Why the $80 Amazon Kindle Is One of the Greatest Products Ever Manufactured

What makes a great product? The way it looks? Functionality? That it solves some fundamental problem?

Amazon Kindle

Indubitably these are all important qualities of great products. But are any of them the most important characteristic? Was the Rubik’s cube not a great product even though it’s not “solving” a problem? Was the Watt steam engine not a great product even though it wasn’t necessarily beautifully designed? Or is a Cartier timepiece not a great product even though its “function” of telling the time isn’t quite useful or even convenient in an age where 2.5 billion humans on earth have glowing rectangles in their pockets?

No. The most important metric that all products share is one that is quite hard to quantify in the first place–how they make you feel. Why is it that you love driving that BMW 3-series of yours, that so-called “ultimate driving machine”? Why is it that you love using that Apple Macbook Pro even though an equivalently priced Lenovo Thinkpad has a lot more functionality and power? Why is it that you trust Airbnb with your life in living at a stranger’s house in a city you know nothing about? It’s because each of these products was designed with trust in mind to make you feel special. Are they all beautiful, functional, and solving some problem? Sure.

But the reason you smile every time you use one of these products is because they make you feel like you deserve the best.

That every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears that went into creating the product are yours to own.

That the magic you feel is completely your own since the product itself fades into the background and disappears when you pick it up.

Perhaps one underrated product of this kind is the Amazon Kindle. On first glance, the cheapest $80 Kindle (often for $50 on holidays) really doesn’t seem to meet any “requirements” for a good product. It’s light and seems to be made of cheap plastic. Unless you pay extra, Amazon shows ads for books on the touchscreen when it’s off. And you definitely don’t need it when you can just carry a book that you obtained for free at the library (rather than Amazon selling you a book file for another $15).

But it’s precisely these qualities that make the Kindle into one of the greatest products in recent history. The fact of the matter is that reading is one of those tasks that we’re often “too busy for” or that is replaced by “something more urgent.” But the beauty of the Kindle is that its form factor–large enough that I can fit enough words on a screen and yet small enough that it’s not much larger than my iPhone 6s+–allows for you to carry it anywhere you go, right in your pocket! Not unlike the original Apple iPod’s quip of “1,000 songs right in your pocket,” the Kindle makes you feel in control; it reminds you that you’re the master of your own destiny and that you have the world’s stories at your fingertips. The device itself isn’t what’s important — it’s just a cheap messenger for what really matters: the knowledge you’re gaining.

And oh yeah, by the way, it’s quite functional as well. I love that I can turn a page with no latency (unlike the Sony PRS-600 Touch Edition–one of the first mass-market e-readers released–I bought during Christmas of 2009); that I can connect to the internet then update my friends on Goodreads, that I only have to charge the battery once a week; that it sends me recommendations that are substantially useful; that if I want to read a new book, I can just buy it right on the device or email it a specified email to automatically upload over Wifi (as opposed to uploading over wire); and most importantly that it just works. Like magic. No questions asked. No BS. Ultimately, I end up using the Kindle for many hours a day; it actually pushes me to read more since I love the light form factor and how well it works.

But just as Achilles had his heel, so too does every product–no matter how brilliant–have some flaws. One major qualm I have with the Kindle is that it doesn’t connect to Evernote directly (there are some workarounds but unlike other features of the Kindle, they are cumbersome and don’t make me feel special). I’m a voracious reader and love to take notes but because the Kindle doesn’t have Evernote connectivity–oftentimes I’ll add upwards of twenty-thirty new notes with ideas and thoughts to my “external brain” throughout the day–I always have to sit down with my smartphone or laptop, which can sometimes lead to distractions. The Kindle has an amazing keyboard and the product already allows you to take notes directly to Goodreads/Kindle; since most of the infrastructure is already there, building this functionality would be relatively simple. Even if Amazon would lose some access to data of what people are commenting on, the marginal benefit of keeping the vast number of Evernote users happy seems to trump the marginal cost of losing a small bit of data.

No matter, the Amazon Kindle will go down in history as a product as impactful as the iPod.