Review: Amazon Kindle Scribe

You can read ebooks, write notes, or mark up PDFs on this new slate, but your wallet will feel a lot lighter.

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Adds note-taking and doodling abilities. Stylus is responsive, with no noticeable input lag. You can mark up PDFs. Big screen size for writing. Long battery life.

Expensive. Might be too big as an e-reader for some people. Not waterproof. You can't notate directly on ebooks.

Amazon's many different Kindles are pretty identical in how they perform, with minor differences separating the base Kindle from the Paperwhite and the Oasis. That's mostly by design, and I don't mind. I don't need my ebook reader to do 20 different things—I just want to read with zero distractions. But the new Kindle Scribe changes things up and is the first Kindle in a long time to add a new twist: the ability to write or draw on the slate.

With the included stylus, you can take down digital notes like a ReMarkable 2, mark up PDFs, or doodle on your downtime. This upgrade comes at a hefty cost: The Scribe goes for $340. That's $240 more than the base Kindle and $200 more than the Paperwhite. If you've been itching to write more physical notes but don't want to resort to paper and pen, it might be worth it.

Kindle batteries seem to last forever. I can turn one on months later, and it still boots right up, unlike a regular tablet that's dead by the end of a day or two. The Scribe isn't as long-lasting as other Kindles, especially if you're taking notes for hours at a time, but you still won't have to take it to the charger every few days. Amazon claims 12 weeks of battery life for reading and three weeks for writing, but I haven't had that long to thoroughly vet those claims. So far so good, though: It's at 46 percent after a little more than a week of use (started at 60 percent out of the box). The USB-C port is on the left side instead of the bottom, as on other Kindles, but this didn't pose any issues.

Amazon Kindle Scribe

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Weirdly, the Scribe isn't waterproof. It's confusing given the price—only the base Kindle and Kindle Kids ebook readers aren't waterproof (the Paperwhite Kids is). It's no deal breaker, but you'd think the most expensive Kindle would have a feature that's been the standard on other luxe Kindles for years. I do appreciate that it's constructed out of recycled aluminum and post-consumer recycled plastics.

The Scribe has the same 300-pixels-per-inch screen as the rest of the Kindle lineup, and there are 35 LEDs to light it up, so it gets really bright and can adjust the brightness automatically to your surroundings, which is helpful if you read outside. E Ink screens are already easy on the eyes, but the Scribe includes the adjustable warm light that makes it even nicer when you're reading by the lamp before bed. There's a dark mode to turn the background black and the font white too.

There are a lot of E Ink tablets that let you doodle on the screens, like the aforementioned ReMarkable 2. I also have tried and like the Kobo Elipsa and Boox Note Air 2 Plus, both of which let you take notes, edit PDFs, and mark up books. They're all quite pricey, so the Scribe doesn't seem too out of line. The big perk here, though, is that Kindles are super reliable and have one of the largest ebook libraries. That makes it one of the better propositions out there—if you can get past Amazon's repeated failings.

Amazon Kindle Scribe

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