I tested the Kindle Scribe for two weeks, and its best feature isn’t what I expected

Amazon’s new release Kindle scribe You can think of it as a 2-in-1 because it’s both a note-taking tablet and a dedicated e-book reader. It does both very well and stands out from the crowd in how it combines these two features.

Scribe’s physical shape is smooth and light, with a thick grip that makes it easy to hold in either your right or left hand, and you can flip it upside down to readjust your perspective.

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But Kindle Scribe’s standout feature is its “Active Canvas,” which lets you take notes and scribble your thoughts directly on the pages of your book. This personally resonates with me as an avid note-taker.

The new Scribe comes with a pen that allows you to change the size and shape of the brush, from a pen for doodling in the margins to a highlighter when you want to highlight a specific part of your text. A nice design element here is that your panned notes exist on a separate “layer” from the book text, allowing you to edit what you’ve written without messing with the book text.

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In reality, the active canvas appears as a blank space between the text, where you can jot down your thoughts. While this feature is useful for certain texts, it can be a bit intrusive for others. In fact, I found that I prefer using the sticky notes feature. The Sticky Notes feature drops a small icon on top of your text, which you can tap to open a floating window with your notes that you can then close.

However, the pen is one of Scribe’s best features. It provides a smooth, lag-free writing experience on par with high-end tablet/stylus devices like the ReMarkable Paper Pro, one of my favorite devices.

The nib is soft and textured, giving you a smooth, quiet writing experience, just like a “real” pencil. It’s heavy, feels premium, and attaches to the side of your device with a magnetic snap, but you’ll need to adjust it to the right position for it to stick.

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Even note-takers without sophisticated pen skills can easily convert their handwriting to text and further edit the font and size. This is a great way to organize and organize your hastily taken notes and save them for later reference. This is especially useful when there is something missing in your text.

The onboard AI is very good at parsing even the most illegible chicken scratches, but it gets a little dangerous when your handwriting approaches completely illegible.

The Kindle Scribe’s display is very good, even if it’s similar to other Kindle models. At 300 pixels per inch, text appears fine and crisp, even in very small fonts. The screen is also quite bright and easy to see even outdoors. You can also adjust the warmth of the display, giving you a more sepia-toned image on one end or a cool white on the other.

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As for battery life, Amazon touts it as lasting up to 12 weeks on a single charge if you read about 30 minutes a day, but that number drops if you use Scribe for heavy writing or note-taking. Let’s start. Over several weeks of testing, the device only needed to be charged a few times, but with intermittent, average use, it will probably last several weeks on a single charge.

The device itself comes with 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB of on-device storage, which is quite a lot for an e-book. In reality, this is enough space to store thousands of books, enough for a true digital library.

However, this device is designed to store more than just e-books. If you use Scribe, you’ll probably be taking a lot of notes. Organize them by keeping them in a notebook. A notebook is a book with multiple pages, similar to a physical book.

Notebooks are further organized into folders, which you can name and categorize to keep your content streamlined. Even better, there are countless “paper” choices to choose from for note-taking, including checklists, daily and weekly planners, trackers, and even storyboard templates.

This allows the device to act as a capable note-taking tablet in its own right, with enough creation tools to allow for a robust feature set without all the bells and whistles of other high-end tablets. That said, while the number of brush and marker features may be limited, they worked smoothly with no lag or typos.

Of course, Kindle Scribe also has some AI features. On-device AI can summarize up to 15 pages in your notes and extract important points from the text into a neat summary. This is, in my testing, roughly equivalent to commonly used AI services on other platforms. In other words, complex information can produce general results that are generally accurate.

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Your Kindle saves anything you’ve highlighted in multiple texts in a “clipping” folder, separate from your collection of notes. This is very useful for automatically checking important information at a glance.

Of course, Kindle Scribe is set up to make purchasing e-books as seamless as possible, giving you easy access to Amazon’s Kindle Store on your device and a variety of ways to search for the books you want to read. . Depending on how you plan to use your device, you can purchase e-books individually or in the spring. Kindle Unlimited Membership gives you unlimited access to (most) titles with a monthly subscription of $11.99.

Amazon is currently offering a 30-day free trial of Kindle Unlimited, so it’s worth checking out if you can get the most out of it. If you are a slow reader, you may want to choose to purchase them separately.

ZDNET purchase advice

Overall, Kindle scribe is an e-reader designed for readers who like to engage with text, doodlers, note-takers, and list-makers who like to “just write things down.” At $399 for the 16GB version, we think the Scribe is competitively priced for a functional tablet, and considering all its features, it’s definitely one of the best options unless you really need a larger device. Masu.

However, keep in mind that upgrading to the 32GB version increases the price to $420, and if you want 64GB you’ll pay $450. This brings the price in line with the ReMarkable Paper Pro, which is an ultra-premium device with lots of note-taking features (color display, endless brush selections, etc.), but doesn’t have easy access to email. Book.

Even if you don’t need to doodle on pages or highlight what you’re reading, Scribe is a top-rated e-reader with an easy-to-grip, reversible form factor, bright display, and great battery.