10.2” Kindle Scribe: 64GB w/ Premium Pen $360, 16GB w/ Basic Pen Expired

I was so excited about this product pre-launch but man this has turned into a huge bummer. Just to compare from a ratings perspective this product to the standard Kindles.

Reviewers that give it 5 stars:
Kindle Paperwhite - 85% (4.7 out of 5 overall)
New Kindle - 77% (4.5 out of 5 overall)
Kindle Oasis - 79% (4.6 out of 5 overall)

Scribe - 47% (3.8 out of 5 overall)

To sum up the reviews - it may be the best Kindle reading experience out there. Great build quality, the screen is top-notch. As long as you can work with a 10" screen it should make an excellent reader, maybe even the best reading experience.

BUT, and it's a huge but, the real promise of this device is to take on the expanding eInk tablet space. With Remarkable, Boox, etc you can have a great reading experience but also have a great writing experience. And this is where the Scribe is just miles behind. Awful note-taking capability. Worst in class in many functions. Reviews keep defending Amazon by saying it's a first gen product. The reality is that the feature set is much closer to a beta product. The reception has been so bad that Amazon has already announced some of the features that they will be adding "soon". They rarely, if ever, talk about their tech roadmap and future features on their other products. They've had no choice but to change their standard practices just to stop the bleeding.

I suspect that you will start seeing many of these pop-up as renewed very soon. Probably holding back right now a bit as they want to push the new inventory. Lots and lots of unhappy customers ended up shipping back their device after Christmas.

With your trade-in credit and the price reduction, the value proposition is a little better than it was at launch. Just be aware that there are products like the Note Air 2 from Boox that give you a full Android experience (including the Kindle reading app) and kill the Scribe in drawing/note-taking. When you factor in cases, stylus, etc, it works out to be about $100 more than the Scribe for much, much more functionality. You will need to consider if having the full Android experience + better writing experience for an extra $100 is worth it.

This is actually a good deal if you have an old Kindle around that works or want to swing by your local thrift shop to snag one. I just traded in a Kindle that's nearly a decade old to get a Scribe with a premium pen for around $255 shipped.

This is a big device, roughly regular iPad sized, which makes it heavier than normal Kindles. It's also not waterproof, nor does it have hardware page buttons. However, if you read comics, anything with graphics, PDFs, etc it's a really nice supplementary device - particularly if you plan to keep it for several years. USB-C charging is a huge improvement over other Kindles.

The drawing won't compete with an iPad Pro or anything, but the battery life will last weeks and if you value distraction-free focus and can live with limited sync options it's a solid option.

I personally am keeping my waterproof Paperwhite for portable reading, will use this for PDF review and general reading (I like to read on a stand anyway while eating, etc) along with general notetaking. It's not the best at anything but if you go into it with open eyes there's a lot of promise with it, and it's still a darn good eReader.

Edit: My information comes from watching basically every review on YouTube about this device. I actively take notes on my iPad Pro and iPad Mini and have used Kindles since launch.

No doubt this is in response to the Lenovo version... the inking capabilities on the lenovo looks far superior to the scribe and Lenovo seems to be committing to longer term software support for their tablets. The main product page on amazon says "Kindle Scribe does not currently support writing directly on the page in PDF documents loaded via USB-C or previously sent to your library before 11/11/2022." This is a major let down.