Amazon Kindle Scribe (16 GB) – 10.2” 300 ppi Paperwhite display, a Kindle and a notebook all in one, convert notes to text and share, includes Basic Pen

2 reviews for Amazon Kindle Scribe (16 GB) – 10.2” 300 ppi Paperwhite display, a Kindle and a notebook all in one, convert notes to text and share, includes Basic Pen

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Happy Sea Slug – July 7, 2024

   First impressions review: I hesitated to get one of these when they first came out, because I couldn’t see a use for it. But recently this year I took up a spiritual tradition (Buddhism) that requires a fair amount of study. As I was slogging through another text that was one abstract philosophical concept after another, I thought to myself, “You know, maybe I would get more out of this if I could take notes.” Then my teacher recommended some ancient texts to read. He said they were meant to be read and digested slowly. Another case for being able to take notes.

   So, given my long love affair with Kindle, I suddenly had an excuse to try the Scribe. It’s expensive, but I scraped together the money from my discretionary savings and purchased the refurbished version which is good as new.

   Wow wow wow I love it.

   First, that boring text I was reading? Infinitely more interesting and engaging for me to take notes as I go. When I have longer notes, I have a notebook I created that is dedicated exclusively to that book. The pen is really fluid and captures the exact idiosyncrasies of my handwriting. It really feels like writing on paper, which is such a therapeutic feeling for me. Already I feel like I’m getting more out of my reading and applying it to my own life. And I love that I can review my highlights and sticky notes in summary at any time. This has been transformative to my spiritual life. So if you like to study religious or spiritual texts I can’t recommend it more highly.

   I also read a lot of non-fiction in general, from self-help to popular science, and I can imagine I’m going to get so much more out of my reading now that I can engage more deeply with the text. This is in contrast to how I would just rapidly consume these books in the past without really absorbing their lessons.

   So I got what I was hoping for out of this tool, but what I didn’t expect was to be able to use it in so many other ways. Since I got the thing (only two days ago!) I have created several more notebooks, including a folder for all my Buddhist studies (including a notebook where I just write down questions I want to ask my teachers.) I created a freewrite journal to write my daily gratitude and set my intentions for the day or reflect at night. I created a work folder for me to jot down general notes during work. And I created a fiction folder for me to work on developing my novel in progress.

   The charm of this little machine is that you can organize all your notes about everything in one place. Until now, I have all the time been scribbling things down on random pieces of paper or in one of twenty different notebooks. With my ADHD I am all but guaranteed to lose important thoughts because I can’t remember where I put them.

   But now – I only have one place to look! Nothing will get missed. I put it to the test yesterday because my Teams wasn’t working at work, and I ended up having to take notes shorthand during a meeting. And those notes were waiting right there for me at the end of the day to review and create tasks.

   Finally, like the Oasis and the Paperwhite Signature, the Scribe has a dark mode, and it is a lot of fun to write with glowy handwriting in bed. I really enjoy recapping my day in the dark before drifting off to sleep. It almost makes me feel like a kid again, scribbling in my journal before bed. Only no flashlight needed.

   Now, constructive feedback:

   1. Because this is a Kindle, the UI is not great. Some features are not intuitive to use. It took me forever to figure out how to change the pen width, another forever to figure out you can add a page to a notebook just by swiping right. For the person that said you can’t change page templates within the same notebook, you can – you have to go to the page overview grid thing and you can add pages of any template. Had to figure that out too.
   2. I don’t love that notebooks are interspersed with books in My Library. There should be two separate categories IMO but then they couldn’t advertise I guess.
   3. If you are going to use a lot of sticky notes I suggest getting the premium pen, hiding the toolbar and setting the shortcut to sticky note. Now you don’t have to look at the toolbar while you read.
   4. I really wish there was a way to attach a notebook to a book, creating a shortcut for access, for longer notes that don’t fit inside a sticky note. Either that or have infinite space in a sticky note.
   5. I bought the 64GB and it appears they sent me the 30GB but I have already written too much to send it back without losing all my notes. Hopefully I will not run out of space!
   6. I really don’t know how this would work as a primary work tool. With my work, which is very detail oriented, I really can’t write all my notes by hand. Typing is much more comprehensive. But the Scribe is great in a pinch where you need to write something short, like a reminder or phone number, or you have no other option. So I am using it at work for anything where I would normally use a pad of paper, but not when I would use a computer keyboard.

   Update: This little device has turned into one of my most treasured writing tools. As a fiction writer I really didn’t imagine how much it would break open my creativity. It took me back to my childhood days when all I had was a pad of paper and a pen to write down my stories. Now I find myself coming back to the Scribe over and over when I need to work out a plot problem, or sometimes when I just don’t feel like staring at a computer screen. I’ve composed many rough drafts of scenes, I’ve worked through themes, I’ve written outline sketches, it’s just my catchall tool for figuring my books out. And for some reason it has massively accelerated the pace of my writing, particularly how quickly I am able to problem-solve when I get stuck. Something about the tactile freewrite experience really opens up my creativity in a way that staring at a blank computer screen does not. If you are a writer like me, I urge you to consider it!

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Agatha783 – September 26, 2024

   I struggled with the decision to purchase the new Kindle Scribe. I have had several kindles (going all the way back to the Kindle with a keyboard) and a few Kindle Fires. I currently have a Kindle Paperwhite and Fire 8 plus. I have always valued the reading experience on kindles along with the ability to have access to a library of books, obtain samples of books, and a convenient way to highlight and add sticky notes. I was initially excited to see the Scribe come out, but the price and some negative reviews really gave me pause. At the urging of my spouse as a Christmas present and convincing myself that I would return it if it didn’t meet my expectations I decided to take the plunge. I am so glad I did. It has exceeded my expectations in all three of my must haves. I decided to write this review in hopes of helping others going back and forth about whether to purchase it now or wait for a future update.

