I've had Amazon's Kindle Scribe for six months now, and it's become not only my go-to note-taking
device, but I've also found myself reading on it more than I originally thought I would. The
Kindle Scribe has a 10.2-inch, 300 ppi display. Not only does text look incredibly crisp on it,
but you can fit much more text per page than on something like a Kindle Paperwhite.
If you're someone who needs big text, this Kindle is perfect. You can simply
use your fingers to pinch to zoom on text to increase or decrease the text size. That
means you can spend more time reading line by line, and less time just turning pages.
Another thing I've really liked about the Kindle Scribe is its performance. It's a noticeably
quicker experience navigating around the Scribe's OS than on a Kindle Paperwhite. I haven't
had any issues with keyboard lag on it, like I did with my Kindle Paperwhite, and it's very
fast to wake up, taking me right to my notepad. Overall, the note-taking experience has actually
been pretty great. There were a few features missing at launch, such as an overview of pages
and a notebook with more pen styles, but they did add those in subsequent software updates.
Not only is the note-taking experience great, but I'd say so is the overall design,
especially with something like this pen. I'll never forget when I first picked up
this pen and just how great it feels in your hand. It's made with a more grippy material compared to
something like the Apple Pencil 2, and the sound it makes when you first use it is beautiful.
It sounds like a pencil on a sketchbook. As someone who used an iPad for note-taking,
it always felt like something was missing with that experience. A screen that looks like paper,
with that beautiful sound and no noticeable lag, gets you much closer to the experience
of actually writing with a pen on paper. And looking at an e-ink screen is much easier on the
eyes because there's no backlight. Amazon e-ink displays, like the one found on the Kindle Scribe,
have what's called a "light guide," which shines light primarily down at the screen rather than up
at your eyes, like most LCD and OLED displays do. The Kindle Scribe is also one of the only e-ink
writing tablets with a high-resolution display that comes with an adjustable
warm white. You can schedule how warm you want the light to be in the Kindle Scribe settings,
and you can schedule it to turn on at a specific time, or you can leave it on automatic mode and
it'll dynamically change throughout the day based on your location and when the sun rises and sets.
Like on other Kindles, you can still swipe down from the top of the device to get to your quick
settings and a shortcut to all settings. You can also purchase ebooks directly within the
Kindle Scribe, which is actually one of the best ways to purchase Kindle books. Amazon doesn't
allow you to purchase Kindle books through their iPad app, iPhone app, or Android app
because they're trying to avoid paying Google and Apple their app store fees.
You can only purchase Kindle books now through amazon.com via a browser or on the Kindle itself.
One area where I found myself spending a lot of time on the Kindle Scribe is in notebooks.
Notebooks are where you'll do most of your writing on the Kindle Scribe, unless you decide to mark up
a PDF or take notes in a book. You can choose from several templates when you create a notebook, such
as regular lined paper, graph paper, or something like a storyboard, which I've used a lot.
When you're in a notebook, you'll notice the pen tool icon, which is where you can adjust your pen
styles and sizes for each pen tool. Amazon has expanded this area since launching the
Kindle Scribe. You can now choose a fountain pen, marker, pencil, and pen, each with five different
thickness options. Some, like the fountain pen and marker, also support pressure sensitivity. You can
move the icon to the left or right side of the screen, but you can't get rid of it completely,
like you can when marking up a PDF. At the top, you'll see a few buttons.
One new addition Amazon recently made is the page overview button, which allows
you to quickly see all of the pages in your notebook, delete pages, and even reorder them.
Also at the top, you'll see the notebook settings icon, which is where you can change
the template of the notebook, as well as its cover page and name. The last main button is
the share button. This is actually how you export a notebook from the Kindle Scribe, so
you can download it as a PDF or other file types. Notes are backed up by default to Amazon's cloud,
so you don't have to worry about manually exporting your notebook just to back it
up. You can also access your notebooks via the Kindle app on a mobile device,
though oddly not via the Kindle Mac app. You would think you'd be able to just download all
of your Kindle notebooks from any Kindle app that can display them, but that's just simply
not the case. The experience is kind of clunky. Where things get even more clunky is with PDFs.
Now, sending a PDF or other type of document to your Kindle Scribe is actually relatively
easy. You can do this via USB-C, or by utilizing Amazon's "Send to Kindle" feature in the Amazon
app on iOS. Or, maybe the simplest way is just by going to amazon.com/sendtokindle,
where you can just drag and drop whatever files you need to get onto your Kindle Scribe.
I've actually used "Send to Kindle" and a third-party service called "Push to Kindle"
a lot for sending articles from my iPad and iPhone to my Kindle for reading. Push to Kindle
is a paid app that will sometimes work even when the "Send to Kindle" feature from the Kindle app
doesn't. When you send an article to your Kindle, it looks great on the Kindle Scribe, though. I do
wish Amazon would make it a bit easier to put news magazines and publications on the Kindle
Scribe itself. This is something they used to do, but moved away from in the past few years.
Marking up a PDF is pretty straightforward. You'll use the exact same pen tools that you're
used to from your notebooks. You can pinch to zoom on a PDF page and move it around,
but the markups you make to the PDF are not synced back to your Kindle library. In order to export a
PDF with your markups, you have to hit the share button and then email it to yourself, which works.
But this certainly is a clunky solution. And when you download that PDF from your email,
I've noticed that the resolution of the markups you made are not as crisp as they would be if
you used a device like an Apple Pencil and iPad. Overall, if you need a device where you're going
to be marking up a bunch of documents every single day, the Kindle Scribe isn't really designed
to be that device. I would recommend going for something like an iPad or Surface Pro instead.
