In the event you primarily desire a pill machine to mark up, spotlight, and annotate your e-books and paperwork, and maybe generally scribble some notes, Amazon’s new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft may very well be well worth the hefty funding. For everybody else, it’s in all probability going to be laborious to justify the price of the 11-inch, $630+ e-ink pill with a writeable coloration show.
Nevertheless, if you happen to had been already leaning towards the 11-inch $549.99 Kindle Scribe — which additionally has a paper-like show however no coloration — chances are you’ll as properly throw within the further money at that time and get the Colorsoft model, which begins at $629.99.
At these value factors, each the Scribe and Scribe Colorsoft are what we’d dub pointless luxuries for many, particularly in contrast with the extra inexpensive conventional Kindle ($110) or Kindle Paperwhite ($160).
Introduced in December, the Fig coloration model simply started transport on January 28, 2026, and is obtainable for $679.99 with 64GB.
Clearly, Amazon hopes to carve out a distinct segment within the pill market with these upgraded Kindle units, which compete extra with e-ink tablets like reMarkable than with different Kindles. However high-end e-ink readers with pens aren’t going to ship Amazon a big viewers. In the meantime, practically everybody can doubtlessly justify the price of an iPad due to its quite a few capabilities, together with streaming video, drawing, writing, utilizing productiveness instruments, and the 1000’s of supported native apps and video games.
The Scribe Colorsoft, in the meantime, is designed to cater to a really particular sort of e-book reader or employee. One of these machine may very well be an excellent match for college students and researchers, in addition to anybody else who recurrently must mark up information or paperwork.
Somebody notably keen on making to-do lists or protecting a private journal may additionally admire the machine, but it surely must get day by day use to justify this value.
The machine is simple sufficient to make use of, with a Dwelling display screen design just like different Kindles, providing fast entry to your notes and library, and even recommendations of books you may write in, like Sudoku or crossword puzzle books or drawing guides. Your Library titles and e-book suggestions pop in coloration, which makes it simpler to discover a e-book with a fast scan.
Spec-wise, Amazon says this newer 2025 mannequin is 40% quicker when turning pages or writing. We did discover the pill responsive right here, as web page turns felt snappy and writing flowed simply.
Regardless of its bigger measurement, the machine is skinny and lightweight, at 5.4 mm (0.21 inches) and 400 g (0.88 kilos), so it gained’t overwhelm your bag the way in which an iPad or different pill would (the iPad mini, with an 8.3-inch display screen, weighs barely much less). You can simply stand to hold the Kindle Scribe in your purse or tote, assuming you sport a bag that may match an 11-inch display screen. In contrast with the unique Colorsoft, we like that the Scribe Colorsoft’s bezel is identical measurement across the display screen.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft incorporates a glare-free, oxide-based e-ink show with a textured floor that makes it really feel lots like writing on paper. This helps with the transition to a digital machine for these used to writing notes by hand. It additionally saves on battery life — the machine can go as much as 8 weeks between prices.
Helpfully, the show routinely adapts its brightness to your present lighting situations, and you may choose to regulate the display screen for extra heat when studying at evening. However though it’s a touchscreen, it’s much less responsive than an LCD or OLED touchscreen, like these on iPad units. Meaning whenever you carry out a gesture, like pinching to resize the font, there’s a little bit of a lag.
Like several Kindle, you may learn e-books or PDFs on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft pill. You too can import Phrase paperwork and different information from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive on to your machine, or use the Ship to Kindle possibility. (Supported file varieties embody PDF, DOC/DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and EPUB.) Your Notebooks on the machine might be exported to Microsoft OneNote, as properly.
The included pen comes with some trade-offs. In contrast to the Apple Pencil, the Kindle’s Premium Pen doesn’t require charging, which is a perk. It has additionally been designed to imitate the texture of writing on paper, and it glides pretty properly throughout the display screen. With no flat aspect to cost, the rounded pen doesn’t have the identical really feel and grip because the Apple Pencil. It’s smoother, so it might slip in your hand.
Amazon’s design additionally requires you to interchange the pen ideas now and again, relying in your use, as they’ll put on down. It’s not terribly costly to take action — a ten pack is round $17 — but it surely’s one other factor to maintain up with and handle.
There are 10 totally different pen colours and 5 spotlight colours included, so your notes and annotations might be pretty colourful.
