Halo fitness and sleep tracking hardware division—and all these devices became e-waste when their software stopped being supported.
- There’s a big Amazon-sized loophole in the Digital Fair Repair Act that passed in Minnesota last year: Manufacturers are exempt from the law if they provide a replacement device at no cost to the consumer (see p. 172 of the omnibus bill).
But there is some hope: In May 2024, the EU Parliament banned the destruction of unsold textiles—and may include electronics in the future. The law enters into force two years after its enactment.
It’s time for us, as consumers and as stewards of our planet, to rethink our buying habits. Remember that the allure of a shiny new device on Prime Day has an environmental price tag. Demand better. Demand that Amazon takes responsibility for the lifecycle of its products, from production to end-of-life.
Amazon offers a flotilla of “smart” devices to replace your microwave, kids’ nightlights, wall plugs, and, coming soon, rings and eyeglasses. But the company’s barely-noticeable effort to recycle or help people repair these things is dumb, and it’s costing our planet a whole lot. It’s time people stop giving Amazon’s cheap products a pass on responsible stewardship. The retail giant has the resources to do so much better.
And that’s before we even talk about Fire tablets.
Amazon doesn’t repair their own products for customers outside their return or warranty periods. The company doesn’t make parts available. Need a new battery for your old but still functional Kindle Paperwhite? That’s too bad, Amazon doesn’t sell them directly (though you can roll the dice on a number of third-party vendors). The same goes for microwaves and nightlights. And even after you’ve given up on fixing something, Amazon’s recycling and trade-in programs for its own products exist, but they’re drastically under-promoted.
The impact of Amazon’s cheap, hard-to-fix gear is ignored or obscured at every level. The company’s environmental report talks about a “circular economy” mostly in the context of refurbished goods customers can buy. Customers, it reads, “may discover” a device recycling program or trade-in programs (we had no idea either existed, and you likely didn’t, either). On a human scale, an iFixit staffer who twice received a keyboard with a missing part was told by different Amazon customer support reps to “just simply thrown into trash” (sic) and “just [give] it to garbage man, they will separate that.”
That this goes overlooked is odd, as Amazon’s impact on everything has gotten attention lately. The dangers and small business pinch of “free” delivery, the mire of fake reviews, the privacy invasions of Ring video doorbells or Alexa/Echo devices, even the impact of Cyber Monday cardboard: we’re all starting to think more critically about Amazon’s all-consuming reach.
Yet at the same time, way too many of us are okay with buying, gifting, or recommending cheap Amazon tech as disposable, good-enough solutions. Tech review sites with otherwise critical eyes regularly recommend underwhelming Fire tablets as kid’s toys or streaming screens, eagerly announce when Echo devices go on sale, and never mention where all those cheap devices end up when they age, break, or become obsolete.
In response to this post, and questions about the company’s recycling and repair programs posed before publication, an Amazon spokesperson noted the company’s pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2040. Refurbishment and trade-in programs have “kept millions of devices from ending up in landfills in 2019 alone,” and many Amazon products are still in use after five years, according to a statement from the spokesperson.
The statement did suggest Amazon is aware that more work is needed.
“While we have been focused on sustainability for many years, such as through our recycling, refurbishment and trade-in programs, we know we have more work to do to allow our customers to make informed choices and to provide transparent information about the environmental impacts of devices through their whole life cycle,” Amazon’s spokesperson stated.
Nobody seems to be asking of Amazon the same kind of device stewardship that we ask of Apple, Google, Microsoft, or even smaller brands. Maybe it’s due to the largely transactional relationship people have with the mega-store. Maybe it’s because people simply tolerate Amazon’s tech gear, rather than truly enjoy it, even when it’s new.
The New, Already Outdated Fire Tablet

Fire Tablets are low-end Android devices optimized for Kindle reading, streaming video, Alexa commands, and simple games. The goal is to feed you Amazon’s services and validate your $120 yearly Prime membership. Inside the current 7- and 8-inch versions ($50 and $80 respectively, though they’re often on sale for less) is a MediaTek MT8163V/B all-in-one chipset. That chip is actually slower than the one in Samsung’s Galaxy S5, released in early 2014 1. Fire tablets can functionally run one Amazon app at a time, but trying to flip between apps or do actual work feels like trying to get a teenager to wake up and rake leaves.