In terms of design, the Kindle Scribe is the most premium-feeling Kindle I've ever used, and that's
thanks to its nice aluminum enclosure, which feels really great in your hand. It doesn't weigh too
much either, at 433 grams. Amazon really optimized the design of the Kindle Scribe for writing.
They smartly included four rubber feet on the bottom of the device. So it doesn't slide around
when you're writing on it. And the magnets that hold the pen in place are strong and it
consistently stays attached to the Scribe. Also, the USB-C port you'll use to charge the Scribe,
as well as the power button, are on the side of the device, which is another nice touch.
So if you still want to use it, while you charge it, you can be confident that it's
pretty unlikely for this device to die on you all the sudden. Because like with all Kindles,
the Kindle Scribe has incredible battery life. It's lasted me three to four months on a single
charge and that's with me using the device almost every day for at least an hour with the screen on,
which is just incredible. I never have to worry about
running out of battery. Speaking of writing,
back to the pen for a second. The one that came with my Kindle Scribe is the premium pen which
has an eraser and shortcut button built into it that the regular one doesn't have. Do I think
it's worth getting the premium pen? Yes, actually. I use the eraser all the time. It just feels more
intuitive than constantly having to switch to the eraser tool, which is what you'd have
to do with a regular pen. Now, the shortcut button I could take or leave. When I first
got my Scribe, I kept accidentally hitting it. After six months though, I've gotten used to
it and I actually find it pretty useful. You can change what it does in settings,
but I've kept mine as a shortcut for the highlighter. The last thing to talk about
with this pen is the tip. You'll notice that when you get a Scribe, Amazon includes
multiple tips, which prompts the obvious question. Okay, so how long are these things going to last?
For me, the tip lasted about four to five months. It just started to look a little flattened and I
noticed when I was writing on the Kindle Scribe, it just didn't quite feel like it used to.
The last part of the Kindle Scribe's design that I've really enjoyed is the folio cover.
Amazon designed it so that the Scribe magnetically attaches to the case, which is so much better than
those annoying plastic cases that some tablets come with. When you open the cover, the Scribe
automatically turns on and very quickly, which is a big advantage it has over Android e-ink
tablets. There's an indent on each side of the case for the pen, and that's because the
case can transform into different configurations. You can have it up on a stand, using its origami
flap, slightly raised on a flat surface, or just completely flat. And when you rotate the
case without moving the Scribe, its screen will automatically adjust to the correct position.
You can also keep the pen either magnetically attached to the Scribe on its side, or you
can use the pull tab at the bottom of the folio cover, which doubles as a more secure pen holder.
So that's everything I've really liked about the Kindle Scribe over the past six months. Now,
let's talk about some improvements I think Amazon should make to this device and some downsides.
When using it to add a handwritten note to a Kindle book, you'll need to highlight the text,
add a note, and then choose whether or not you want to type or handwrite your note. You do get
way more room to handwrite a note this way, but you don't see your handwriting on the page itself,
which I still think would be more booklike. Another improvement they could make to the
writing experience is the ability to insert images into your notes from a computer or
phone. Another improvement Amazon could make is adding pinch-to-zoom in notebooks,
especially when you're doodling or doing a sketch. I think this would be really useful.
Now, just after we shot all of the footage for this video, Amazon actually just released a
brand new software update for the Kindle Scribe. Obviously, I haven't had time to
really go through it over the long term and use all of these features. So I plan to do
a follow-up on these new features over the long term in our six months later,
monthly newsletter. If you haven't subscribed to that yet, I'll leave a link in the description
below. It's totally free, but for now, let's quickly go through what Amazon just announced.
You can now convert all of your handwritten notes to text when you export your notebook
using the Share button. If you select the Convert to Text and Email option,
you can actually preview the text conversion and change the text before emailing it to yourself.
It's clear that Amazon can process the conversion on the device, so there may be room to do a bit
more with this feature in the future. The second new feature that the Kindle Scribe
has is a lasso select tool, which is great to see. This tool allows you to select text
and drawings and move them around the page. You can also select and copy text from one
notebook to another, or to a sticky note or even a PDF. You can also resize text and drawings that
you select. At the time of recording, you cannot rotate the objects that you select. Amazon has
also improved how PDFs are handled on the Scribe. You can now switch between portrait and landscape
view mode, crop margins to increase the font size, and select text to make a highlight with
your finger or pen, just like you can do with a Kindle book. Speaking of which, Amazon has done
something pretty surprising. You can now write on the page of selected Kindle books!
Don't get too excited, though. You're not going to be able to mark up thousands of Kindle books yet,
but Amazon does have a new Write on Books section on Amazon.com with categories like
crossword puzzles, sudoku, and guided journals. Next, let's talk about the downsides. Unlike
Amazon's other Kindles, like the Paperwhite that I reviewed, this Kindle is not water resistant,
so I wouldn't recommend taking it on the beach, by the pool, or in a tub.
So, now let's talk recommendations. If you want a device where you can read your Kindle books,
have a writing experience that's similar to pen and paper, have a device that has a very fast wake
time for writing, and of course one with excellent battery life, I'd go with the Kindle Scribe.
It's priced very competitively against competing devices, like the Remarkable 2
and other e-ink tablets. However, if you want a bit more expanded capabilities, but still
retain a great e-ink screen, I'd recommend the Remarkable 2, which you can add a keyboard to.
And then of course, if you really don't care about the screen type itself or having a long-lasting
battery life, the iPad has a pretty good writing experience and has great apps,
and is easier to integrate with your phone or computer if they're also made by Apple.
Now, if you want to see more of my thoughts on other Kindle devices,
iPads, and e-ink Android tablets, I'll leave those reviews in the description
below. And be sure to hit that thumbs up button if you found this review helpful,
and subscribe to the channel for more long-term reviews on Amazon devices,
tablets, and other e-ink devices. Thanks for watching!