After a month, I am not won over

Design and Pen

• Surprisingly good-looking for a modern Kindle
• Graphite and Fig colour options
• Very thin and light

Amazon has really upped its industrial design game with the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, and this signals a big shift in the right direction. I’ve found previous Scribes a little ugly, with an enlarged side giving the device an uneven feel. Yes, some might have liked this for added grip, but since this is such a light device, it is hardly necessary.

That whole design blueprint has been ditched for the Scribe Colorsoft, with a much more traditional tablet design taking its place. The bezels are now uniform and it looks very sleek. Amazon sent over the graphite hue, although if you’re after something a little more ‘fun’, the Fig colour is a lovely purple shade that really stands out.

Like all the best Kindles, the Scribe Colorsoft is designed with simplicity in mind. These are devices that need to blend in, rather than stand out, and Amazon has decided against adding too many needless flourishes. 

There’s a simple ‘Kindle’ logo on the bottom right, another one on the back and four rubbery feet in each corner to keep it steady on a table. One small detail I really like is the positioning of the power button, which, unlike on the Kindle Colorsoft, is on the side rather than on the bottom. It’s much harder to accidentally press now. 

The USB-C charging port is on the bottom, and there’s a slightly indented area on the side to show where the stylus should be docked when not in use.

This stylus, or Premium Pen, as Amazon calls it, is included in the package. If you get the Fig model, the stylus matches that colour, although my Graphite has a white pen – a slightly odd contrast. The pen itself has an eraser on the back, a button on the side and magnetically attaches to the side of the tablet with a satisfying click. It’s not the strongest magnet though, and it will likely fall off when placed in a bag.

When I first saw the Scribe Colorsoft had an 11-inch display, I was worried it might feel too big – but it really doesn’t. This is a remarkably slim and light tablet, measuring a mere 5.4mm thick and weighing 400g. It’s light enough to slip into a bag alongside a laptop without noticing the difference.

I haven’t been using the Scribe with a case, although considering the high price, I would recommend adding some sort of protection. After a few weeks of use, the device remains free of any dings or small scratches.

Screen

• The first colour Scribe
• 11-inch display is an ideal size
• Colours are slightly muted

This is the first Scribe device with a colour display, and the screen is the star of the show. It’s the reason this package is so expensive, and it’s certainly eye-catching.

Anyone familiar with the Kindle Colorsoft, and even the Remarkable Paper Pro, will know what to expect, but it’s important to set expectations here. This is not an LCD or OLED, and the Colorsoft Kaleido 3 E Ink panel isn’t going to display the same sort of colours you’d find on an iPad. Hues are far more muted, with an almost watercolour or pastel look. There’s also far less colour variation.

When displaying colour, the screen displays 150ppi. That’s half of the resolution you’ll get with black and white content. This is simply a shortcoming of the tech, and hopefully something that gets improved in the next iteration. There’s no issue with the adjustable front light, though, which is even and does a great job.

I reviewed the Kindle Colorsoft upon release, and I still use one regularly. My biggest issue with the reader was that you could clearly see the colour covering of the screen, and it made everything slightly blurry. Next to the Paperwhite, the Colorsoft offers a worse reading experience, even though it’s a more expensive device. I have not found the panel so distracting here, and the colour layer is far less visible.

Still, the addition of colour here is far more useful, at least in my view, than on the smaller Colorsoft. The larger screen is great for comics, cookery books and travel guides, and all these are made far more enjoyable with even a small amount of colour. It’s great for notes too, especially highlighting PDFs and the like.

I’ve used a lot of the best e-ink tablets, and while the writing experience here is good, it’s not a patch on the Remarkable Paper Pure or the Paper Pro series. There is a slight texture to the display that adds some resistance, although no one is going to mistake it for the feeling of paper. It’s far more akin to writing on an iPad than one of the Remarkable’s excellent tablets. I don’t hate writing on the Scribe; I just wish there was a little more resistance to really improve the experience.

Software and Features

• Updated homescreen combines books and notes
• Document importing from Google and Microsoft
• Excellent bookstore

There’s a lot of interesting – good and bad – software features here, but I will touch upon performance first, as it’s pretty simple.

Like any other Kindle, or e-paper device for that matter, the Scribe Colorsoft can feel slow at times. The screen needs to refresh often, and for those used to the speed of phones and traditional tablets, it can be a bit jarring. In daily use though, it’s fine. Everything opens quickly while pages turn without lag. There’s 4GB RAM here, and it is faster to navigate than the previous Scribe models.

Amazon has the best bookstore for content, and all that is available here. Kindle Unlimited, Audible audiobooks (if you connect a Bluetooth speaker or headphones), everything you’ve previously purchased, daily deals and new releases.

Where the software experience falls down is the note-taking side of things. The way notebooks sit alongside your books on the rejigged homescreen is odd to me, especially as someone who uses the note elements for work and the reading parts for pleasure.

Having them hit up against each other is a constant annoyance. Of course, this is something that’ll vary depending on personal preferences – and if you take notes relating to books, or combine the notes with study books, then great. I just don’t think the layout is for everyone.

Another issue is Amazon’s persistence in pushing me to its store with rows and rows of recommended books. I use a Kindle every day, so I know this is how the company operates, but on a dedicated reading device that is fairly affordable, I can deal with it. On a device that can cost upwards of £600/$600 and is aimed at a more professional market, I think we can do without the rows of suggested books.

As a digital notebook, the Scribe Colorsoft is best described as good.

As mentioned before, it’s not in the same league as Remarkable and its devices. On the Remarkable Paper Pure, for example, you can share presentations from tablet to browser and access hundreds of bespoke notebook templates that often look stunning. I also just prefer the simple, clean layout of Remarkable’s homescreen and its focus on your content, rather than trying to sell you anything and everything.

But it’s fair to say that Amazon’s Scribe software has progressed since I reviewed the very first Scribe. You can sync documents with services like Google and Microsoft 365, or use the Send to Kindle feature to ping PDFs from a laptop and sign or annotate them. Getting them onto the Kindle is easy and quick, but getting them off is a real pain due to the way the system likes to create extra files.

Books can be annotated in the margins, and there are some AI features for summarising documents and making wayward handwriting easier to understand. You can also ask the AI questions about the content inside notebooks. Like all AI features, the results are hit and miss and not to be completely relied upon.

Battery Life

• Multi-week battery life unless it’s really pushed
• USB-C charging
• Cable included

Battery life on tablets and e-readers is far harder to gauge than on smartphones that are used constantly throughout the day. The endurance of the Scribe will completely depend on how it’s used. Amazon claims weeks of charge based on around 30 minutes of reading every day, which is a mostly useless metric for a notetaking device.

I’ve been testing the Scribe Colorsoft for a month, and I have charged it twice. That’s after daily use, both taking notes and referring back to them throughout the day and probably an hour of reading (on average) per day. Use it just for reading, and it’ll last longer.

There’s a USB-C cable included in the box, and you’ll need to provide your own charger. Unlike some of the Signature Edition Kindles, there’s no wireless charging here.

Should you buy it?