There are loads of cheap, underperforming tablets available, but Amazon’s aggressive pricing, tie-in services, and outsized brand power have a reality distortion effect on buyers and otherwise hyper-critical reviewers. They’re cheap, the thinking goes; even cheaper with ads on them. At such prices, you can toss it in your bag to watch videos while traveling, or let your kids beat it up. Most people wouldn’t clutter their home with a no-name, underpowered Android tablet bought on a whim, but they’ll take one from Amazon.
Wirecutter states the HD 8 is “great for consuming Amazon-provided content, but it’s not as flexible as a full-fledged Android tablet.” But at $95 ($80 with lockscreen ads), it’s “a tolerable trade-off when you need a media-consumption tablet on the cheap.” The Verge gives the newest $150 10-inch Fire a seven out of 10, but notes it “Feels as cheap as it costs” and is “Slow for a 2019 device.” This is not to single out those two sites; they’re reviewing products in a particular reader-service context. Many other tech sites push cheap tablets with far less pondering.
But the net result of this very slick sales funnel is a lot of rare materials pulled from the earth, energy used to make tablets already past their prime, fuel used to ship them, and then, when they can’t be fixed or efficiently disassembled, a huge pile of shredded plastic, circuit boards, and, more than likely, hazardous batteries.
I called a local store in a national repair chain to ask if they repaired Kindle Fire tablets. “I’m gonna be honest with you, the price of repairing that is going to be equal to or more than replacing it,” an employee there told me. “Like $50 or $75?” I asked. “Last time I looked, it was $100,” the employee said. It’s not surprising that Amazon can make, pack, and ship me a tablet for just a bit more than the restocking fee on an iPad. But it’s not helping our growing e-waste problem.
Throwing ideas at the wall and shipping them

Amazon’s flotilla of always-listening Echo products is expanding rapidly. Review and tech sites are always a little skeptical, but they also link even the weirdest products, with affiliate codes, in part because Amazon saves its richest referral fees for its own products. (Full disclosure: we also add affiliate codes to our Amazon links, and if you buy these devices despite my efforts to talk you out of it, we may get a fee, too.)

The Kindle parts that we sell are sourced from an electronics recycler because that is literally the only place we can find them. And those parts don’t exactly fly off the shelves. It’s hard to blame people for not wanting to fix or upgrade a tablet that often costs $35.
If the door handle on your Kenmore microwave breaks, you can probably get the part and repair instructions through Sears Parts Direct. If any part of your AmazonBasics Microwave (Works with Alexa!) breaks, you have to pray that someone dismantled one and put the parts on eBay. While an Amazon spokesperson emphasized that Amazon devices regularly receive updates that require no action on the owner’s part, we wonder how many years an Amazon microwave could expect to receive security updates, and whether customers could actually fix wayward software (we’ll update this post if we hear more).
Free, easy shipping for costly, tough waste

Amazon has a poorly advertised recycling program for its non-working electronics and trade-in offers for working devices (that mostly provide discounts on newer devices). I discovered these resources while writing this post, after more than 11 years writing about technology. Two of my friends with 15 years of combined experience in the field also did not know about them; the same goes for every iFixit staffer I asked.

At a basic web-search level, the Amazon recycling program is a kludgy form where you type in the raw number of Amazon devices you have in each category—e-readers, tablets, TV sticks, Dash buttons—and get a shipping label. There are also currently 10 U.S. locations where Amazon will accept discarded electronics.
Amazon claims that millions of devices have been saved by its refurbishment and trade-in programs. I’d wager most of those devices come from product returns rather than end-of-life trade-ins (we’ve asked Amazon to clarify this). Most people simply don’t know that Amazon will trade, refurbish, or recycle their stuff. As a result, the cost of recycling cheap products lands on local municipalities, most of them already overburdened with e-waste. But even if Amazon’s mail-in recycling were wildly successful, recycling should be the last resort for electronics. We should be making products that stand the test of time, and can have multiple owners.
