Accident-Protection Plan | Tablet Computers

Eighteen percent of tablet owners we surveyed bought a service contract or extended warranty

Consumer Reports magazine: January 2013

The median price survey respondents paid for AppleCare for iPads was $82.

In a recent survey of readers who bought a new tablet since 2010, almost one in five bought a service contract or extended warranty for the device. The figure was about one in four for those who bought iPads.

The leading reason by far for getting a plan, cited by 59 percent of buyers, was to cover accidental damage. But like most extended warranties, a protection plan for a tablet isn't really a good buy, our data suggest. For example, only 4 percent of the 7,217 tablet owners in the survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, had repaired their tablet for any reason. And the vast majority of those tablets had been repaired within their first year, when many might well have been covered by the manufacturer's warranty or the free insurance provided by some credit cards.

Though it's true that manufacturer warranties don't cover accidents, fewer than half of the repairs in the survey were made for that reason. And only 8 percent of those who bought a warranty had used it for a repair.

Plans don't come cheap, either. The median price respondents paid for AppleCare, Apple's extended plan for iPads, was $82 and, for non-iPad tablets, $61. AppleCare also has a $49 per-incident charge for repairs due to an accident. And should your iPad be damaged, you won't necessarily get a brand-new replacement. Plan terms allow for repairs to be made to your unit or for it to be replaced with a refurbished unit.

If you must buy a plan to cover accidents, try to pay as little as possible. For an iPad, consider accidental coverage that's cheaper than AppleCare, such as the $28, two-year accidental plan sold at Walmart.