In case you primarily need a pill gadget to mark up, spotlight, and annotate your e-books and paperwork, and maybe typically 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 colour show.
Nonetheless, should you have been already leaning towards the 11-inch $549.99 Kindle Scribe — which additionally has a paper-like show however no colour — you might as nicely throw within the additional money at that time and get the Colorsoft model, which begins at $629.99.
At these worth 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 colour model simply started delivery on January 28, 2026, and is accessible 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, almost everybody can probably justify the price of an iPad due to its quite a few capabilities, together with streaming video, drawing, writing, utilizing productiveness instruments, and the hundreds of supported native apps and video games.
The Scribe Colorsoft, in the meantime, is designed to cater to a really particular kind of e-book reader or employee. Such a gadget may very well be a very good match for college students and researchers, in addition to anybody else who commonly must mark up information or paperwork.
Somebody notably concerned with making to-do lists or holding a private journal may additionally respect the gadget, but it surely must get each day use to justify this worth.
The gadget is simple sufficient to make use of, with a Dwelling display screen design much like different Kindles, providing fast entry to your notes and library, and even strategies of books you may write in, like Sudoku or crossword puzzle books or drawing guides. Your Library titles and e-book suggestions pop in colour, 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 gadget is skinny and lightweight, at 5.4 mm (0.21 inches) and 400 g (0.88 kilos), so it received’t overwhelm your bag the best way an iPad or different pill would (the iPad mini, with an 8.3-inch display screen, weighs barely much less). You might 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 similar measurement across the display screen.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft includes 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 gadget for these used to writing notes by hand. It additionally saves on battery life — the gadget can go as much as 8 weeks between fees.
Helpfully, the show mechanically adapts its brightness to your present lighting situations, and you may choose to regulate the display screen for extra heat when studying at night time. However though it’s a touchscreen, it’s much less responsive than an LCD or OLED touchscreen, like these on iPad units. Which means while you carry out a gesture, like pinching to resize the font, there’s a little bit of a lag.
Like every Kindle, you may learn e-books or PDFs on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft pill. You may also import Phrase paperwork and different information from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive on to your gadget, or use the Ship to Kindle possibility. (Supported file sorts embrace PDF, DOC/DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and EPUB.) Your Notebooks on the gadget will be exported to Microsoft OneNote, as nicely.
The included pen comes with some trade-offs. Not like 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 nicely throughout the display screen. And not using a 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 exchange the pen suggestions occasionally, relying in your use, as they will 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 completely different pen colours and 5 spotlight colours included, so your notes and annotations will be pretty colourful.
When writing, you may select between a pen, a fountain pen, a marker, or a pencil with completely different stroke widths, relying in your preferences. You possibly can set your favourite pen device as a shortcut, which is enabled with a press and maintain on the pen’s aspect button. (By default, it’s set to spotlight.) In case 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 nicely sufficient for its function. An e-ink pill isn’t actually one of the best for making digital artwork, regardless of its pens and new shader device, however it’s good for writing, taking notes, and highlighting.
From the Kindle’s Dwelling display screen, you may both soar straight into writing one thing down via the Fast Notes characteristic, or you will get extra organized by making a Pocket book from the Workspace tab.
The Pocket book provides 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, each day planners, dotted sheets, and far more. (New templates with this gadget embrace Assembly Notes, Cornell Notes, Authorized Pad, and Faculty Rule choices.)
It’s enjoyable that you could 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 device is accessible from the toolbar with completely different widths, if wanted. Due to the e-ink display screen, you may typically nonetheless see a faint ghost of your drawing or writing on the display screen after erasing, however this fades after a bit (which can drive the extra explicit sorts loopy.)
There’s a Lasso device to circle issues and transfer them round, copy or paste, or resize, however this in all probability received’t be used as a lot by extra informal notetakers.
There are another helpful options for individuals who do loads of annotating, too.
As an illustration, while you’re writing in a Phrase doc or e-book, a characteristic referred to as Energetic Canvas creates house to your notes. As you write straight within the e-book on prime of the textual content, the sentence will transfer and wrap round your be aware. Even should you modify the font measurement of what you’re studying, the be aware stays anchored to the textual content it initially referenced. I favor this to writing straight in e-books as issues keep extra organized, however others disagree.
In paperwork the place margins develop, you may faucet the expandable margin icon on the prime of the left or proper margin to take your notes within the margin, as an alternative of on the web page itself.
A Kindle with AI (in fact)
The brand new Kindle additionally contains quite a lot of AI instruments and options.
The gadget will neaten up your scribbles, and mechanically straighten your highlighting and underlining. A few instances, the highlighting motion brought about our assessment 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) allows you to each summarize textual content and refine your handwriting. The latter, oddly, doesn’t allow you to change to a typed font, however will allow you to choose between a small handful of handwritten fonts (Cadia, Florio, Sunroom, and Notewright) by way of the Customise button.
The AI device 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 should you can’t write nicely after years of typing, however like the texture of handwriting issues and the extra analog vibe that entails.
The AI search characteristic also can look throughout your notebooks to search out notes or make connections between them. To go looking, 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 means 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 will have — like a personality’s motive, scene significance, or different plot element. One other characteristic, “Story So Far,” will allow you to atone for the e-book you’re studying should you’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 accessible at $679.99 with 64GB of storage. Circumstances for the Scribe Colorsoft are an extra $139.99.