Not all devices need to be top of the line, and buyers should have more options than a brand-new iPad. But it would be nice to see the realities of buying and recommending cheap devices acknowledged in product reviews. Even better, mention that there are many good markets for quality used and refurbished tablets and other devices out there: Apple and Samsung have refurbished offerings, or Swappa and Back Market provide nearly as much assurance at normalized prices. And for the deal hunters, Craigslist, OfferUp, and Facebook Marketplace are great local options.2
Activists like us pressure the makers of expensive, useful devices when they fail to design for reliability and a sensible afterlife. Sometimes it pays off. Apple is pushing the envelope and developing recycled sources for challenging materials like rare earth metals, and puts trade-in and recycling options in front of their customers. Microsoft redesigned the Surface Laptop 3 to dramatically improve its repairability. Amazon, meanwhile, is selling loads of electronic devices at artificially low prices, and their product responsibility policy is, at best, a quiet and very mixed message.
It’s high time that we demand better. Let’s hold Amazon to the same e-waste standards as the rest of the industry.
Note: This post has been updated to incorporate a statement from an Amazon spokesperson, and some of Amazons responses throughout.
Top image by 기태 김/Flickr
[1]: You can see why Amazon prefers relative comparisons to real numbers—stating the new Fire HD 10 is “30% faster” is a lot more impressive than “Now competitive with Samsung circa 2015.” ↩
[2]: Amazon does have its own secondary markets: “Renewed,” “Warehouse,” and “Certified Refurbished.” They’re not easy to differentiate or navigate, and their requirements for what counts as refurbished are less specific than many refurbished vendors. ↩
crwdns2944067:028crwdne2944067:0
Great write-up! Thanks for bringing this up!
I’ve used their trade-in service once for a functioning and non-functioning device. Only found it when I was looking for ways to recycle Amazon products.
FYI : whime instead of whim
efrenr - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
This is fantastic. I never knew about the recycling program and have had an old, defunct Kindle hanging around the house. Now I know where to send it. Thank you!
Stephanie P - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
My Kindle Reader regularly reminds me that I can trade it in on a newer version.
Ed Reames - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
I’ve always wondered why the Amazon Fire tablets are such slow pieces of garbage.
Tom Parkison - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
The way to fix this MIGHT be to privilege repairable / recyclable products in tax policy. Amazon is a symptom. The cause is the consumer’s insistence on better for cheaper and the most efficient way to get there is to make the product functionally disposable and/or force the buyer back to the manufacturer to deal with problems.
We need to hard-wire some inefficiency into the marketplace.
S. Mittelstaedt - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
The externalities are present ever. We just don't see it. Articles like this are excellent to open our eyes.
Dirceu -
Amazon definitely went out of their way to let me know about their trade-in program about a year ago through an aggressive series of e-mails and offers, encouraging me to trade in my functioning—albeit only marginally usable—three-year-old Fire 7 tablet. They gave me $10 for the old tablet, for which I had originally paid $29 on sale, and had stopped using, as part of a steeply discounted deal on a new Fire HD 8 tablet.
Edwin Powell - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
One thing that we have discovered is that there are many inexpensive hand-held two-way radios and mobile two-way radios that are imported from China without FCC ID numbers. They have CMIIT ID numbers, meaning they are “tested” and “certified” in China. It is illegal to import such radios into the US, sell them in the US, or operate them in the US. The FCC is ignoring this, and Amazon is also ignoring it. Apparently US Customs is ignoring it. In my experience, the radios are very well built, well designed, and functional. Still illegal. Repairable? Good question.
