For individuals primarily seeking a tablet to mark up, highlight, annotate e-books and documents, and occasionally jot down notes, Amazon’s latest Kindle Scribe Colorsoft might be a worthwhile, albeit significant, expenditure. However, for most other users, the substantial price of this 11-inch, $630+ e-ink tablet with a color writeable display will likely be difficult to rationalize.
Nonetheless, if your preference was already leaning towards the 11-inch, $549.99 Kindle Scribe — which offers a paper-like display but lacks color — it would be logical to invest the additional funds for the Colorsoft edition, starting at $629.99.
Considering their price tags, both the Scribe and Scribe Colorsoft are generally considered unnecessary luxuries for the majority of consumers, particularly when contrasted with the more budget-friendly traditional Kindle ($110) or Kindle Paperwhite ($160).
The Fig color variant, initially unveiled in December, commenced shipping on January 28, 2026, and is priced at $679.99 for the 64GB model.
Amazon is evidently aiming to establish a distinct segment within the tablet market with these enhanced Kindle devices, which are more in competition with e-ink tablets such as reMarkable than with its own Kindle lineup. However, premium e-ink readers featuring pens are unlikely to attract a massive user base for Amazon. In contrast, an iPad’s diverse functionalities—encompassing video streaming, drawing, writing, productivity applications, and a vast ecosystem of native apps and games—make its cost potentially justifiable for almost anyone.
The Scribe Colorsoft, on the other hand, is specifically engineered to appeal to a particular demographic of e-book readers or professionals. This device could be an ideal match for students, researchers, and any individual who frequently requires the ability to mark up files or documents.
Individuals keen on creating to-do lists or maintaining a personal journal might also find the device appealing, though its significant price point would necessitate daily usage to be justified.
Operation of the device is straightforward, featuring a Home screen layout consistent with other Kindles, providing rapid access to your notes and library, alongside suggestions for interactive books such as Sudoku, crossword puzzles, or drawing guides. Library titles and book recommendations are displayed in vibrant color, facilitating quicker selection.
Regarding specifications, Amazon claims this updated 2025 model offers a 40% improvement in speed for page turns and writing. Our experience confirmed the tablet’s responsiveness, with swift page transitions and smooth writing fluidity.
Even with its larger dimensions, the device maintains a slim and lightweight profile, measuring 5.4 mm (0.21 inches) and weighing 400 g (0.88 pounds), preventing it from adding significant bulk to your bag unlike an iPad or similar tablet (an 8.3-inch iPad mini, for instance, is marginally lighter). The Kindle Scribe is comfortably portable in a purse or tote, provided your bag can accommodate an 11-inch display. In contrast to the initial Colorsoft, we appreciate the consistent bezel size around the Scribe Colorsoft’s screen.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft boasts a glare-free, oxide-based e-ink display with a textured finish, simulating the sensation of writing on actual paper. This characteristic assists users accustomed to manual note-taking in adapting to a digital format. Furthermore, it conserves battery power, allowing the device to operate for up to 8 weeks on a single charge.
Conveniently, the display intelligently adjusts its brightness to match ambient lighting, and users have the option to set a warmer screen tone for nighttime reading. While it does incorporate a touchscreen, its responsiveness lags behind that of LCD or OLED touchscreens found on devices like the iPad. Consequently, gestures such as pinch-to-zoom for font resizing exhibit a slight delay.
Mirroring other Kindles, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft tablet supports reading e-books and PDFs. Users can also directly import Word documents and various other files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, or utilize the Send to Kindle feature. (Compatible file formats encompass PDF, DOC/DOCX, TXT, RTF, HTM, HTML, PNG, GIF, JPG/JPEG, BMP, and EPUB.) Additionally, Notebooks created on the device can be exported to Microsoft OneNote.
The accompanying pen presents certain compromises. A notable advantage is that, unlike the Apple Pencil, the Kindle’s Premium Pen requires no charging. It is engineered to replicate the tactile experience of writing on paper and performs quite smoothly on the screen. However, its rounded design, lacking a flat charging side, offers a different feel and grip compared to the Apple Pencil, being smoother and potentially more prone to slipping.
Amazon’s pen design also mandates occasional replacement of the pen tips, as they degrade with usage. While not overly costly — a pack of 10 costs approximately $17 — it represents an additional maintenance consideration.
