I Tested The Kindle Scribe For Two Weeks, And Its Best Feature Isn't What I Expected

Amazon's new Kindle Scribe can be considered a 2-in-1, as it's both a note-taking tablet and a dedicated e-reader. It does both well, and it stands out from the crowd because of how it combines these two features. 

The Scribe's physical form factor is sleek and light, with a thick grip that allows it to be easily held by either your right or left hand, as turning it upside down realigns the perspective. 

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The Kindle Scribe's standout feature, however, is its "Active Canvas," which allows you to take notes and scribble your thoughts directly onto the pages of your book -- something that resonates with me personally as an avid note-taker. 

The new Scribe comes with a pen that allows you to change your brush size and shape from a pen for margin scribbling to a highlighter if you'd rather emphasize certain parts of the text. The cool design element here is that the notes you draw with the pan exist on another "layer" than the book text, allowing you to edit what you write without messing with the text in the book. 

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In practice, the active canvas appears as a blank space in between the text where you can jot down your thoughts. I can see this functionality being useful for certain texts, but it might be a bit distracting for others. I actually found that I preferred using the sticky notes function, which drops a tiny icon on the text that, when tapped, opens up a floating window with your notes that can then be closed. 

The pen is one of the Scribe's best features, however. It delivers a smooth and lag-free writing experience on par with high-end tablet/stylus devices like the ReMarkable Paper Pro, which is one of my favorite all-time devices. 

The tip of the pen is soft and textured, resulting in a silky, silent writing experience that feels exactly like a "real" pencil. It's weighty, feels premium, and attaches to the side of the device with a magnetic snap, although you do have to align it just right to get it to stick. 

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Note-takers who don't have the most elegant penmanship can easily translate their handwriting into text and then edit the font and size further. This is a great way to clean up and organize hastily taken notes that you can save for further reference, particularly if your writing leaves something to be desired.

The on-board AI is very good at parsing even the most illegible chicken scratch, although it does get a little dodgy if your handwriting approaches complete illegibility. 

The display on the Kindle Scribe is quite nice, if rather similar to other Kindle models. It has 300 pixels per inch, which results in fine and crisp text, even with the tiniest fonts. The screen can also get quite bright, making it easy to see outdoors. You can also adjust the warmth of the display, going all the way to a more sepia-toned image on one end or a cool white on the other.

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Regarding battery life, Amazon advertises up to 12 weeks on a single charge if you read for about 30 minutes a day, but that number starts to go down if you use Scribe for lots of writing and note-taking. In my testing over the course of a few weeks, I only bothered charging the device a few times, and with intermittent, average use, you'll probably get multiple weeks out of a single charge. 

The device itself comes with either 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of on-device storage, which is quite a lot of space for e-books. In practice, this is enough space to hold thousands of books, enough for a veritable digital library.

The device is geared to store more than just e-books, however. If you're using the Scribe, you're probably going to be taking lots of notes. You organize them by keeping them in notebooks, which, like physical ones, are books with multiple pages.

Notebooks are then further organized by folders, which you can name and categorize, allowing you to keep your content streamlined. Even better is the myriad of "paper" selections you can choose to write your notes on, including checklists, daily and weekly planners, trackers, and even storyboard templates. 

This opens the device up to be a capable note-taking tablet in its own right, with just enough creation tools to allow for a robust feature set without all the bells and whistles of other high-end tablets. In other words, there may be a limited number of brushes and marker functions, but the ones have worked smoothly, with zero lag or false inputs.

The Kindle Scribe also features some AI functions, of course. The on-device AI can summarize up to 15 pages in a notebook, extracting key takeaways from the text in a neat summary that, in my testing, is about on par with commonly used AI services found on other platforms. In other words, it's generally accurate, although complex information can produce generic-sounding results.

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Aside from your collections of notes, the Kindle keeps everything you've highlighted across multiple texts in a "Clippings" folder, which can be super helpful for automatically looking at key information at a glance. 

Of course, the Kindle Scribe is set up to make buying e-books as seamless as possible, with Amazon's Kindle Store easily accessible on the device and lots of ways to search for what you want to read. Depending on how much you plan on using the device, you can purchase e-books individually or spring for the Kindle Unlimited membership, which gives you unlimited access to (most) titles with a subscription of $11.99 per month.

Right now, Amazon is offering a free 30-day trial of Kindle Unlimited, so it's worth checking it out to see if you'll get the most out of it. If you're a slower reader, you might want to opt for individual purchases. 

ZDNET's buying advice

All in all, the Kindle Scribe is an e-reader designed for readers who like to engage with their texts, doodlers, note-takers, and list-makers who prefer to "just write it down." At $399 for the 16GB version, the Scribe is competitively priced as a functional tablet, and unless you really need a larger device, I'd say it's certainly one of the best options out there, taking into account its full suite of features. 

However, keep in mind that upgrading to the 32GB version raises the price to $420, and if you want 64GB, you'll pay $450. This brings the price in line with the ReMarkable Paper Pro, an ultra-premium device with many more features for note-taking (color display, myriad of brush selections, etc.) but less in the way of easy-to-access e-books. 

If you're not someone who needs to scribble on the page or take a highlighter to what you're reading, the Scribe is still a top-tier e-reader with a grippable, flippable form factor and a bright display and great battery.