Thomas O'Brien - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
There’s a reasonable chance the ‘well designed’ bit is false and the illegal bit true. A friend of mine is a civilian employee at a major Airforce base; one of his additional job duties is running direction finding gear whenever a crappy chinese made radio ends up illegally barfing harmonics all over the base guards radio channels or the ILS band. He really has more important things to do than guiding a van of MPs to someones door to have a friendly chat (tm) about why they can’t use their shiny new toy; and really wishes people would stop buying cheap - often counterfeit knockoff of decently designed - radios with fake/missing FCC approval.
Dan Neely -
I’m not buying into the Amazon slant on this article. Their devices are no different than anyone else’s cheaper offerings. The vast majority of tech these days isn’t reparable simply because of form factor.
Justin - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Amazon plugs their trade in program on the add to cart box any time I look at a new Kindle. For my 8 year old Kindle 3 keyboard they offer $5 plus a 20% discount on a new model ($18-75 depending on model, $50 or 60 for what I’m most likely to buy). Since their offer is unchanged regardless of it it works or not, I assume it’d go straight into the electronics shredder if I sent it in instead of being refurbished. :(
They sell for on ebay ($20-30), so I can’t accuse amazon of lowballing their offer at least; but I’d still probably ask around to see if any family or friends wanted it first.
I’m not planning to get rid of it anytime soon though, the battery still lasts for about 2.5 novels (down from 4.5 when new) and is an easy replacement if needed. The bigger issue though is that Amazon still only uses micro-b ports to save a penny or two on the BOM; and I don’t want to buy anything that’s going to force me to carry two charging cords for the next 5 or 10 years.
Dan Neely - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Screen repair of Kindle3 is surprisingly simple - sadly the “juice is not worth the squeeze…”
andrew - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
I understand what you are saying. In the end, devices will become less and less serviceable. We have been trending that way for the last 30 years. First, it was tubes to transistors. I used to troubleshoot and repair circuit boards, then they became disposable. It cost more to repair them than replace them, as with the tablet you mentioned. As they shrink components, at some point, it will be hard to distinguish the electronics from the battery. And with that, recycling will be the only option, if even that. Once the new ‘Life Time’ battery is released, they will never need to be replaced. (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ac... battery will probably outlast the device. Who knows. Until then, stay after them…
EdsLife - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Enjoyed your article. I gave up on Amazon electronics several months ago. Not that i had many But when I had to buy a new remote fro my FireTV box in just over a year and then the replacement started having the same problems as the old one in under 2 months of use I opted out of Amazon products. The Irony here is that Amazon helped me opt out. They had a big sale on the ROKU Ultra 4K unit. And since the Roku in my Bedroom was still going after about four years, the remote too, the decision was a no brainer.
I have never minded paying more for reliability but when the mass market prefers cheap over reliability the quality devices many times disappear.
protagonistic - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Excellent article, recommended to me by a good friend. And proud to still be working on a 1998 vintage HP desktop machine, 2004 Lenovo Workstation, and this, my newest PC, a 2012 MacBook Pro!
biowizard - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
I am still using my mid 2012 MacBook Pro. I just replaced the SATA cable in it and upgraded to a 1 TB SSD. That change makes it super fast as if it is a new machine.
R Howard -
Thank you for this, I had wondered also about the slowness of my Fire and you have pushed me to see about amazon recycling here in Australia by Amazon. I look forward to another decade where right to repair becomes universal. Rock on IFixit.com.
Bee Reynolds - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Let’s talk about the Nexus 7 Android Tablets. Beautiful condition, good batteries and fast. Our school bought 25 of them. Google has abandoned them and blocks them from the Google Play Store. The school is also losing 100’s of Chromebooks because Google won’t update them. Amazon is not the only one filling the landfills with prematurely aging technology.
Sarah Peters - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
I actively avoid giving Google any of my money. These big corporations only care about $
Ben -
What do you recommend for an ebook reader? I think just about all non-Kindle readers read epub file format and not Amazon’s azw or mobi.
That’s part of the problem - if you’re in Amazon’s ecosystem, you’re buying ebooks from them, meaning their format - and thus using their hardware to read them.
If you have a free ebook app on your computer like Calibre, you can convert to a different format, though. But then you also need a way to deal with the copy protection on the original ebook file so that Calibre can read it.
