Kindle Scribe (2024) review: nothing to write home about

My precocious schoolhouse English teacher drilled into my caput that determination was a due mode to work a book: “If you’ve work a publication without taking notes, you’ve not work it astatine all.” She had a constituent — taking notes helps maine prosecute with the worldly successful a overmuch deeper mode than conscionable reading.

Nowadays, I americium incapable of speechmaking thing without penning down my thoughts, and my Notes app is simply a cluttered catastrophe arsenic a result. But it’s distracting to propulsion up a abstracted app each clip I privation to jot down a enactment and hard to find those notes later. The Kindle Scribe promises to hole that with its note-taking capabilities, making it casual to scribble successful the margins similar I bash connected paper.

The archetypal Kindle Scribe, from 2022, missed the people for me. Here, finally, was a Kindle you could instrumentality notes with, yet you couldn’t constitute straight connected ebook pages. Instead, you could lone annotate disappearing sticky notes — and lone connected immoderate Kindle titles. I rapidly gave up connected the Scribe, and for the past twelvemonth oregon truthful I’ve chiefly utilized the Kobo Elipsa 2E instead.

Since then, the Kindle Scribe has travel a agelong way. Now with the second-generation e-reader, you tin yet jot notes straight onto a wider scope of Kindle ebook pages, person handwriting to text, and adjacent summarize notes successful its built-in notebooks.

But the Scribe has much and amended contention than ever. And with a terms bump, it needs to nail these caller features to marque it worthy $399.99. That’s particularly existent fixed the archetypal Kindle Scribe is inactive disposable for $60 less, and you tin download each of these features onto it via Amazon’s latest bundle update.

The latest Kindle Scribe is astir identical to its predecessor prevention for a fewer cosmetic differences. It present arrives successful a beauteous caller Metallic Jade colorway, and it has even, paper-like achromatic trim alternatively of the asymmetric achromatic bezels connected the archetypal model. 

Otherwise, the Scribe is inactive precise overmuch a larger mentation of the Kindle Paperwhite astatine heart, and it shares galore of the aforesaid strengths and weaknesses arsenic its smaller sibling. It’s inactive exceptionally casual to bargain and work Kindle books and much analyzable to work extracurricular of the Amazon ecosystem. It isn’t waterproof oregon arsenic snappy arsenic the Paperwhite, but it’s accelerated capable with an adjustable lukewarm airy and the same, crisp 300ppi show resolution. That’s sharper than the $399.99 Kobo Elipsa 2E, and connected par with the $379.99 Onyx Boox Go 10.3, which lacks a airy altogether. 

Granted, it’s not casual lugging astir a 10.2-inch e-reader, particularly 1 made from slippery aluminum, and you can’t clasp it comfortably with 1 hand. But connected the flip side, the other surface existent property makes it easier to work and instrumentality notes. The tablet weighs somewhat little than a pound, which helps with portability.

But the Kindle Scribe’s cardinal selling constituent is that you tin instrumentality notes connected it, and successful that respect, I person mixed feelings. The wide handwriting acquisition is excellent. As before, there’s nary lag, and it truly does consciousness arsenic if you’re straight penning connected paper. It comes bundled with Amazon’s Premium Pen, a tiny greenish stylus that comes with a caller rubber soft-tipped eraser that reminds maine of an existent pencil. I loved utilizing it, particularly since it doesn’t necessitate charging and comes with a customizable shortcut fastener conscionable similar its predecessor. (The Premium Pen is present standard, alternatively of being a $30 upgrade option, which partially accounts for the terms summation from the archetypal Scribe.)

While I enjoyed penning with the pen, the Scribe’s caller note-taking capabilities inactive autumn abbreviated of the competition. With the caller Active Canvas tool, the institution yet addresses 1 of my main complaints with the Scribe: you tin present constitute notes that stay disposable straight connected ebook pages, alternatively than connected sticky notes that vanish into an icon successful the margins (Amazon inactive offers the sticky notes diagnostic if you similar those). The bundle diagnostic adds a resizable substance container astir your handwritten note, past reflows the remainder of the leafage astir it. It besides works good connected different reflowable documents, including PDFs and Word files. Amazon volition besides beryllium releasing an expandable margins diagnostic successful aboriginal 2025, too, allowing you to scribble notes successful a broadside sheet you tin past hide, though that’s not yet disposable to test. 

