Kindle Scribe review – Is it useful for writers?

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I’ve had my old, classic Kindle since 2012 so I’m not one to get a new Kindle every time they come up with a new edition. Knowing that, I think it says something that I got immediately excited about the Kindle Scribe when I first heard about it.

I admit: Scribe apparently came out in November 2022 and I didn’t learn about it until July 2024, but like I said, I was doing just fine with my old Kindle and wasn’t planning on replacing it until its envitable complete battery death.

But what even is Kindle Scribe and how can it be useful for writers specifically? Read on to find out.

Kindle Scribe for writers – pros and cons

In case you don’t want to read the whole blog post, here’s a pros and cons list for your reference:

What is Kindle Scribe anyway?

Kindle Scribe is the first Kindle with handwriting features. You can make notes about and on your books (more on that later) and you can have notebooks with different page layouts.

The screen is the biggest of all Kindles with whopping 10.2 inches and it has a longer battery life than in any other Kindle device. The paperwhite screen is also brighter than on any other Kindle, but fortunately you can also tone it down a notch or even make the light warmer to protect your eyes. In other words, it’s very easy to read in different conditions, though I wouldn’t go as far as call the screen glare-free.

Kindle Scribe comes with a pen and you can choose between basic and premium pens. The premium pen has a shortcut button on the side and an eraser at the other end, and both pens come with extra nibs so you can replace them as they inevitably get worn out.

To get the full specs and see the comparison between all the different Kindle e-readers, you should check out Amazon for all the details.

Should you get a preowned Kindle Scribe or a new one?

After I first learned about my new favourite Kindle, I had a problem: Amazon.com doesn’t send them to Finland, where I live. Fortunately I was smart enough to check Amazon.de as well, and not only do they deliver the Kindle to Finland, but they also offer cheaper, pre-owned ones. With the premium pen!

Pre-owned Kindles on Amazon aren’t just some old devices that have been roughed around with – they’re checked and refurbished by Kindle to make sure they actually work and that you’re not accidentally getting a copy of someone’s Kama Sutra PDF when you purchase yours.

Sometimes they might sell devices with “cosmetic flaws” which is usually nothing but some surface scratches – do you think you might be able to live with that just to pay a lower price? Yup, I thought you might! At the same time, you also help prevent electronic waste.

Should you get Kindle Scribe with the premium pen or the basic pen?

I like having the nicest version of anything whenever possible so it was obvious to me that I wanted to get the premium pen. That said, you can totally live without it.

You can program the shortcut button for sticky notes, any of the different pen types or the eraser. The last one doesn’t much make sense, though, since the premium pen already comes with an eraser on the end! For me, it simply makes sense to use it for the sticky note function so that it’s easier for me to make notes on my books.

Although the pen is meant for writing, you can also use it to navigate the Kindle and to click things just as well as you can use your finger on the touch screen.

Here you can see all the different types of pens that are currently available except for the highlighter. All pens also have four different weight levels so you can write a very thin line or a thicker one. (I just realised the picture quality is not amazing – I’ll upload a different one as soon as I can!)

So what can you actually do with Kindle Scribe?

I’m glad you asked! Here are the features:

Taking notes with your Kindle Scribe

First of all, you can mark up your books in two different ways. When you’re reading an EPUB, you can take hightlights like you can with all Kindle devices, but you can also add sticky notes. You choose the sticky note from the sidebar (or use the shortcut button like I do), you click where you want the note to go and then you can either handwrite or type your note.

You can find all your sticky notes and hightlights for that book in the same place and you can scroll down and see them all in chronological order. It’s really easy to see what you’ve thought was important to remember about that book and you could even write a summary based on your notes in one of your notebooks.

If you’re reading a PDF file that has kept its original formatting when you sent it to Kindle (it should give you the option to choose) you can make notes straight onto the document. That means that you could even create your own workbooks or notebooks with something like Canva and then upload them to your Scribe. Just keep them simple so they work in the black-and-white screen.

Why taking notes is useful

I read mostly books about writing and other non-fiction books with my Kindle and I like to take a lot of notes. I have copious notebooks lying around and no real attempt to actually organise them. With Kindle Scribe, however, I can find all my important notes exactly where I need them.

