Kindle Scribe

Over the years, I've bought a lot of tech. Some good, some bad, but not a whole lot that I've been crazy about. I've spent countless days researching, pouring over reviews, videos, and the like only to buy a piece of equipment that ultimately ends up collecting dust (I'm looking at you RetroPocket 2S and Y1 Mp3 Player). You know, pieces of tech that I convinced myself would be daily uses and fill some strange gap in my day. Yet, outside of my phone, iPad, MacBook, Xbox and Playstation, nothing recently has become part of my daily routine. Heck, I don't even use my MacBook or video game consoles daily.

That was until I bought my Kindle Scribe in June. This was a purchase that wasn't overly research or pre-planned. In fact, my wife had to convince me to pick one up since I've wanted a larger e-reader for a couple of years now. I fought her on it, I really did, but in the end she won and I agreed to give it a try and return it if it wasn't worth the cost. Well, it's been almost six weeks and you couldn't pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Not only do I absolutely love the size, how quick it loads, and how well it fits in my hand, but I truly adore the ability to journal and write on it. I really didn't think I'd have much of a need for it, but I use it daily! I journal by hand pretty much every day now and I find myself looking forward to it. The writing feels fantastic and the use of AI to convert it to legible text is like magic. I love the lack of clutter and its so nice to pick it up real quick and jot down some notes.

It's super easy to load all my .epubs on via email and I haven't run into a single issue there. Heck, the device doesn't even load to the Kindle store, so I forget it exists.

While I don't use it quite as much, it is nice to be able to write notes directly into a book and watch it shift around the text. Highlighting quotes, which I do use often, is also super easy to use and I love that it keeps them all separately in a journal for you.

The device isn't perfect of course, the AI rendering can be a bit slow and organizing pages is a little cumbersome, but that is to be expected with e-ink. I purchased the original model, the 2024 release so it doesn't sync to Google Drive or Dropbox, which means the only way to exporting your journals is via .pdf and email. It's still rather quick and easy, but I'd love some more options (preferably iCloud) and maybe some different export options.

I haven't used any other large e-ink devices, so I can't compare it to the reMarkable or anything similar, but both reading and writing is a significant improvement over the iPad, although I'll still occasionally read something on my iPad.

My reading has actually increased by about forty percent with the Kindle. I think it being so easy on the eyes keeps me reading longer and I read through several books a week now.

Now... the one thing that I haven't brought up is price. I paid $160.00 for my mine on Woot, which was listed as refurbished but was clearly new. It's worth $160 all day long and Woot has been adding more and more of these devices every few weeks. But the price of the latest model new is $400, would I pay that.... 🤔 No.

At the end of the day, this is a large Kindle with some writing features. I feel like the sweet spot for this device is $250 and $400 is just a bit too much. I'll be upgrading slowly and methodically when that day comes because this device just doesn't pack enough punch to be $400.

But I'm just hoping that day is a long way away, because right now I'm really loving this e-reader. The large screen is perfect for what I need at this point in my life and all the writing features is just icing on the cake.