Amazon Kindle Scribe (2024) review: Stylus over substance

The 2024 Kindle Scribe is a tablet for those who end up hopelessly sidetracked by the sheer time-wasting potential of an iPad or Android tablet. It’s a giant, combined e-reader and notepad and comes with a stylus in the box. This is the second edition; the original was released in 2022.

What have two years of progress got us? Not a huge amount. The hardware is barely any different, the Kindle Scribe 2024’s core “new” features are coming to the old version in an upcoming software update anyway, and it’s not even clear if all the new features will come to the UK version of the new Scribe, either.

A lot of the fundamentals are still strong. The feel of writing on the display surface is great and the interface is reasonably simple, but Amazon hasn’t quite made enough improvements for it to challenge the best notebook e-readers on the market.

Kindle Scribe (2024) review: What do you get for the money?

The Kindle Scribe includes everything you need to get going, which is a relief when it is so expensive. Prices start at £379 for the 16GB version, while the 32GB and 64GB models cost £399 and £429 respectively. That makes it not only four times more expensive than the base Kindle but also dearer than the first-generation Kindle Scribe.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that this new model does come with the premium stylus included as standard, which has a high-friction virtual eraser on the top, as well as an on-barrel button. This has 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, as before, and snaps magnetically onto the right edge of the chassis. Happily, it doesn’t need charging.

Amazon has masked the lack of major hardware changes with a stylistic tweak: the 2024 Scribe has a split two-tone screen surround. From a quick glance it may appear the display extends to the edge of the casing. It does not remotely do so and its dimensions are almost the same as the 2022 edition’s. There’s also a stylish new green model in this generation, although that’s only available if you stump up for the 64GB version.

Just like the 2022 model the device comes with a 10.2in monochrome E Ink display. It’s perfectly sharp, with a pixel density of 300ppi, and it comes with a front light that has automatically adjusting brightness and colour temperature, just like the Paperwhite Signature Edition. However, there’s no upgrade here to the latest E Ink Carta 1300 technology, which means the page background does look a little on the grey side.

There are no ongoing fees with a Kindle Scribe, but you can of course sign up for Kindle Unlimited. This costs £12/mth and includes access to a library of ebooks, audiobooks and magazines, although not nearly Amazon’s full library.

Kindle Scribe (2024) review: What does it do well?

The Kindle Scribe’s main strength lies in how it differs from traditional tablets like an iPad, and how that can help you get things done. Its interface is stripped back – it’s very similar to that of a 6in Kindle, just with a Notebooks section bunged in – and there’s little opportunity for doomscrolling or other online distractions.

And that simplicity extends to the document management side of things, too. Note-taking is represented in the UI by the Notebooks section. Notebooks can be based around one of 18 templates, from a blank page to sheet music, checklists, graph paper and plain old lined paper. If you’re using a Scribe regularly, you could end up with hundreds of these notebooks, and they can be arranged into folders to stop it all becoming a migraine-inducing mess. Additionally, you can view your notes via the Kindle app, and you can export the files as PDFs via your Amazon email address.

The feel of writing and drawing on the Kindle Scribe is great. With the average tablet-plus stylus, you write on glossy glass, but here the top-most layer is textured plastic, which results in a pleasing level of friction that feels just right and you can tweak that feel by replacing the nib with a softer or harder one, too.

Palm rejection is no issue at all (where your hand sets off the touchscreen by accident) because all note-taking input is done using the stylus, and this doesn’t rely on capacitive technology. A wire coil in the pen interacts with copper mesh under the screen, to tell where the pen nib is. And better yet, there’s no battery inside the stylus, meaning it never needs recharging.

And while the Scribe’s processor is extremely limited compared to that of a standard tablet, there’s no obvious lag in the pen’s output, even if you scrawl a line from one end to the other at speed, like an angry toddler. It isn’t as slick as, say, an iPad but it’s responsive where it needs to be.

Kindle Scribe (2024) review: What could it do better?

The roots of the Kindle Scribe’s strength lie in its simplicity and low-tech foundations, but these do lead to its main weaknesses.

The main shortcoming is that there’s no system-wide handwriting recognition, so when searching the Kindle Store, or your Library of ebooks, you have to use a virtual, onscreen keyboard. This makes sense when the Kindle software platform is so much less “always online” than a normal tablet and the Scribe is so underpowered, but it doesn’t mean it’s any less disappointing.

Similarly, there’s no clean way to sync a cloud store of, for example, PDFs to the Scribe — something you can achieve with Kobo Elipsa 2A. With a Scribe you have to either connect to a laptop or desktop via USB cable to transfer files, or use the Send to Kindle website. This lets you upload files in a browser, which are then sent directly to your Kindle.

And there are lots of other features you can imagine making sense in a Kindle Scribe that aren’t here, either. The Scribe can’t, for instance, convert handwritten charts, arrows and tables into neater-looking versions. It won’t magically clean up musical notation to make it ready to print out and put on a player’s music stand.

And while on-the-fly conversion of written text into digital text within notebooks is coming for US buyers as part of an upcoming “AI” feature, there’s been no confirmation yet that this will arrive on UK devices. “We don’t yet have information to share about this in the UK,” was all we could squeeze out of Amazon’s people. As before, the Scribe only translates handwritten content into “digital” text when you send it to yourself over email. The results are crudely presented, and will generally need reformatting before being used in an actual document.

One key new feature UK buyers do get in this new generation Scribe is the ability to make handwritten notes directly on ebooks, rather than just inserting digital Post-It note pop-ups. Amazon calls this Active Canvas.

Some of you may be frustrated with how this pans out, too, though, because there’s no option to play school teacher and start circling words, or drawing lines between paragraphs. Instead, on-screen notes effectively create a text box that nudges the ebook text, forcing it to realign around your notes. It’s a more respectful way to operate than letting you cross out bits of Dickens while writing expletives in the margins, but ultimately it feels almost as detached as the old Scribe method.

Finally, as we noted in our review of the 2022 Kindle Scribe, most should think twice before buying a Scribe as a plain giant e-reader. At 433g, the new Scribe is too heavy to hold one-handed for long without discomfort and it doesn’t even get an upgrade to a more modern Carta 1300 E Ink panel like the 2024 Kindle Paperwhite. As a result, the page background looks ever so slightly greyer.

Kindle Scribe (2024) review: Should you buy one?

The best bits of the second Amazon Kindle Scribe are the same as those of the first. It’s comfortable to write on, doesn’t demand an annoying paid subscription and provides a distraction-free way of writing and note-taking.

Calling this Scribe a “new” model, however, is a little disingenuous. There’s barely any change in the hardware this time around, the new software features are coming to the first generation in a future update anyway and buyers outside of the US will have to wait and see if the Scribe’s AI features will actually come to their devices.

In short, my verdict on the 2024 Kindle Scribe is much the same as Alan Martin’s was on the last one: it’s a solid note-taking e-reader, but not exceptional. Even if you do fancy buying one, with such minimal upgrades in this generation you’d be better off saving yourself some money and picking up one of the original Kindle Scribes while they’re still available.