Amazon’s Kindle Scribe (2022 & 2024) does two things very well. If you want an excellent black and white e-reader with the ability to highlight, underline, and annotate Kindle books and you want an amazing electronic notepad to write in and/or draw on, you want one of these devices. If you only need a tablet for one of those two things or need more specialized functions, you might want to consider alternatives. I purchased the 2022 model about a year ago and last week I killed it dead when I neglected to tighten the cap on my YETI coffee mug. The Scribe is not water resistant. This is the review of the 2024 model that arrived this week.
Reading. The Scribe is a hair over 9 inches tall by 7 and 3/4rts wide and 3/8ths inches thick. It weighs 15.4 ounces. It is a bit large and heavy to hold in one hand; however, the same is true of most books and of course it won’t snap shut on you. The device has a 2480 x 1860 display with 300 pixels per inch. That is better than most of its competitors and means that it can handle detailed grayscale images (e.g., a blueprint, landscapes and cartoons, pie charts and bar charts, etc.). It also means that it produces very crisp text and symbols. If all you want a tablet for is to read novels and short stories, you could probably get something cheaper. However, it is better than anything I have tried out for reading text. It is also perfect for academic works where color is not required (e.g., Robin Wilson’s Number Theory or William Simpson’s Hylomorphism). The only caveat here is that some Kindle books that I can read on my laptop are apparently unavailable for the Scribe. I have several algebra texts that are incompatible with this device, and pretty much any text with ancient Greek.
Where the Scribe really shines as an e-reader is the mark-up. The device comes with a pen. Keep an eye on it. It cost me about $70 to replace the one I lost in the Minneapolis airport. The pen sports a single button near the tip. This changes the function of the pen tip. You can, for example, modify the settings to transform it from a pencil to a highlighter or eraser. One improvement in the new device is that the pen keeps a firmer magnetic grip on the edge of the Scribe than in the previous version. This seems to be a response to reviews of the earlier device.
I love to underline key sentences, but I am so sensitive to crooked lines that for decades I used a ruler for the task. No more. You can underline text with the pen in this device, and it will replace the crooked scribble with beautiful straight lines. Oh, frabjous day, he chortled! I would not replace my Scribe with any reader that did not have the same superpower. The device does have trouble, occasionally, when it comes to distinguishing between an underline and writing or drawing. If it misidentifies the underline as scribble, it will open a canvas for you to write in. An annoying waste of time. You can also use the pen to highlight, which I find much less appealing in grey but, hey, it works just fine. Finally, you can create a “canvas” on which you can scribble or type notes. The notes stay attached to the text and you can access them using the Kindle app on your laptop. I am still exploring this one. One brilliant feature is the ability to send Microsoft Word documents to your Scribe. You can then edit, underline, etc., as effectively as you can Kindle books. If you are reviewing MS documents on a regular basis, this will change your life for the better.
One caveat: the aforementioned annotation functions do not work well with PDF files. It is not difficult to import academic papers, textbooks, etc. in that format. You can then use the pen to draw on the text. If you are careful, the thinnest pen-tip setting gives you plenty of room to scribe a line below a sentence or two. But you don’t see that beautiful straight line replace your hand drawn mark. If I am going to study an PDF document, I do so on my laptop. There I can underline and annotate easily and precisely using the adobe tools.
Writing. I am a retired college professor who taught political theory and philosophy for three decades and whose hobby now is learning algebra and number theory. When it comes to producing text like this review, I use my Asus laptop. When it comes to math, I need a pad to write on. To say that the Kindle Scribe is an adequate replacement for pen and lined notebook paper would be misleading. It is so much better than that. If you spend time writing or drawing on paper (or both) trust me: use this device for a day and you will never go back.
The page is about the size of a standard sheet of notebook paper minus the left and right margins and about the same space gone from the bottom. Writing on it feels like writing on paper. The “ink” flows effortlessly and precisely. You can choose a pen, marker, or pencil for your strokes. Within each of those choices there are five distinct thicknesses. Play around and you will find one that suits you. I am fond of the pencil, which is crisp but with a little variation in the width of the strokes to make it seem more alive.
Where the Scribe really shines as a notepad is when you need to erase something. Five thousand years of writing produced a lot of innovations when it comes to laying down lines on paper. It produced few and mostly awkward and ugly ways of removing such marks. Problem solved. The device gives you three basic ways to erase whatever you have put on the screen. If it’s several lines of text you want to remove, you can use a lasso to surround it and then hit the garbage can icon. If it’s a few words, the bottom of the pen works like a standard eraser, except that it really erases. Using it feels like erasing with the butt end of a pencil. If it’s a character or two, you can set the button action to turn the pen tip into a very precise eraser while you hold the button. For writing down algebraic equations, this function is worth every penny I paid for the device.
Managing documents. The most common complaint I have seen in reviews of the Kindle Scribe is the absence of a way to directly export documents. You can do so, but you have to send them to yourself by email. While it would be nice to be able to save my notebooks directly to my One Drive, the Scribe makes up for that with another brilliant feature. My handwriting drove at least one elementary school teacher into retirement. When I am ready to move a document to Word, I first use the AI function to “Refine Writing”. This is accessible by a small icon shaped like a four-point star that appears in the right top of the page. It turns my scribble into neat, justified text that mimics handwritten text. It is astonishingly accurate and is easily edited. Then I use the “Share” icon (just to the right of the AI icon) and select the choice that converts the handwriting to text and sends it to my stored email address where I can download it as a text file. You can skip the “Refine Writing” step, but I found that the conversion is less accurate.
Another caveat. While the above procedure works very well with English text, it is useless when it comes to math. Even when I write very carefully, the device can’t seem to interpret the symbols or tell a plus sign from the letter t. It has no clue what a raised exponent means. You can, however, save a math notebook as a pdf file iamge, and it will be precisely as legible as the original.
Protection. You will probably want to purchase a case for your Scribe. With my original Scribe I purchased a fabric folio cover from Amazon. It soaked up the coffee like a sponge and kept it near the edges of the screen. In case I am unclear, I do not recommend it. Today I received COBAK case in dark green. I am not sure it would protect my device from a coffee spill, but at least the cover doesn’t seem to absorb water. It has a space for the pen inside the cover (an improvement over the Fabric Folio, which had a loop on the bottom. It also has a spot to keep extra nubs. Great, if you were, hypothetically, expecting to be on cruise ship for a nine-day Pacific crossing.
Bottom line:
The Kindle Scribe is a marvelous device if you want to read and annotate what you read or write in black and white.
Product contains recycled material.
As certified by
Recycled Content Certification for Electrical and Electronic Equipment
Recycled Content Certification for Electrical and Electronic Equipment
Recycled Content Certification for Electrical and Electronic Equipment certifies the total percentage of recycled material in covered products. Covered products are required to achieve certification with more than one recycled material input to promote the use of more recycling inputs and most material impact. The minimum total recycled content to be eligible for the certification ranges from 10-50% depending on the product type. This certification is third-party verified by SCS Global Services.
