An Author's In-Depth Kindle Scribe Review: Is It A Worthy Notebook Replacement?

I've had my eye on getting an e in tablet for quite some time now as an author I really love the idea of having a digital device that replicated a lot of the feel and aesthetic of writing by hand but merg that with some of the conveniences of digital software and management and files and all that other kind of stuff so I've had my eye on various eink devices for a while and I've been doing a lot of reading and research and when Amazon put the Kindle scribe on sale a few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and give it a try so I got my brand new Kindle scribe actually for my birthday uh about 3 weeks ago and I've been using it ever since so I thought now was a perfect time for me to do an in-depth review and discussion of the Kindle scribe talk through some of its features some of the things I really like about it some of the things that I wish they would improve or hope they would improve and give you a little bit of a sense of whether or not the Scribe might be a good eink device for you so let's get into it so let me start by talking about my use case uh which I think is critical the the thing that I have discovered in researching eing tablets is there is no one perfect best tablet even like for the money all tablets uh all eink devices have things they're good at and things that they are not good at pros and cons and you're going to be making some trade-offs so I think it's really important if you're considering buying an eink tablet to be clear about what is important to you and how you plan to use it so for me some of the things that I knew going into getting my tablet first off I love writing by hand so the handwriting feel and functionality was really important I have carried a notebook with me pretty much my entire life certainly my entire adult life I always have one with me and I've often felt frustrated by some of the limitations of that primarily you write in a notebook and then whatever you wrote is just buried within pages and it can be hard to find what you wrote down certainly it can be very difficult to access it because you pretty much just have to either type it up again I know you know I've looked into various like scanning softwares like I have an app on my phone that I have used when I know I have like a several pages of really important things that I wrote that I need to offload and convert to digital and it works well enough but it's cumbersome enough that I tend to forget about it and realistically The Notebook is the space has been the space for me to offload some thoughts out of my brain and mostly I just I use a notebook because I love to write by hand but it has not been very efficient or convenient so even though I have it with me a lot of times when I have a thought for my book or for the work that I do uh I'll often had would end up emailing it to myself off of my phone because it was the most convenient solution I had to hand which is very inefficient and wasn't ideal so one thing I knew that I wanted from from an iank device was um to be able to handw write a lot to carry it with me all the time to take lots of notes in lots of different notebooks because our life is a little complicated I have lots of different books series not just one series but several series that I'm working on I have the non-fiction work that I do for YouTube and our courses on skillshare uh I have the work that we do professionally for digital freelance work and so on so I have lots of different kind of buckets and I wanted something that would allow me to navigate between them keep track of my thoughts and my writing of the things that I need to write down and keep track of along the way another big thing that I knew I wanted was to be able to write and think nonlinearly which is one of the things I like the most about paper and what I mean by that is when you're typing on a digital device you tend to work like top to bottom and it's kind of linear or chronological so you sort of need to know the order that you're going to put your thoughts in as you're putting them down but I one of the things I love about writing by hand is you could write something up here and then something over here and something over here and draw lines between them and kind of work more three-dimensional which especially for brainstorming is just how my brain operates so I wanted something that would um support that way of thinking another big use case that I was tracking is that I'm really committed to reading more in this period of My Life um our youngest child that just started preschool this year and that has finally reopened up a little bit more space in my day than I have had for the last 5 or six years so um one of the things that I really have wanted to do is get back into regular reading both reading fiction for fun and reading non-fiction for personal growth and development so I knew that I wanted my tablet to also function as my comfortable long session e-reader I still do read on my phone for short bursts and really like maximally convenient I'm standing in line at the grocery store and I have 5 minutes types of windows but I wanted something that would also function well as an e-reader and not only as a note-taking device and the last aspect of my use case that I thought was pretty important is that I needed to be able to Output my notes in at least some fashion I can't just have everything live on the device because then I'm sort of still stuck where my paper notebook left me which is that I would get good notes down or think of a great thought or do some brainstorming or outlining for the book that I'm working on but then when I need to access what I wrote you know it's