My high school English teacher instilled in me that there was a proper way to read a book: “If you've read a book without taking notes, you haven't read it at all.” He had this to say – Taking notes helps me connect more deeply with the material than just reading.
These days, I'm unable to read anything without writing down my thoughts, and my Notes app has become disorganized as a result. But having to pull up a separate app every time I want to write a note is distracting and makes it difficult to find those notes later. Kindle Scribe promises to fix this with its note-taking capabilities, making it easy to write in the margins like I do on paper.
Original kindle scribeBy 2022, the target was missed for me. Here, finally, was a Kindle with which you could take notes, yet you couldn't write directly on the ebook pages. Instead, you can only annotate on the disappearing sticky notes — and only on certain Kindle titles. I quickly gave up on Scribe, and have primarily used it for the past year or so Kobo Ellipsa 2e instead.
Since then, the Kindle Scribe has come a long way. Now with the second-generation e-reader, you can finally write notes directly on a wide range of Kindle eBook pages, convert handwriting to text, and even summarize notes in its built-in Notebook Are.
But Scribe has more and better competition than ever. And with the bump in price, it needs to include these new features to make it worth the $399.99. This is especially true because the original Kindle Scribe is still available for $60 less, and you can download all these features through Amazon. latest software updates,
The latest Kindle Scribe is almost identical to its predecessor except for a few cosmetic differences. It now comes in a beautiful new Metallic Jade colorway, and it also has papery white trim instead of the asymmetrical black bezels on the original model.
Otherwise, the Scribe is still at heart a larger version of the Kindle Paperwhite, and it has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as its little brother. Buying and reading Kindle books is still exceptionally easy and reading outside the Amazon ecosystem is more complicated. It's not as waterproof or as fast as the Paperwhite, but it's plenty fast with adjustable warm illumination and the same, crisp 300ppi display resolution. That's faster than the $399.99 Kobo Elipsa 2e, and on par with the $379.99 Onyx boox go 10.3In which there is complete lack of light.
Admittedly, a 10.2-inch e-reader isn't easy to carry around, especially one made of slippery aluminum, and you can't hold it comfortably with one hand. But on the other hand, the extra screen real estate makes it easier to read and take notes. The tablet weighs a little less than a pound, which helps with portability.
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But the main selling point of the Kindle Scribe is that you can take notes on it, and in that regard, I have mixed feelings. The general handwriting feel is excellent. As before, there are no lag, and it really does feel as if you are writing directly on paper. It comes with Amazon's Premium Pen, a small green stylus with a new rubber soft-tipped eraser that reminds me of an actual pencil. I loved using it, especially because it doesn't require charging and comes with a customizable shortcut button, just like its predecessor. (The premium pen is now standard rather than a $30 upgrade option, which partially accounts for the increase in price over the original Scribe.)
Although I enjoyed writing with the pen, the Scribe's new note-taking capabilities still fall short of the competition. With the new Active Canvas tool, the company finally addresses one of my main complaints with Scribe: You can now write notes that appear directly on eBook pages, rather than on sticky notes that appear in an icon in the margin. Disappear (Amazon still offers the Sticky Notes feature if you prefer them). The software feature adds a resizable text box around your handwritten note, then reflows the rest of the page around it. It also works well on other reflowable documents, including PDF and Word files. Amazon will also release an expandable margins feature in early 2025, which will allow you to write notes in a side panel that you can hide, though it's not available for testing yet.
But Amazon still doesn't really understand how people naturally take notes on books or what would make those notes useful. While older Sticky Notes and highlighted passages sync with the Kindle mobile apps, you can't view active Canvas notes on your Kindle mobile or browser app, or export them to another app — they're only visible in Scribe. Are visible on. You also can't add them to your on-device notebook. Also, sometimes the size of the text box distorts the page formatting, creating extra space between sentences. While you can resize, there is a lag that will slow you down. A few times, my notes disappeared completely, so I had to keep adjusting the size until they reappeared.
What's even more frustrating is that you can't circle a word or phrase and write a note right next to it. Once you write a note, the page automatically realigns, so many times the writer adds my note to the wrong part of a line or paragraph. Amazon doesn't let you move a text box around, and you can't even draw an arrow from a line on your note, so you can't manually anchor it to the right piece of text. Overall, it's a frustrating, complicated experience, especially when rivals from Kobo and Onyx let you annotate pages with easy-to-find notes, just like you would write on a physical book.
Marking up PDFs is much more intuitive and free from the limitations of the active canvas, so you can take notes naturally. You can also mark PDFs text-searchable and export them without losing the ability to search within text. Unfortunately, you can't search within markup. You also can't mark sideloaded PDFs; You have to use Amazon's Send to Kindle feature. That said, Amazon says your documents are encrypted while being sent, in the cloud, and while on the device.
Amazon has also made some improvements to its built-in notebooks, offering a wider selection of templates than before Scribe's launch. There are 18 preloaded templates ranging from lined to dotted paper that you can use as weekly planners, checklists and more, all of which I found useful. you can do it too Download more templates from AmazonOr upload PDF files and treat them as templates.
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Scribe also gets two new AI features for its built-in notebook that can summarize your notes and refine your handwriting. However, you'll need an Internet connection to use them and you can't link notes made in the built-in notebook to notes in an eBook or PDF. The AI Summary feature is still helpful, it does a good job of providing a comprehensive overview of your notes. Meanwhile, for the most part the “Refine your handwriting” feature turned my handwriting into accurately typed text, albeit slowly and on a separate page that you can simply add to the front or back of your notebook. Are. However, you can't convert active canvas notes to typed text, which would have been a useful addition.
Even with those additions, Scribe's built-in notebook capabilities are still not as rich as its competitors. Tablets similar to Onyx can summarize notes and convert handwriting to text, while also letting you insert notes, links to files, websites and attachments, record your voice, and jump into the split-screen feature . The latter lets you take notes using all the advanced built-in notebook tools, as well as navigate apps downloaded from the Google Play Store like Kindle and Kobo. the new York TimesThe Kobo Ellipsa 2e's note-taking tools aren't as advanced as Boox's, and it can't summarize notes like Scribe, but it at least lets you quickly convert handwriting in the original notebook document to typed text. .
The Kindle Scribe is a better e-reader for taking notes than it was when it debuted two years ago. Being able to write directly on eBook pages is a welcome improvement, and converting handwriting to typed text is a useful addition. Although it's starting to fall more in line with rivals like Kobo and Onyx, the Scribe still isn't the best choice for serious note-taking. eBooks are still very difficult to explain, and new features are not as useful compared to the competition.
Even if you're looking for a larger Kindle with basic note-taking capabilities, the new Scribe is a tough sell when the base model is still available for less than $60 and when you buy the Active Canvas And also provide generative AI features. Download the latest software updates (Or wait for an over-the-air update in 2025). I would recommend skipping the new Scribe and sticking with the last generation model. The Kindle is both good e-readers for reading ebooks and taking casual notes, but they're almost indistinguishable.
Photography by Sheena Vasani/The Verge