The Kindle Scribe - Two Months In
Intro
Last year I discovered a love for annotating books. I did a little bit of it back in school - but that doesn’t really count (if you enjoy annotating Chaucer and Hardy you do you <3) , but I’ve been struggling with writing in my physical editions and I mostly read on my Kindle anyway. Unfortunately I find highlighting on the Paperwhite a pain in the ass. Kindle’s notes and highlights are…not perfect.
If you highlight something wrong (which is often using dumb chunky fingers on the screen and hoping for the best), and then undo the mistake and do it again… it keeps the error in your highlights document. Apparently the only way to get rid of it is to hook your Kindle up to a PC and manually delete those sections from the highlights file, it’s ridiculous. So I’ve always had half an eye on the Scribe because the pen looked like it could give a lot more accuracy.
Also I got into reading using my iPad, so I appreciate the pocket size of the Paperwhite for my bag, but it feels a bit too small when sitting reading at home.
I had a rough few months, pretty much from September ‘23 onwards my mental health was extremely poor. I had a lot of things go wrong in my life, I went through weaning off one medication and starting another, and in the end it didn’t work out at all. So my January was pretty blue. Which is the only way I can explain deciding to buy a (certified refurbished) Kindle Scribe 32GB.
It’s now March* and before purchasing I did a lot of reading and watching other people’s reviews, verdicts, and discussions, so I thought it might help someone else to give my verdict after the first couple of months.
(*I first drafted this in Feb, so excuse any slip ups, I’m hopeless)
The Review
I bought it with the guarantee I could always return it within 30 days, but I realised pretty quickly I wasn’t going to be parting with it.
For me it’s a really nice size, a little shorter and wider than a regular hardcover, and the weight is less than an iPad so I find it very comfortable to hold. Some cases will add more weight, but that’s up to you and how you want to accessorise it. I haven’t put a screen protector on mine because I don’t want anything to interfere with the pen, and I find e-ink screens to be quite resilient. I’ve been keeping an eye on it because I was a little worried about the pen nib causing scratching, but I haven’t noticed any so far, even with quite heavy use. I also haven’t noticed a huge amount of wear on the nibs themselves - it does come with five spares. People online seem to say they last about 5-6 months, but of course that will vary with how much you use the pen (and for what).
Initial Kindle setup is the same as any other Kindle device - you can speed it up and use your phone if you have the Kindle app, but however you do it getting it up and running is pretty straightforward. If you have a large book library it can take a while to download everything, but again, you’ll find that with any Kindle device you purchase, it’s not a Scribe-specific issue.
The only new addition to the UI on the Scribe is the Notebooks tab, which is where you can create folders and setup notebooks. There’s a decent variety of templates you can use built in to the device, but there are other options (I’ll come back to this). Notebooks do not sync between non-Scribe Kindles, you cannot view a Scribe notebook on your Paperwhite, but you can email the notebook to view it off-device. I find the notebooks decent, but not perfect. Navigating large notebooks will probably become quite complex, and there’s nothing like a contents page to help. In a way I feel I’ve been spoiled by iPad apps like Goodnotes, which I’ve gotten quite good at creating complex notebooks with functional link tabs and everything. It’s a very basic concept of a digital notebook, but I will say that writing on/in it is lovely.
The big question - how is annotating?
Again - imperfect.
A big complaint I see is that you cannot write on Kindle books. There’s no writing in the margains like you might a physical book, no doodling, none of that. I must admit I’ve not seen ads for Kindle Scribe but I’ve seen a lot of people saying that the device was advertised with those kinds of annotations - which is not ok. That’s misleading.
What you can do is highlight passages of text and then you are given the option to add handwritten or typed notes, which appear on your book like little sticky notes. These can be opened by tapping on them, but otherwise sit unobtrusively above the text. It’s a bit niche, but there’s something else to know about these post-it notes. If you write handwritten notes on your post-its they will not be picked up on platforms like Goodreads.
I said it was niche.
When you highlight passages in Kindle books Goodreads gives you the option to display those quotes on Goodreads - and if you typed your notes on the highlight then that text gets pulled through too. Your mileage may vary on how useful that is to know.
Possibly unpopular opinion, but I can see why we can’t write directly on books. The way Kindles work is not a 1:1 copy, page by page, of a book. With a Kindle you can change the font, the size, the layout, even the orientation of the screen. The size of the Kindle screen changes it too. What you see as page one on a Paperwhite is not the same as my page one on the Scribe, and because of this adaptability it’s hard to keep any on-page notes the same when the page itself can change. I think the way they’ve made it work is a decent compromise, but if this is going to spoil your experience I think it’s important to know. And while some people think this is something Amazon can “patch” in at some point, I honestly don’t. And I’m ok with that.
The caveat to this is PDF documents. PDFs can be written on freely, so if you really want to scribble all over something on your Scribe use send-to-Kindle to send a PDF copy across.
This also goes back to my earlier point about notebook templates - if you have a PDF notebook template you want to use (there are free ones out there, as well as paid ones on Etsy) just use send-to-Kindle. And although it won’t be sent to your notebooks folder (I recommend setting up a Kindle collection for this), it’s really useful, and I’ve found some lovely templates and journals and such out there. I’ve also gotten back into doing sudoku through puzzle PDFs on Etsy, it’s been wonderful for keeping my head busy when I’m not feeling great.
I have the pro pen with my Scribe (I think it’s included on all versions over 32gb) but I believe the only difference is that the pro pen has an eraser on the end. I find the pen very responsive, and the handwriting comes out really clean. It’s a little hard for me to judge because my handwriting is infamously terrible - I spent years in remedial handwriting at school and it didn’t improve anything. But even my terrible penmanship is legible on the Scribe, and the writing experience feels very smooth with no noticeable lagging. I’ve not played around a lot with the pen options within the Scribe, there’s not a great deal of variety, but it covers all the basics (pen, fountain pen, marker, pencil, with varying thicknesses).
The Scribe isn’t a huge technical advance over regular Kindles. Performance-wise it runs about the same, has much the same quirks, so the deciding factor really is how important highlighting, annotating, and notekeeping are to you. I think it’s also worth considering if you would benefit from the larger screen size - I’m extremely nearsighted so that’s an added plus for me.
Conclusion
Although I’m very much in love with mine, I’m not going to pretend it’s a device without flaws.
If annotation is not a key part of your reading experience, or you already use journals and notebooks in other apps such as Goodnotes then this isn’t going to bring anything you don’t already have. But for me it’s been so much fun.
Highlighting still isn’t perfect (please let us properly undo highlights, Amazon), the pen is a lot more accurate than a finger on a screen so it’s a lot less frustrating and doesn’t interrupt my reading experience. I love leaving notes for myself on books. I’m fully aware I’m just making jokes for my own benefit, but if that’s what brings me joy why not?
I will also say that even though the screen is a regular black and white e-ink screen this is a really nice way to read manga and graphic novels. The screen size really suits that format, and it’s a lot easier and more enjoyable than trying to navigate them on something Paperwhite sized. I’ve found myself reading a lot more since picking up the Scribe, and even when I read something physically now I want to go back through and add annotations to the Kindle edition. It’s also brought me back to picking up manga again, which is a medium I haven’t read in quite a while.
The best e-reader is whatever e-reader helps you read more, so for me this has been a success. But I’m not going to call it an essential purchase - especially at such a high price point - if you don’t actually think you’ll benefit from the Scribe exclusive features. If something smaller and simpler will do you better, go for it. But I’m really pleased this has worked out for me as much as it has.
