The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is a pricey but pretty e-ink color tablet with AI features

2 months ago 29

If you chiefly privation a tablet instrumentality to markup, highlight, and annotate your e-books and documents, and possibly sometimes scribble immoderate notes of your own, Amazon’s caller Kindle Scribe Colorsoft could beryllium worthy the hefty investment. For everyone else, it’s astir apt going to beryllium hard to warrant the outgo of the 11-inch, $630+ e-ink tablet with a writeable colour display.

However, if you were already leaning toward the 11-inch $549.99 Kindle Scribe — which besides has a paper-like show but nary colour — you whitethorn arsenic good propulsion successful the other currency astatine that constituent and get the Colorsoft version instead, which starts astatine $629.99.

At these terms points, some the Scribe and Scribe Colorsoft are what we’d dub unnecessary luxuries for most, particularly compared with the much affordable accepted Kindle ($110) oregon Kindle Paperwhite ($160).

Announced successful December, the Fig colour version conscionable began shipping connected Jan. 28, 2026, and is disposable for $679.99 successful 64GB.

Clearly, Amazon hopes to carve retired a niche successful the tablet marketplace with these upgraded Kindle devices, which vie much with e-ink tablets similar reMarkable alternatively than different Kindles. But high-end e-ink readers with pens aren’t going to present Amazon a ample audience. Meanwhile, astir everyone tin perchance warrant the outgo of an iPad due to the fact that of its galore capabilities, including streaming video, drawing, writing, utilizing productivity tools, and the thousands of supported autochthonal apps and games.

The Scribe Colorsoft, meanwhile, is designed to cater to a precise circumstantial benignant of e-book scholar oregon worker. Students and researchers could beryllium a bully acceptable for this benignant of device, arsenic good arsenic anyone other who regularly needs to markup files oregon documents.

Someone peculiarly funny successful making to-do lists oregon keeping a idiosyncratic diary mightiness besides admit the device, but it would person to get regular usage to warrant this price.

The instrumentality itself is casual capable to use, with a Home surface plan akin to different Kindles, offering speedy entree to your notes and library, and adjacent suggestions of books you tin constitute in, similar Sudoku oregon Crossword puzzle books, oregon drafting guides. Your Library titles and publication recommendations popular successful color, which makes it easier to find a publication with a speedy scan.

Spec-wise, Amazon says this newer 2025 exemplary is 40% faster erstwhile turning pages oregon writing. We did find the tablet responsive here, arsenic leafage turns felt snappy and penning flowed easily.

Despite its larger size, the instrumentality is bladed and light, astatine 5.4mm (0.21 inches) and 400g (0.88 pounds), truthful it won’t measurement down your container the mode an iPad oregon different tablet would (the iPad mini, with an 8.3-inch screen, weighs somewhat less). You could easy basal to transportation the Kindle Scribe successful your purse oregon tote, assuming you athletics a container that tin acceptable an 11-inch screen. Compared with the archetypal Colorsoft, we similar that the Scribe Colorsoft’s bezel is the aforesaid size astir the screen.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft features a glare-free, oxide-based e-ink show with a textured aboveground that makes it consciousness a batch similar penning connected paper. This helps with the modulation to a integer instrumentality for those utilized to penning notes by hand. It besides saves connected artillery beingness — the instrumentality tin spell up to 8 weeks betwixt charges.

Helpfully, the show automatically adapts its brightness to your existent lighting conditions, and you tin opt to set the surface for much warmth erstwhile speechmaking astatine night. But though it is simply a touchscreen, it’s little responsive than an LCD oregon OLED touchscreen, similar those connected iPad devices. That means erstwhile you execute a gesture, similar pinching to resize the font, there’s a spot of a lag.

Like immoderate Kindle, you tin work e-books oregon PDFs connected the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft tablet. You tin besides import Word documents and different files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive straight to your device, oregon usage the Send to Kindle option. (Supported record types see PDF, DOC/DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and EPUB.) Your Notebooks connected the instrumentality tin beryllium exported to Microsoft OneNote, arsenic well.

The included pen comes with immoderate tradeoffs. Unlike the Apple Pencil, the Kindle’s Premium Pen doesn’t necessitate charging, which is simply a perk. It has besides been designed to mimic the consciousness of penning connected paper, and it glides reasonably good crossed the screen. Without a level broadside to charge, the rounded pen doesn’t person the aforesaid consciousness and grip arsenic the Apple Pencil. It’s smoother, truthful it could gaffe successful your hand.

Amazon’s plan besides requires you to regenerate the pen tips from clip to time, depending connected your use, arsenic they tin deterioration down. It’s not terribly costly to bash truthful — a 10-pack is astir $17 — but it’s different happening to support up with and manage.

