E-Readers for the past five years have been suffering from a lack of build quality. Gone are the days when they were made of aluminum or other metals, and they are now all made of cheap plastic. No matter how much money you spend on a device, you can’t buy a well-constructed e-reader. Plastic is more affordable for manufacturers, and glass screens are not very expensive. This is why the vast majority of e-readers no longer have sunken screens, as they require more capital investment to protect them without glass.
The Amazon Kindle, Kobo, NOOK, Onyx Boox, Pocketbook, Fujitsu Quaderno, Supernote, Remarkable, and all other brands construct their e-readers out of plastic. Even the physical page-turn buttons are made of plastic. The significant cost of these devices is the e-paper screens and internal components. The larger the screen is, the more it costs. If a brand uses a color e-paper display, such as Kaleido 3 of Gallery 3, this increases the cost. The battery, processor, RAM, SD card, and other components contribute to the cost. E-Reader companies are basically in a modern-day race to the bottom. Everyone is competing solely on price as the driving factor.
There are some advantages of an e-reader whose body is made of plastic. Not only is it lightweight, but it also absorbs the impulse of hitting the ground in a fall, thereby protecting the rest of the device. It even functions as an impulse fuse, cracking instead of the impulse tearing the QFNs and BGAs from the motherboard. That’s specifically the reason that harsh operating environment PCBs still use leaded (RoHS 5) solder. RoHS 6 is susceptible to impulse damage on high-density components.
However, things weren’t always like this. There was a time when e-readers were more durable. The early Sony e-readers, such as the PRS-350 and others, were all made of an aluminum front and back panel, which is why they still stand up well in 2025. Sadly, their last e-reader, the T3, was made of plastic, before Sony stopped making them. The Kindle Voyage is primarily made of solid magnesium for its back and a specially reinforced glass front. The Voyage also features PagePress, which are pressure-sensitive buttons for turning pages. The Kindle Oasis, which is now discontinued, utilizes a “featherweight” polymer frame with metal structural electroplating for rigidity.
Some modern-day e-readers do have high-grade components, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Several e-readers use aluminum in their construction. The Onyx Boox Tab X C features a thin aluminum-magnesium alloy case. The Kobo Elipsa 2E uses magnesium alloy as well as plastic. The Kindle Scribe also utilizes aluminum. Additionally, the Kobo Stylus is made entirely of metal, specifically aluminum.
Wrap Up
There are some benefits to plastic e-reader bodies, but some people are concerned about the microplastic issue. Remember when there was a series of reports of watch bands being made of plastic and entering our bloodstream? E-readers made of plastic are generally more affordable. They range in price from $99 to a few hundred dollars, depending on the screen size. E-readers made of metal cost more, ranging from $300 to $1200. This is usually why the Kindle Scribe is the most expensive Kindle, while the Onyx BOOX, with its better build quality, costs significantly more.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.