It's been a little over a month since I've had the brand-new Kindle Scribe, having used it every day for journaling and note taking, and I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed by it.
Now the disappointment could well have been my expectations. After all I expected the Scribe to be: “The end of Remarkable”.
But almost immediately you realise that all Kindle Scribe is an oversize Kindle with the ability to take notes in a clumsy way (which we’ll get to!).
Amazon have tried to please everyone, and the process missed a huge opportunity.
First the pros. In true Amazon style this is a very solid product!
I've travelled with it several times now, loading it into my backpack along with my laptop and not once had concerns about damaging the device, which has been a problem with larger ereader devices in the past.
I do like the responsiveness of Scribe which feels quite quick when writing.
There appears to be less lag and the pressure resolution is quite wide, making it great to artists to draw on.
The real sticking point for me has to be how notes are taken within ebooks.
Instead of being able to write directly onto the page you have to select a particular word or highlighted sentence to write a note, which is fairly similar to what we already have on the Paperwhite (albeit without a pen).
This can make reviewing the notes that you've taken a bit more cumbersome and in fact Amazon have taken away online access to your notes making it further difficult to review all of your notes in one go.
It's clear to see that Amazon have tried to please its core Kindle customers with access to the Kindle store, which is fair enough as most existing Kindle owners may be tempted to purchase a Scribe.
However, it comes at a cost to the note taking experience.
Having used ereaders for many years, I think it's impossible to try to merge both Ebook and a note taking device in one. Amazon have tried to see if they could do the impossible and have missed the mark.
However, if you're looking for any device for taking notes, I don't think this is it.
As it really does fall flat on the note take in management for taking notes and I think devices such as Remarkable and the Note Air 3C do a much better job of handling those notes and also have a nicer writing experience in general.
Whilst its not the best note taking device, I do think for the price point it is a good starter to university students and professional that want to dip their toe. Access to your existing Kindle library and annotation of pdfs is handy, it’s just not as good as it’s rivals.