There are 10 antithetic pen colors and 5 item colors included, truthful your notes and annotations tin beryllium reasonably colorful.

When writing, you tin take betwixt a pen, a fountain pen, a marker, oregon a pencil with antithetic changeable widths depending connected your preferences. You tin acceptable your favourite pen instrumentality arsenic a shortcut, which is enabled with a property and clasp connected the pen’s broadside button. (By default, it’s acceptable to highlight.) If you grip your pen tightly and accidentally trigger this button, you’ll beryllium gladsome to cognize you tin unopen this diagnostic off.

The penning acquisition itself feels natural. And portion the e-ink show means the colors are somewhat muted, which not everyone likes, it works good capable for its purpose. An e-ink tablet isn’t truly the champion for making integer art, contempt its pens and caller shader tool, but it is bully for writing, taking notes, and highlighting.

From the Kindle’s Home screen, you tin either leap straight into penning thing down done the Quick Notes feature, oregon you tin get much organized by creating a Notebook from the Workspace tab.

The Notebook offers a wide assortment of notepad templates, allowing you to take betwixt blank, narrow, medium, oregon wide-ruled documents, and besides each sorts of different options. There are templates for gathering notes, storyboards, wont trackers, monthly planners, euphony sheets, graph paper, checklists, regular planners, dotted sheets, and overmuch more. (New templates with this instrumentality see Meeting Notes, Cornell Notes, Legal Pad, and College Rule options.)

It’s amusive that you tin erase things conscionable by flipping the pen implicit to usage the soft-tipped eraser, arsenic you would with a No. 2 pencil. Of course, a precision erasing instrumentality is disposable from the toolbar with antithetic widths, if needed. Thanks to the e-ink screen, you tin sometimes inactive spot a faint shade of your drafting oregon penning connected the surface aft erasing, but this fades aft a bit. (It may, however, thrust you crazy, we should pass the much peculiar types.)

There’s a Lasso instrumentality to ellipse things and determination them around, transcript oregon paste, oregon resize, but this astir apt won’t beryllium utilized arsenic overmuch by much casual notetakers.

There are immoderate different useful features for those who bash a batch of annotating, too.

For instance, erstwhile you’re penning successful a Word papers oregon book, a diagnostic called Active Canvas creates abstraction for your notes. As you constitute straight successful the publication connected apical of the text, the condemnation volition determination and wrapper astir your note. Even if you set the font size of what you’re reading, the enactment stays anchored to the substance it primitively referenced. I similar this to penning straight successful e-books arsenic things enactment much organized, but others disagree.

In documents wherever margins expand, you tin pat the expandable borderline icon astatine the apical of the near oregon close borderline to instrumentality your notes successful the margin, alternatively of connected the leafage itself.

A Kindle with AI (of course)

The caller Kindle besides includes a fig of AI tools and features.

The instrumentality volition neaten up your scribbles, and automatically straighten your highlighting and underlining. A mates of times, the highlighting enactment caused our reappraisal portion to freeze, but it recovered aft returning to the Home surface with a property of the broadside button.

Meanwhile, a caller AI diagnostic (look for the sparkle icon astatine the apical near of the screen) lets you some summarize substance and refine your handwriting. The latter, oddly, doesn’t fto you power to a typed font, but volition fto you prime betwixt a tiny fistful of handwritten fonts (Cadia, Florio, Sunroom, and Notewright) via the Customize button.

The AI instrumentality was not perfect. It could decipher immoderate unspeakable scrawls, but it did get stumped erstwhile determination was different scribble connected the leafage alongside the text. Still, it’s a bully enactment to person if you can’t constitute good aft years of typing, but similar the consciousness of handwriting things and the much analog vibe that entails.

The AI hunt diagnostic tin besides look crossed your notebooks to find notes oregon marque connections betwixt them. To search, you either pat the on-screen keyboard oregon toggle the enactment to handwrite your hunt query, which is converted to text. You tin interact with the hunt results (the AI-powered insights) by mode of the Ask Notebooks AI feature, which lets you query against your notes.

Soon, Amazon volition adhd different AI features, too, including an “Ask this Book” diagnostic which lets you item a transition and past get spoiler-free answers to a question you person — similar a character’s motive, country significance, oregon different crippled detail. Another feature, “Story So Far,” volition assistance you drawback up connected the publication you’re speechmaking if you’ve taken a break, but again without immoderate spoilers.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft comes successful Graphite (Black) with either 32GB oregon 64GB of retention for $629.99 oregon $679.99, respectively. The Fig mentation is lone disposable astatine $679.99 with 64GB of storage. Cases for the Scribe Colorsoft are an further $139.99.

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