I still prefer physical books for the most part. The main thing I like about ebooks is the ability to search and the reduction in bulk, and not much else. Illustrations usually work a lot better in a physical book.
ed_l_grey - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
very nice article.
a) industry try to sell., of course.
But we as customers should avoid choosing products on price.
If we prefer quality, maybe some awful products will not be producted.
Companies sell what we buy.
B) note those products are also assembled in countries where human working conditions are very low: so not only we destroy planet resources, but also encourage some kind of slavery.
C)I don’t think in a serious modern nation we could assemble such devices in that way, but most of amazon customers want a kindle at 80$ and not 800$ device assembled in US or Europe with the care (even if not yet sufficienT) we take about environment, working conditions and toxicity.
ingconti - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Fantastic post ! keep fighting ! I actually use Amazon a lot and I would not downgrade their massive role in making generally stuff delivered to your doorstep. Including a lot of stuff that iFixit “adeptees” use to fix their machines. But the fact that they sell load of disposable, cheap electronic rubbish and that their own devices are hopelessly underspecced.. is true and obvious to all of us. There is nothing environmentally friendly about this and when I see the TV ad with a child sponsored from Amazon shouting at me… “I dare you to do something for the environment” I feel my blood boiling :-) and I could answer “well lets start to take all your cheap amazon gadgets away from you”. I am not a luddite. I am an IT manager and I like electronics. But it is time Amazon rethinks its role. It is starting to make Alibaba look like good guys :-) that is the reason I dont have Alexa or any “alexa powered” devices :-)
Angelo Mattivi - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
One other thought about Amazon... A global tech company. There has been a lot of speculation about China and Covid. My view is that Amazon would be a great scapegoat, how to double or quadruple the value of a company in 24 months.
Erwin Walter - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Don't get me started on rubbish micro USB ports I have a stack if kindle fires which are pretty much impossible to repair unless you have the eyesight of an eagle and more high tech kit than you can swing a cat at.
Erwin Walter - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
We are seniors who did computers since 1981. We have two Amazon HDX 8.9" Fire tablets that have the best screen resolution they ever put on their devices. Along with Gen 3 Echo dots and a Gen 2 Echo, we have a Show 8" & 5" current gen . The real issue is that they do not keep up the software like Windows does with their devices. Our Bose Soundlink speakers and soundbars all have Alexa these days. We have two Surface Go 2 with M3/LTE and a Surface Pro 7 and a Surface Pro 7+ in addition to our desktops.
We also have two Fire 8"HD plus tablets. Why? Kindle unlimited costs less than a paperback! Unlimited access to more than I will ever read. And because our old HDX 2014 Fire tablets no longer play Amazon music - no software updates like Android 2-5 yr only support, my HDX tablets will soon be jail broken to Android.
But reading in bed and on the throne is much easier with the little lightweight tablets that survive being rolled on. Now make them fixable like Microsoft tablets are becoming.
Derek - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
Stuck with a Kindle Fire 4th Gen device that will never be fixable (Battery Swell-up) which I also can't get rid of (1. Personal data, 2. Ifixit pledge, 3. It is the ONLY kindle fire in the house that I've modded and added Google Play Store to, because the device was rootable[Suggest rooting Kindle's, they are a LOT better when you remove the bloatware.]) If only Amazon would make devices fixable...
Jri-creator - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
I heard about your sure from watching a Youtube video that recommended 66 most useful sites, yours being the first I clicked… came here looking for help to repair this refurbished Amazon Firestick (as I have had 0 luck with over the last few weeks) and was pleased to see this article in the front page… Ill be back to report if I find a solution. 🤞🤞
doyouloveit - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0
I'm trying very hard to avoid Amazon. I haven't bought anything from Amazon in at least 10 years.
And yet I bought a Maxfree product recently and I saw that it was shipped by Amazon after purchase.
I'm getting very annoyed. I'm starting to think I'll need to live like the Alaskan Bush People. 🙄
Ben - crwdns2934203:0crwdne2934203:0