on the device and you have to pull it up and look at it and find some way to transfer it to a computer or wherever you're doing your work so I knew that I wanted to make sure my eink device supported that function and allowed me to export my notes in some way which is a good segue into talking about some of the updates that Amazon has made to the Scribe because that was one of the big uh eliminating factors for it originally is that uh the Scribe did not ship out the gate with the ability to translate your handwritten notes into text in any way uh and that was one one of my kind of deal breakers initially but they've added that as a feature in the most recent update you can now um email yourself a your files and in that process you can translate your handwriting into text now it's not as efficient as something like the supernote where handwriting to text conversion is just happening in the background automatically uh but it works I've tested it it works great and it works well enough for the function that I needed to perform I would like for it to be a tiny bit more convenient but it works well enough the other big things that they added in their updates are multiple pen types a fountain pen marker and different pen um thicknesses that you can choose which is nice I will be honest I like the fountain pen because it writes pretty and I enjoy that I like using it to like title my pages and stuff it's not essential but it's nice um I don't draw so the different pen types and pencil types aren't really a big deal to me but it is nice that they added it and it does you know add some extra functionality they also added a lasso selection tool and that was huge for me I use it all the time because it allows you to just draw a selection box around any piece of text that you've written anywhere on the page once you've done that you can cut and copy and paste it to another page or you can move it around on the page to change the location and that gets back to the working and thinking nonlinearly component that was important to me it has been so helpful to be able to just madly scribble whatever I'm thinking about and then use the lasso tool to pick and select and organize my thoughts right there on the page it's one of the ways that makes it feel like better than a paper notebook because you can't do that easily on paper and you can do it very easily here and I really like that so those various updates um were definitely things in the Pro column which when I Revisited the Scribe when I was considering buying it because of the sale those were some of the first things that stood out to me now that I've had a chance to use it for a few weeks let me start by talking through some of the other pros and the things that I really like about the Scribe so I think the very first pro I should name because it was one of the big factors that pushed me to go ahead and give it a shot was price uh I actually got the Scribe with the premium pen and the folio for under $300 which is a great deal and is close to half the price of comparable options like the supernote or the remarkable by the time you add in a quality folio and a good pen those were pushing above $500 a piece so you know if money is really not an issue for you you can sort of eliminate that one but I for me it certainly was and I think for many of us it is definitely a factor especially when you're considering a very specific device like this that does a set of things it's not a laptop that you can justify spending a little more on because it does so many different things it is an e-reader and a notetaking device and to a degree it's a luxury item cuz I can get a paper notebook for 15 so the price factor and how cheap I was was able to get the Scribe was definitely a big item in the Pro column When comparing to some of the other devices which do have features that I would really like but definitely I don't feel like those features are worth twice as much as I spent for this another big Pro that I noticed immediately when I started using it is I love the feeling of writing on it I was not sure how that was going to go uh like I said I really enjoy handwriting and there's something about the tactile aspect of it and I for me because I do it so much it definitely helps trigger my brain in certain ways and certain types of thinking goes better when I'm writing by hand than trying to type and I was worried that a digital device wouldn't be able to replicate that but for me it definitely does and in some ways I almost like it more the weight in the pen is really really nice it's balanced really really well and then the you can kind of almost hear when you write it has that kind of papery sound and feel to it the premium pen has an eraser on the back and it it just it just works and it clicks um it's one of those things that's very subjective so I can't necessarily guarantee that you will feel the same but for me the physical experience of writing in the Scribe feels lovely and I really enjoy it also on the reading side because it's a Kindle device it's one of the best e-readers you can get I have lived in the Kindle ecosystem primarily uh so I have a lot of books in the Kindle app already so you know three clicks on the way in I logged in and linked and all of a sudden boom there's all my books and I could go through and just start downloading um I got the midsized option with 32 gigs of space on here um which given how small eor files tend to be feels like an Infinity of space so I was able to go through and just quickly download a ton of my books and the one of the things that I did like about the Scribe is that the screen is 300 DPI um which is a higher resolution than a lot of the other e-readers and again subjective but I