Highlighting bits of books you read usually isn’t enough to help you learn and remember better. When you actually write down what you’ve just read, with your own words, you end up retaining a lot more information. This is useful whether you’re a student studying for exams or a writer doing background research for a novel.

Using notebooks with your Kindle Scribe

You don’t need to have your notes tied in with specific books – you also have notebooks available to you. When you add a new notebook, you get to choose between 18 different page types, everything from lined pages to habit trackers and sheet music. And don’t worry, when you add new pages, you can choose different layouts for the same notebook so you’re not stuck with your choice or anything.

Here’s a neat thing: You can actually convert your handwritten notes into typed notes and send them to your email. It depends on your handwriting, however, how well it actually does this job. I’m not the neatest writer in any situation, and with the slippery screen that is definitely not “just like paper”, my writing looks even sloppier than normal. The fountain pen mode kind of makes up for it, though.

That said, the neatness of my writing is not really an issue. Nobody else needs to read my notes anyway.

To help you actually make sense of your notebooks, you can arrange them into different folders. That way you can keep your doodles away from your fantasy novel’s worldbuilding notes and your anthropology lecture notes away from the notebook where you practice writing your signature with your crush’s family name.

Reading books with Kindle Scribe

Since my old Kindle was the classic kind of with no backlight, the reading experience with the Scribe is very new and exciting for me. I can see! Even in darker conditions!

Some people lament the lack of page-turning buttons on the sides, but I don’t mind having to tap the screen at all. Do I sometimes accidentally turn the page when I don’t mean to? Sure, but I can’t find it in me to get annoyed by that.

When I set up my Kindle Scribe, it didn’t want to connect to the Kindle app on my phone so I had to log in manually. That wasn’t a lot of work, though, and then I got access to all the books I already had on my Kindle account and I was even able to connect my Goodreads account to my Kindle. Yes, Kindle will use all that information to try and sell more books to you – quite convenient for both of you.

And you know what? You can even listen to Audible books with your Kindle – you just need to connect to bluetooth speakers or headphones because there are no speakers in the Kindle itself.

Browsing the internet with Kindle Scribe

Is there a browser on the Kindle Scribe? There sure is, and I couldn’t care less. Some reviewers complained about the browser and how clunky it is, but I don’t see why you’d need to go on the internet with your ebook reader. Sorry, but I just don’t. You have plenty enough devices with endless distractions as it is.

My experience with Kindle Scribe

When you look for Kindle Scribe reviews, you might come across reviews listing all kinds of things that the Scribe can’t do but should.

I don’t feel that way at all. Kindle Scribe does everything I want it to. Can I read books? Yes. Can I take notes? Yes. Therefore, I’m satisfied.

The only minor complaint I have is that this device is a chonky boy. Yeah it’s nice to have a big screen for reading and writing, it’s less nice when you can’t fit it into your handbag. That’s definitely a me problem, though, but even just one centimetre less width would help me fit the Kindle in my bag without the zipper bursting. Maybe I’ll just buy this messenger bag instead and use it for my errands with the Kindle.

I really like writing sticky notes about the books I’m reading and I have separate notebooks for ideas about the novel I’m currently writing. Sometimes I just doodle, although I’m not much of an artist.

I’ve had the Kindle for about three weeks now and I’ve been using it for reading as well as for filming these reviews, and there’s still 70% battery left even though I don’t think I fully charged it when I got it. It’s a nice change from my old Kindle whose battery would deplete even when I wasn’t using it and it was never ready for action when I needed it. Mind you, writing takes more battery power than reading, so if you’re writing a lot, remember to charge more often than when you’re just reading.

If you’re a writer or a student, I think Kindle Scribe can definitely streamline your note-taking process. Am I going to get rid of all my real notebooks? Absolutely not. I need 15 different journals. But when it comes to taking notes I’m actually going to need later, I’m a Scribe girl from now on. Researching and planning my novels has already got so much easier.

So if you’re on the market for a new e-reader and you like the idea of taking notes and you don’t need any of the fancy features of iPads and the like, I can wholeheartedly recommend seeing if Kindle Scribe is right for you. Personally, I’ve been 100% happy with my purchase.

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Protagonist Crafts is a blog about writing fiction, written by a published author and creative writing teacher. You can find more writing tips and inspiration in the blog and you can get the best author tools at Writer Lifestyle on Etsy.