Texas is the new state which has passed the right-to-repair law. It took effect on September 1, requiring access to parts, tools and documentation for covered electronics. I also happen to know how a repair enquiry often ends with a suggestion to buy a new device. A right to obtain the necessary materials does little for an owner who cannot justify the bill.

Under the Texas law, parts must be offered on terms equivalent to those available to authorized repair providers. That can remove a barrier to independent repair, theoretically. It does not make an expensive official part cheap. If the part already approaches the price of a new product, adding a repair shop’s labor costs leaves the customer with much the same decision.

In my experience, shops often only have the tools to repair the most popular gadgets. In some extreme cases I can recall, the tools are so specific to a brand that a shop ends up advertising itself as a “specialized” repair service for it. Once the component cost is added, buying a new device begins to sound more appealing every second.

A shop can spread equipment costs over customers, but diagnosis and labor still have to be paid for. Texas allows manufacturers to supply preassembled parts, provided those assemblies or equivalents are also available to an authorized repair provider or owner. If the offered repair is an expensive board replacement, access alone does not make it affordable. Manufacturers could recover damaged boards for refurbishment or salvage and credit that value against repairs. That would give them a role in lowering repair costs beyond listing parts for sale. Affordability has to be baked into the repair process.

If we remove repair shops from the loop to keep costs down further, equipment is only part of the problem. Swapping a dead battery in a household gadget and replacing a soldered RAM chip in a smartphone are two very different jobs. The owner would first need the skills and equipment to identify the fault on the board, then the tools, components and skills to repair it. Needing a smartphone, or even being good with technology, does not make someone a smartphone repair technician. And that is assuming buying the equipment makes financial sense. There is no guarantee the same equipment will work with the next generation of smartphones.

This is the limit I see in right to repair. Parts, tools and documentation can make a repair available while leaving it undesirable. Make it worthwhile for consumers to return old or broken electronics and for manufacturers to recover their materials. Affordable repair should be the easier choice.