personally feel like I can notice the difference when I'm reading the reading is more comfortable for my eyes the screen is nice and big and I've just really enjoyed the reading experience and even just in the past 2 to 3 weeks I've been reading a lot more the backlight with the different lighting op for warm light has been wonderful and it is a feature that U devices like the supernote don't have so that was a big plus for me because a lot of my reading I do later in the evening I tend to stay up later than my wife so I will kind of wind down my day with 30 minutes or an hour of reading before I go to bed and being able to just have this and not need an external light has been fantastic another component again very subjective but I really enjoy the look and feel Of The Scribe you'll notice no uh when especially when it's out of the folio it's very light uh it's very thin and it's not you know it's fancy there's no particular Frills but it's I just think it's very sleek and it's the the kind of I don't know if it's aluminum or whatever the metal uh of the case and the kind of the bevel around the side it's nice again these are little things but it's nice that it's just slightly raised but it's not raised too high so when you're resting your hand on it which you do all the time or sliding your hand on it cuz you're writing um it's not irritating it doesn't like cut into your palm at all and um yeah the just the overall construction of it look and feel of it I will get to the case when I talk about cons but uh overall it's been fine uh the device itself I really really like the U the look and feel of it and finally I'll talk about battery life the battery life on this thing is incredible I charged it to 100% the day that I got it and I didn't plug it in for over 2 weeks and by the time I did charge it it was only stun to about 177% and that's after using it pretty much all day every day I have used it constantly the only thing I haven't really used it for is like a super marathon reading session of let's say maybe 5 or 6 hours at a time but even that I mean I have had the screen on a lot I haven't been particularly careful about switching it into sleep mode on and off when I'm not using it I just kind of have used it and I wanted to see how that would go and the battery on it has been fantastic so I love that I do a fair amount of traveling so knowing that I can kind of charge it up before a trip and bring the charger with me but even if I have a long travel day or if I'm you know out of my hotel room for a long time at meetings I don't have to worry about the battery at all and that has been great so that's a reasonably long list of pros and you can probably tell by now that I actually really like the Scribe I'm surprised by how much I have used it and more importantly how much I've wanted to use it it's not just because it's a new device and so I feel obligated to use it and I'm thinking about it I have gotten completely attached to this thing I carry it with me everywhere I go and I use it constantly throughout the day and and I like using it and I look forward to using it which is again subjective but a really big deal for me but it's not perfect so let's talk about some of the cons the first one which I eluded to before is some aspects of the folio itself the case are not my favorite I don't mind the the construction like I kind of like the sort of fabcy feel of it and it's not particularly heavy it doesn't add a lot a ton of weight which is good I don't love the flipping up vertical primarily because I actually wouldn't mind it except the way that the Scribe attaches into it is just um a set of kind of magnets but you'll see it has these kind of like indents where the the the Nubs go and you just kind of you set it in there and slide it until it sort of pops in and it holds well enough but not well enough that I am feel totally confident like I've this is fine but if I shake it it comes right loose um so it leaves me feeling just a little insecure about having it in the case I wish I wish it held on a little bit better and because the magnets are here again getting nitpicky but this is a review when it's open and when you're ready to flip it back shut you kind of have to like peel the magnet loose and there's been multiple times where the way that I do that kind of Pops The Scribe out of the thing and then if I'm sitting at a desk it's like oh it slides and I don't know it's just it's just a a slight barrier of irritation but because it's part of the use experience it's one that you experience like every time you're using it I do like that it puts it into sleep mode when you close the case which is nice and also I like it took me a bit to get used to it but the way that the back folds there's a sort of like magnetic section across here so you can flip it and fold it like this which then when you're ready to set it on the desk gives you like a slightly inclined surface for writing on which can be handy or you can flip it and hold it up that way and when if you are reading and you just want it vertical so for the you know $15 I got a used one for like the $15 I spent on it I'm happy enough with it but I will be doing some research and I'm considering getting a slightly higher quality uh folio maybe one that flips open I would actually like to get a folio that maybe has some slots for cards or maybe a physical pen or some scraps of paper or stick a business card in for when I'm traveling um but I would personally at this point I would put the folio just on the slightly con side of things it's not the worst ever but it's not my favorite thing about it so now let's talk about some of the cons of the Scribe itself because the folio is optional you don't don't even