From left to right: Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, the updated Kindle Scribe, and the younger version of Scribe without a front-lit screen.
Credit: Amazon
Our review of the regular Kindle Colorsoft I was less than impressed because there was very little you could do with color on a small-screen ereader that didn't support pen input, and because monochrome text looked a little worse than on a regular Kindle Paperwhite. The new Scribe Colorsoft may have some of the same problems that largely plague color e-ink technology as it exists today, but the larger screen will also be better for reading comics and graphic novels, and for reading and marking up full-color documents—there may be more benefits here, even if the technology trade-offs are similar.
Amazon continues to be slower to incorporate color into its e-readers than competitors, as it was last year. reMarkable Paper Pro ($579 then, $629 now). Scribe's software also feels a little basic—the writing tools seem tied to the more mature reading experience offered by the Kindle operating system—but things are gradually improving. All new Scribes support file syncing with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive (but not Dropbox or other services), and the devices can export notebooks to the Microsoft OneNote app so you can pick up where you left off on your PC or Mac.
Other software improvements include a redesigned home screen, “AI-powered search” and a new shading tool that can be used to add shading or gradients to drawings and sketches; Amazon says many of these software improvements will come to older Kindle Scribe models via software updates sometime next year.
This post was updated at 4:30 pm on December 10th to add a response from Amazon about software updates for older Kindle Scribe models.
