Amazon is Disabling Old Kindles... Buy One of These Instead

When the clock touches the 12th hour, this Kindle e-reader will transform from Cinderella into a brick. And this ain't no fairy tale. Amazon is officially killing support for pre203 Kindle devices on May 20th, 2026. To be fair, 14 years is a pretty good run for a modern device. But the part that sucks here is that it doesn't have to be this way. It's not like books are getting any longer. It should be able to open the same file formats that it always has. And yet, due to the nature of Amazon's locked down ecosystem, this perfectly functional piece of tech is counting down its days to the dump. And this isn't the first time that Kindle services have changed the rules after you've given Amazon your money. So, here's an idea. Let's stop doing that. It's an area that I haven't personally really explored before, but after our recent video on the Kindle Coloroft, you guys pointed out that there are plenty of e-reader options out there, and none of them seem as restrictive as Amazon's walled garden. So, let's talk about what Amazon's doing, why its Kindle ecosystem kind of sucks, and how you can turn the page on the Kindle chapter of your life. But first, let's turn the page on this segue to our sponsor, Meter. They build enterprise level networks from the ground up, including designing and manufacturing their own hardware. So, if you're looking for a reliable, scalable networking across multi-sight enterprise environments, check out our link in the description. Global shipping costs are out of control, but we've got a way to FIGHT BACK. THAT'S RIGHT, Shiptorm has returned. From April 24th to May 7th, you can get free shipping sitewide on ltstore.com of orders over $150 in the US and Canada or $225 worldwide. No special code required. Just load up your cart and you're good to go. And if you want an even lower threshold for free shipping, you can sign up for our supporter plus tier at flowplane.com for an even better offer. We'll have that linked down below. Before we get into the alternatives, I want to cover off some of the finer details of Amazon's upcoming old yeller here. First, while it is true that you will no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download books from affected devices, you can still read books that you have already downloaded to the device. However, even that saving grace is pretty hollow since Amazon says that dregistering the device either through your device options or a factory reset will make it so that you cannot reregister or use it in any way. So, bricked. By comparison, Amazon's biggest competitor, Coobo, takes an approach that feels downright open. For instance, Coobo also has DRM protection for ebooks from its store, but they have a first-party guide that tells customers how to read those DRM ebooks on third-party devices. And the way that Coobo plays nice with other platforms makes its own devices way easier to use in the first place. With a Coobo, if I want to get a DRM free ebook from some other store, I can plug it in, drag and drop my files to it, and that's it. It's good to go. Meanwhile, Amazon does allow a few file types to be dragged and dropped, but generally relies on the send to Kindle online tool that only works when your device is registered and online. And since that's the only official way to add third party ebooks to Kindle, come May, you might be plum out of luck. That is, unless you're willing to open up a pathway to abilities that some might consider to be unnatural. More on that later. First, aside from making your files easy to move around, Kobos also have native Libby integration, so you can just download ebooks from your local library directly to your device. Kindles, meanwhile, can use Libby as well, but it's a little convoluted, requiring you to borrow from another device before syncing because, I don't know, screw anything that doesn't give Amazon an extra buck, right? Coobo so far kind of looking like a no-brainer here. Having its own ecosystem means you keep all the ease of use benefits of a Kindle, but without giving up the freedom to take your stuff and move on later. And did I mention that the entry-level Cobalt Clar costs just $10 more than the cheapest Kindle? Or at least the cheapest Kindle that doesn't fart ads in your face every time you use it. Of course, there are other options, including one that is even more open. Books, or as I like to call it, Books with its Android based e-readers, just does away with ecosystems entirely. That could make it the easiest possible transition if you want to bring your old libraries with you since you can just download Kindle, Coobo, and Libby as apps and then have access to everything on one device. Then going forward, you can obtain ebooks however you see fit and read them in a third party reader app. The Books Go 6 would probably be the most basic Kindle-like 6-in reader and at $149 is just $20 more than the Kindle. Though again, this is compared to the one that doesn't belch Chads in your face. Both Coobo and Books have alternatives to higherend Kindles as well, like the Scribe, which has a touchcreen and stylus, and the Kindle Coloroft, which is in color. If neither of those sound right for you, though, Pocketbook, Biggney, and Nook are also around. But while each of them does have their diehard fans, none of them seem to have reached the same critical mass as Coobo or Books. Of course, none of what I've talked about so far helps the folks whose devices are being bricked. Amazon said, "Haha, too bad. Go buy a new one." And so far, we've offered just more of the same. Is there an alternative to spending more money right now? Actually, yes. Even if it's been dregistered, you can sideloadad ebooks to your Kindle with the third party tool, Caliber. We're going to link a detailed guide in the description down below, but pretty much all you need to do is connect your Kindle via USB and click send to device in the application. It will automatically convert ebooks to a file that your Kindle can read, and you should be good to go. It is worth noting, we don't know for sure that this is going to continue to work after Amazon's sunset date. That's where the asterisk that you might have noticed before comes in. But we think that it should still be okay. We bought this old Kindle Touch on Marketplace. We left it unregistered and we tried caliber sideloading on it. There wasn't a problem. Then we tried the same process on an unregistered Kindle Scribe and our file opened just fine. So Amazon surely knows about all of this unregistered sideloading tom foolery and hopefully doesn't intend to block it, but probably just didn't want to acknowledge it publicly. So, it may be then, ironically, that the only ebooks that you can't read on your pre203 Kindle will be Kindle ebooks. If you're the daring type, you do have other options. You could just jailbreak your Kindle. I actually didn't know this was a thing, but depending on your firmware version, it may be possible. Amazon is constantly playing whack-a-ole with the Kindle modding community, so jailbreaking guides become obsolete very quickly. But it looks like Kindle firmware below 5.18.6 6 can be jailbroken, which expands your device compatibility, so you don't need a special app to sideloadad anything. You can just drag and drop files. And it can even let you do things like remove ads for free. Of course, as far as we can tell, none of this will help you read purchased Amazon books on your device if it's been dregistered, but hey, there you go. Now, we're not going to go into detail about how to do a jailbreak today, but there is a healthy community around modding Kindles that includes a dedicated wiki, and ZDNet has a great walkthrough where they jailbroke a pre203 Kindle DX. We're going to link to both of those in the video description. Now, at this point, I want to reiterate that I don't blame Amazon for wanting to shed some weight for their development team. As I said before, 14 years is a long time to support a device. And some of the alternative manufacturers we highlighted today have also ended support for older products, including Coobo. NO, NOT COOBO. But the difference, as far as we can tell, is that those devices retained their core functionality by accepting files over USB or manufacturers have made moves to make them more open. But because Amazon seems hellbent on locking their users into their ecosystem, they've created this problem for themselves. They are the exception in the industry now for thinking that it is okay to render devices unusable in any way. Now granted, Amazon does sometimes inch towards good things. They added an option for DRM free ebooks in the store just this year, but just last year they removed the option to download DRM protected ebooks to your computer. So, uh, it does still remain to be seen exactly what Amazon's bricking is going to look like here. And they could still do a better job of this and be a good guy. We want that. That's actually why we're making this video before they pull the plug. But as it looks at the moment, seems like Amazon is not going to give up on controlling their users with an iron fist, which is unfortunate. And this is an unfortunate segue to our sponsor, meter. 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He liked the device, but didn't like the way that Amazon treats customers that are locked into their ecosystem. That's my boy