If you're clumsy with your electronics, you might want to think twice about buying Amazon's superb new 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX. If you break the front glass or damage its innards, you're going to have one heck of a time repairing it.
The teardown experts over at iFixit recently got their hands on Amazon's latest addition to the Kindle Fire family, and from a fixability perspective, this low-priced stunner stinks. Overall, the Kindle Fire HDX scored a miserable 3 out of 10 on iFixit's reparability scale.
Amazon's list of DIY sins are in line with the latest trends among electronics makers: Fusing parts together and using all kinds of adhesive to keep the device components in place. The Fire HDX's battery, for example, uses a strong adhesive, iFixit says, and you have to remove the entire motherboard just to replace the power pack.
Taking the battery out requires the smudger equivalent of the Jaws of Life, says iFixit.
Speaking of the motherboard, it's hard to replace. The LCD display is also fused to the tablet's front glass—so if you break one display component, you have to replace both thereby jacking up the repair cost.
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