Amazon just made Kindles pricier and, for some longtime owners, less useful.
In August 2026, Amazon raised prices on every current Kindle except the Kindle Scribe. The company attributed the hikes to what it called significant increases in memory and storage component costs - the same supply crunch nicknamed RAMageddon. Separately, as of May 20, 2026, Amazon stopped issuing software updates and web-service access to Kindles released in 2012 or earlier, including the original Kindle, the Kindle DX, and the first Kindle Paperwhite. Those devices still power on and display already-downloaded books, but owners can no longer add new titles without connecting to a computer, which effectively cuts off Libby library borrowing.
The pricing move is a preview of what component-cost inflation looks like once it reaches consumer hardware rather than just data-center chips. The support cutoff is a separate lesson: owning a Kindle outright doesn't mean owning full access to it forever, since features like library lending depend on Amazon keeping the lights on for that model's web services.
If you're shopping now, the lineup is six current models deep, the Oasis is discontinued, and its page-turn buttons survive mainly on rivals like the Kobo Libra Colour - which makes this an odd moment to treat a price increase as anything but a loyalty tax.