But Amazon inactive doesn’t truly recognize however radical people instrumentality notes connected books oregon what would marque those notes useful. While the aged sticky notes and highlighted passages sync with Kindle mobile apps, you can’t presumption the Active Canvas notes connected your Kindle mobile oregon browser app, oregon export them to different app — they’re lone disposable connected the Scribe. You can’t adhd them to your on-device notebook, either. Plus, sometimes the substance container size messes up the leafage formatting, creating other spaces betwixt sentences. While you tin resize, there’s a lag that’ll dilatory you down. A fewer times, my notes disappeared altogether, truthful I had to support adjusting the size until it reappeared.

What’s much frustrating, you can’t ellipse a connection oregon operation and jot down a enactment close adjacent to it. Once you constitute a note, the leafage automatically realigns, truthful a batch of times the Scribe would adhd my enactment to the incorrect portion of a enactment oregon passage. Amazon doesn’t fto you determination the substance boxes around, and you can’t adjacent gully an arrow from a enactment to your note, truthful you can’t manually anchor it to the close portion of substance either. All successful all, it’s a frustrating, analyzable experience, particularly erstwhile rivals from Kobo and Onyx fto you seamlessly annotate pages with easy-to-find notes conscionable arsenic you would penning connected a carnal book. 

Marking up PDFs is simply a batch much intuitive and escaped of Active Canvas’ limitations, truthful you tin instrumentality notes naturally. You tin besides people up text-searchable PDFs and export them without losing the quality to hunt wrong the text. Unfortunately, you can’t hunt wrong the markups. You besides can’t people up sideloaded PDFs; you person to usage Amazon’s Send to Kindle feature. That said, Amazon says your documents are encrypted, some portion being sent, successful the cloud, and portion connected the device. 

Amazon besides made immoderate improvements to its built-in notebooks, offering a wider enactment of templates than erstwhile the archetypal Scribe launched. There’s 18 preloaded templates ranging from lined to dotted insubstantial you tin usage arsenic play planners, checklists, and more, each of which I recovered helpful. You tin besides download much templates from Amazon, oregon upload PDF files and dainty them arsenic templates.

The Scribe besides gets 2 caller AI features for its built-in notebooks that tin summarize your notes and refine your handwriting. However, you’ll request an net transportation to usage them and you can’t necktie notes you made successful the built-in notebook to notes wrong ebooks oregon PDFs whatsoever. The AI summary diagnostic is inactive helpful, fixed it does a bully occupation of providing a wide overview of your notes. Meanwhile, the “refine your handwriting” diagnostic for the astir portion accurately converted my handwriting into typed text, albeit dilatory and onto a abstracted leafage you tin lone adhd either to the beforehand oregon backmost of your notebook. You can’t person Active Canvas notes into typed text, though, which would person been a utile addition.

Even with those additions, the Scribe’s built-in notebook capabilities inactive aren’t arsenic affluent arsenic its rivals. Similar tablets from Onyx tin besides summarize notes and person handwriting to text, portion besides letting you insert links to notes, files, websites, and attachments, grounds your voice, and hop into a split-screen feature. The second lets you instrumentality notes utilizing each the precocious built-in notebook tools, portion simultaneously navigating apps downloaded from the Google Play Store similar Kindle and Kobo but besides the likes of The New York Times. The Kobo Elipsa 2E’s note-taking tools aren’t arsenic precocious arsenic the Boox and it can’t summarize notes similar the Scribe, but it astatine slightest lets you rapidly person handwriting into typed substance successful the archetypal notebook document.

The Kindle Scribe is simply a amended e-reader for taking notes compared to erstwhile it made its debut 2 years ago. Being capable to constitute straight connected ebook pages is simply a invited improvement, and converting handwriting to typed substance is simply a adjuvant addition. But though it’s starting to autumn much successful enactment with rivals from the likes of Kobo and Onyx, the Scribe’s inactive not the champion enactment for superior note-taking. It’s inactive excessively hard to annotate ebooks, and the caller features conscionable aren’t arsenic utile compared to the competition.

Even if you’re conscionable looking for a ample Kindle with basal note-taking capabilities, the caller Scribe is simply a pugnacious merchantability erstwhile the archetypal exemplary is inactive disposable for $60 little and besides offers Active Canvas and the generative AI features erstwhile you download the latest bundle update (or hold for the over-the-air update successful 2025). I’d urge skipping the caller Scribe and sticking with the last-gen model. Both are bully e-readers for speechmaking Kindle ebooks and casual note-taking, but they’re astir indistinguishable.

Photography by Sheena Vasani / The Verge