The device includes a selection of 10 distinct pen colors and five highlight colors, enabling a reasonably vibrant and diverse range for your notes and annotations.
During writing, users can select from various tools including a pen, fountain pen, marker, or pencil, each offering different stroke widths to suit individual preferences. A favorite pen tool can be assigned as a shortcut, activated by pressing and holding the pen’s side button (which defaults to highlighting). For those who grip their pen firmly and might unintentionally activate this button, the option to disable this feature is available.
The act of writing on the device feels intuitive. Although the e-ink display renders colors somewhat subdued—a characteristic not universally appreciated—it effectively serves its intended function. Despite its pens and novel shader tool, an e-ink tablet isn’t optimally suited for digital art creation, but it excels in tasks like writing, note-taking, and highlighting.
From the Kindle’s Home screen, users have the option to immediately start writing via the Quick Notes feature, or they can opt for a more structured approach by creating a Notebook from the Workspace tab.
The Notebook functionality provides an extensive selection of notepad templates, enabling users to choose between blank, narrow, medium, or wide-ruled document styles. Templates are available for various purposes, such as meeting notes, storyboards, habit trackers, monthly planners, music sheets, graph paper, checklists, daily planners, dotted sheets, and numerous others. (This device introduces new templates like Meeting Notes, Cornell Notes, Legal Pad, and College Rule options.)
A pleasing feature is the ability to erase simply by inverting the pen to use its soft-tipped eraser, much like a traditional No. 2 pencil. Naturally, a precision erasing tool with adjustable widths is also accessible from the toolbar, should it be required. Due to the e-ink screen, a subtle ghosting of previous drawings or text might occasionally be visible after erasing, though this dissipates over time (a minor detail that could irk meticulous users).
A Lasso tool is included for selecting and manipulating elements—moving, copying, pasting, or resizing them—though this feature might see less frequent use among casual note-takers.
Furthermore, several other convenient functionalities exist for individuals who frequently annotate.
For example, while annotating a Word document or book, the ‘Active Canvas’ feature dynamically allocates space for your entries. When you write directly over the text within the book, the surrounding sentences will automatically reflow and wrap around your note. Critically, even if the reading font size is modified, the note remains consistently tethered to its original textual reference. I find this preferable to direct e-book annotation, as it maintains better organization, though some users hold differing opinions.
Within documents featuring expandable margins, users can tap the corresponding icon at the top of either the left or right margin to jot down notes within that margin, rather than directly on the main page content.
AI Integration in the Kindle
The updated Kindle additionally incorporates several AI-powered tools and functionalities.
The device is designed to improve the tidiness of your scribbles and automatically align highlighting and underlining. On a few occasions, the highlighting function caused our review unit to temporarily freeze, though it resumed normal operation after a return to the Home screen via the side button.
Concurrently, a novel AI capability (identifiable by a sparkle icon in the top left corner) offers both text summarization and handwriting refinement. Curiously, while the latter doesn’t allow conversion to a standard typed font, it does provide a choice from a limited selection of handwritten fonts (Cadia, Florio, Sunroom, and Notewright) accessible through the Customize button.
The AI tool exhibited some limitations. While it could interpret some highly illegible scribbles, it struggled when additional markings appeared on the page alongside the primary text. Nevertheless, it remains a valuable feature for those whose handwriting has deteriorated due to extensive typing but still prefer the tactile sensation and analog feel of writing by hand.
The AI-driven search functionality can also scan across all your notebooks to locate specific notes or identify thematic connections between them. To initiate a search, users can either use the on-screen keyboard or activate the option to handwrite their query, which is then converted to text. Interaction with the search results (AI-generated insights) is facilitated by the ‘Ask Notebooks AI’ feature, enabling users to pose questions against their compiled notes.
Amazon plans to introduce additional AI features in the near future. These include an “Ask This Book” function, allowing users to highlight text and receive spoiler-free answers to inquiries about character motives, scene importance, or other plot elements. Another forthcoming feature, “Story So Far,” will assist readers in resuming a book after an interruption, also without revealing spoilers.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is offered in Graphite (Black) with storage options of 32GB for $629.99 or 64GB for $679.99. The Fig variant is exclusively available in 64GB at a price of $679.99. Protective cases for the Scribe Colorsoft incur an extra cost of $139.99.