3 reasons to buy the Kindle Scribe, and 2 reasons not to

Amazon’s growing range of Kindle e-readers caters to all needs and budgets. Prices start from as little as £85 and go up to as much as £410. But the best Kindle for most people is likely to be the Kindle Paperwhite. It hits the sweet spot with a palatable price and a decent array of features.

For those who are willing to splash out a little, right at the top of the range is the Kindle Scribe. New for 2022 it’s an e-reader that doubles up as an e-writer. You can use it in the same way as other Kindles to get stuck into a good book but as well as that, it comes with a stylus so you can use it to draw and write on. 

Starting from £330, the Kindle Scribe doesn’t come cheap so it’s worth knowing as much as possible about it before you buy one. I’ve been trying it out and there are a few things I really liked about it, but there were also a couple of issues I encountered along the way as well. 

It has the biggest screen on a Kindle  

By far the biggest screen on any Kindle, you get a huge 10.2 inches to play with. Just like the smaller displays, it is anti-glare with a paperlike feel to it which mimics the experience of reading (or writing on) an actual book. 

You get 300ppi so the lettering is crystal clear and super sharp. 35 backlights make it visible at all times of day and to add to that, there are auto-adjusting light sensors which adjust the brightness automatically depending on the lighting around you. The warmth of the screen can be tweaked too which will make it easier on the eyes in the evenings in particular.  

You can use it to make notes and annotate books 

Thanks to the included stylus, the Kindle Scribe doubles up as an electronic notepad letting you draw or write on a blank page, on a selection of lined pages or even on your books. Not everyone will make use of that but for some, it will be really handy, like if you’re studying or if you want to be able to jot down ideas as you read. 

In your hand, the stylus feels very comfortable to use because it’s about the size of a ballpoint pen. What’s more, is that it doesn’t have a battery which means you won’t need to remember to charge it up all the time, it’ll just work. 

The battery life lasts for weeks 

If you were to read a book on the Kindle Scribe for an hour a day, the battery would last you up to 12 weeks of use, and if you were to write on it for an hour every day then you wouldn’t need to plug it in for 3 weeks - that’s pretty good going if you ask me. Charging it back up again only takes 2.5 hours as well if you plug it into mains power.

But drawing could be better 

You can’t expect to get a tablet-like experience for drawing - for example, there’s no way of creating thicker lines by applying more pressure on the stylus, you have to manually choose that from the menu. And you won’t be able to use colour either, you’ll just get blacks and greys here. What that means is you won’t be creating super accurate masterpieces on this, it’s more for note-taking and rough sketching.

It does lack a few features you get elsewhere 

Given its price, you’d expect to get the whole breadth of features poossible but you actually don’t. 

The Kindle Scribe skips over wireless charging, and it’s not waterproof either which means you’ll need to be a little careful using it outside or on holiday by the pool. You may also find it a little too bulky to use one-handed, and it’ll be a little too big to slot in your bag each day.