   As a little background, I am in academia. I decided that I would purchase and keep the Kindle Scribe if it did an excellent job with The following.

   1) Able to read textbooks and technical books with tables, charts, graphs, and math.
   2) Able to read pdfs.
   3) Able to write notes (lecture notes, answer keys, personal research notes, etc.)

   Based upon the previous reviews, I was not confident that the Scribe would do a great job with all three of the above must haves. However, it does. I’ll take each one separately with my pros/cons and fixes.

   1) With my previous kindles (including my current paperwhite and Fire), I was never able to have that wonderful reading experience when it came to textbooks and/or more technical books which included tables, charts, graphs, and math. The physical size of the previous kindles simply was never going to work well with these types of books, even with the zoom feature. The size, and perfection of the screen, of the Scribe makes reading these types of books just as enjoyable as reading a book of fiction. The technical stuff comes across wonderfully and there’s no funky formatting that the previous kindles would have when it comes to tables, charts, etc. So, the Scribe passed with flying colors when it come to this must have. In response to some other reviews, I will say that I’m actually glad that I cannot write (make notes, underline, circle) on the books themselves. I like writing a sticky note and highlighting because it keeps the pages less cluttered. Looking back at physical books that I’ve had to read many times over the years, I have written so many notes in the margins, underlined, etc. that it makes reading them again a pain. I hope that Amazon will always keep the option of sticky notes even if one day it allows writing directly on the book. Given the price, did I need the Scribe? No. I could’ve just continued to read these types of books as physical books. But, I am so glad that I can do it on the Scribe and have the wonderful kindle reading experience. My only complaint is that a few books purchased in the past don’t recognize the pen. This might just be an issue of needing to reformat all books and hopefully it will be fixed in the future. Even with those few books, I can still type sticky notes and highlight as before so it hasn’t bee a big deal.

   2) Given the size of previous Kindles, sending a pdf and reading it just was never going to work well. The Scribe does a near perfect job. Now, having read some reviews, I was really worried about this must have. I read lots of pdfs from my laptop for my job, and as I sit reading look over to my Paperwhite and wish that I could use it instead (the E-ink is just so much better). Here’s my take on pdfs, if the pdf is nicely formatted to begin with then it comes across on the Scribe perfectly. Yes, you can write on it which is nice (kind of wish I could use sticky notes instead though) and easily export it to your email address. On the other hand, if the pdf is not nicely formatted and/or the text is a bit blurry to begin with, then it doesn’t come to the Scribe perfectly either of course. I have played around with preparing these troublesome pdfs by cropping or simply changing the margin size before sending and it seems to help, but the text is not as crisp. Still though, I can read the pdfs on the Scribe just as easily as reading them on my laptop. So, overall, the Scribe exceeded my expectations here. One strange thing I’ve come across is that when initially opening a pdf, it opens to a cover page so you have to actually go to the beginning by opening up the toolbar at the top then you can flip the pages. This is an example of needing to play around a bit with the Scribe to figure out some of the features. The entire focus on the “cover” thing in pdfs and notes seemed to be a big thing with the tech folks, might be a privacy issue they have in mind. I realize that some folks, myself included, use Google drive and other web-based options to store documents, but Amazon has done an excellent job of allowing the user to drag and drop a document into the Send to Kindle page/app (and, I make sure to choose the option to send only to my Scribe rather than clutter up all my devices). I have only tried one Word document so far but it came across perfectly on the Scribe. If you have a book pdf, you can simply write Chapter 1, 2, etc. on the page of each chapter then go to the notes to easily move to where you want to go. So, I have been extremely happy with this feature which would’ve been a deal breaker for me.

   3) Others have said that writing on the Scribe feels nearly the same as writing on paper and it does. I plan to write lecture notes, answer keys, and just some notes for myself. Amazon has done a great job in allowing the notebooks to be easily sent to my email address as pdfs, and they come across on my laptop and Fire exactly has I’ve written them. I am really, really pleased with this aspect. In the past, I would scribble an answer key or some notes on a lecture (including Graphs and math) on some scrap paper then a year later when teaching the class again realize that I’d lost the notes and have to redo them. I will be doing all my writing on the Scribe and storing them for latter use. Having read some reviews, it sounded like the current software on the Scribe was not up to the competition. I have to say, however, I am very pleased with the existing software. You don’t get twenty different widths for the pen but rather five. I really don’t want to have to choose from a great many, and what they have now is just fine for my needs. It is true that you don’t have subfolders to create and a large notebook would be difficult to find things in. I get all of those issues. However, instead of writing a 100 page notebook I plan to write lecture notes in 10 notebooks of 10 pages in length saved under one folder. By using appropriate titles for each notebook I think it will actually be better than having one rather lengthy notebook. There’s not a great many templates to choose from, but I have found the ones currently available work just fine for my needs. Again, though, the Kindle Scribe exceeded my expectation for writing notes.

   Overall, I am thrilled with the Kindle Scribe. I really enjoy the reading and writing experience. Given the price, did I absolutely need the Scribe? Not really. I could read the physical textbooks/technical books. I could read the pdfs on my laptop. I could write notes on paper then scan them into my computer. Or, of course, I could do these things on a good tablet. However, I have always enjoyed the reading experience on a kindle and the Scribe might be the best yet. The writing experience on the Scribe is the closest digital device to paper that I have used. I am glad to have these things on one device which does not have all the distractions that come with laptops and tablets. I hope this review helps others in making their decisions. Oh, and as others have said, the battery is amazing compared to tablets and phones.