When writing, you may select between a pen, a fountain pen, a marker, or a pencil with totally different stroke widths, relying in your preferences. You possibly can set your favourite pen software as a shortcut, which is enabled with a press and maintain on the pen’s aspect button. (By default, it’s set to focus on.) In the event you grip your pen tightly and by chance set off this button, you’ll be glad to know you may shut this characteristic off.
The writing expertise itself feels pure. And whereas the e-ink show means the colours are considerably muted, which not everybody likes, it really works properly sufficient for its goal. An e-ink pill isn’t actually the very best for making digital artwork, regardless of its pens and new shader software, however it’s good for writing, taking notes, and highlighting.
From the Kindle’s Dwelling display screen, you may both bounce instantly into writing one thing down by means of the Fast Notes characteristic, or you may get extra organized by making a Pocket book from the Workspace tab.
The Pocket book affords all kinds of notepad templates, permitting you to decide on between clean, slender, medium, or wide-ruled paperwork. There are templates for assembly notes, storyboards, behavior trackers, month-to-month planners, music sheets, graph paper, checklists, day by day planners, dotted sheets, and way more. (New templates with this machine embody Assembly Notes, Cornell Notes, Authorized Pad, and Faculty Rule choices.)
It’s enjoyable you can erase issues simply by flipping the pen over to make use of the soft-tipped eraser, as you’d with a No. 2 pencil. In fact, a precision erasing software is obtainable from the toolbar with totally different widths, if wanted. Due to the e-ink display screen, you may generally nonetheless see a faint ghost of your drawing or writing on the display screen after erasing, however this fades after a bit. (It might, nonetheless, drive you loopy, we must always warn the extra explicit varieties.)
There’s a Lasso software to circle issues and transfer them round, copy or paste, or resize, however this in all probability gained’t be used as a lot by extra informal notetakers.
There are another useful options for many who do a variety of annotating, too.
As an example, whenever you’re writing in a Phrase doc or e-book, a characteristic referred to as Lively Canvas creates house to your notes. As you write instantly within the e-book on prime of the textual content, the sentence will transfer and wrap round your word. Even if you happen to regulate the font measurement of what you’re studying, the word stays anchored to the textual content it initially referenced. I desire this to writing instantly in e-books as issues keep extra organized, however others disagree.
In paperwork the place margins increase, you may faucet the expandable margin icon on the prime of the left or proper margin to take your notes within the margin, as a substitute of on the web page itself.
A Kindle with AI (in fact)
The brand new Kindle additionally consists of quite a lot of AI instruments and options.
The machine will neaten up your scribbles, and routinely straighten your highlighting and underlining. A few instances, the highlighting motion triggered our evaluation unit to freeze, but it surely recovered after returning to the Dwelling display screen with a press of the aspect button.
In the meantime, a brand new AI characteristic (search for the flicker icon on the prime left of the display screen) helps you to each summarize textual content and refine your handwriting. The latter, oddly, doesn’t allow you to swap to a typed font, however will allow you to decide between a small handful of handwritten fonts (Cadia, Florio, Sunroom, and Notewright) through the Customise button.
The AI software was not good. It might decipher some horrible scrawls, but it surely did get stumped when there was one other scribble on the web page alongside the textual content. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasant choice to have if you happen to can’t write properly after years of typing, however like the texture of handwriting issues and the extra analog vibe that entails.
The AI search characteristic can even look throughout your notebooks to search out notes or make connections between them. To look, you both faucet the on-screen keyboard or toggle the choice to handwrite your search question, which is transformed to textual content. You possibly can work together with the search outcomes (the AI-powered insights) by the use of the Ask Notebooks AI characteristic, which helps you to question towards your notes.
Quickly, Amazon will add different AI options, too, together with an “Ask this Ebook” characteristic which helps you to spotlight a passage after which get spoiler-free solutions to a query you’ve got — like a personality’s motive, scene significance, or different plot element. One other characteristic, “Story So Far,” will show you how to atone for the e-book you’re studying if you happen to’ve taken a break, however once more with none spoilers.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is available in Graphite (Black) with both 32GB or 64GB of storage for $629.99 or $679.99, respectively. The Fig model is simply obtainable at $679.99 with 64GB of storage. Instances for the Scribe Colorsoft are a further $139.99.