have to get one you should definitely get something that's going to cover it and protect it but you have options for what you do with that but what comes baked on to the device is what it is and my cons really are more of a wish list of features that I would like to see added at this point I've used it enough to feel comfortable that there's nothing about the note taking and reading functionality that is such a problem that impacts my ability to use it the way that I want to use it but there are some things that either I wish it could do or that the way that it does it is just a little bit cumbersome and adds a little bit of friction to the experience of at least the way I use it that I wish it didn't have so let's talk about those the big first one that I wish that it has had was better and easier notebook navigation um because of the way that notebooks work when you want to if you're in a notebook so if I want to go to a different notebook I have to actually drop down from the top switch back to my main notebooks and then if it's not if it's in a different folder I have to go back multiple menus back to finally get to the folder that I want to be in um and then you can go into that folder and then if I have subfolders so it hopping back and forth between notebooks is very um cumbersome and timec consuming I wish that it had uh kind of a not a table of contents but like a recently accessed notebooks maybe feature where when you're in a notebook then up here where some of the options are I wish like you can pull this up and you see the pages within your notebook but I wish there was a similar icon that would open up like recently accessed notebooks like maybe the five most recent ones or even just the one most recent one because then at least if I was working between two different thought lines or two different notebooks I could hop back and forth between them without having to click back out and click back in and the same thing is true for books this is the other big one of the other big cons that I wish uh they would add a better functionality because the e-reader is great and the notes app is functional and getting better but they don't play nicely with each other if you're in the e-reader and you're reading a book you can drop a you can highlight you can use all the normal Kindle features and you can drop a note card in the book anywhere on the page and you can handw write on that and then when you're looking in your book you can see a list of all the notes cards but it that's sort of contained within the book itself if you want to go and write in one of your notebooks again you have to navigate back to the main Kindle library and then go on the main screen from your library over to notebooks and then you can pull up at from there at least you can pull up the most recent notebook you were using I love to take notes when I'm reading especially when I'm reading non-fiction so I'm constantly hopping back and forth and it's so much so that there have been times where I will actually read on my phone and have the notebook up on my scribe because I'm going back I'm writing so many notes and it's just too obnoxious to switch back and forth and I wish my my dream scenario would be for them to add a cuz you can do actually split screen now they added that for reading which is wonderful cuz it feels like you're reading a book I since they have the split screen functionality already added I wish they would include the option to be able to have the Kindle app open on one part of your split screen and then a notebook open on the other part of your split screen so that while you're reading you can also be take note taking and annotating and whatever you want to do doesn't do that so switching back and forth between the books and the notebooks is obnoxious to the point of being not that functional uh depending on how much you're note taking while you're reading and that's something I wish that they would work on another con would be overall searchability and interaction between your various notebooks and folders um I wish they would replicate some of what the supernote does with hyperlinks um and being able to sort of build a table of contents and using search um I understand that because it's not doing handwriting to text automatically I get search would be difficult but already even after just a couple of weeks of using it I have to kind of keep a pretty clear mental picture and be very organized about where I put things so that I can find stuff again let's say I'm working on uh notes for a character profile for a book I'm working on I would love to be able to for example put um a hyp do a little hyperlink of text over to a different notebook where I had taken notes on key items to include in a character profile while I was reading a book about how to write great characters or doing my own brainstorming about that and be able to like hop back and forth more easily between notebooks which again you can't do another feature that I really wish they had um this one is also frustrating is the ability to have different page templates within a single notebook right now when you have a notebook that it is nice that they have included a lot of different um template options for types of page backgrounds so you can do line you can do graph you can do um blank you can do grid uh you can do some things like task list with checkboxes or times and they're all they're actually quite nice I like the range of options that they have added and you can change it after the fact so you're not stuck with it once you pick one for your notebook but whatever you pick applies to all the pages in your notebook and I would love to be able to select a template per page instead of per notebook so that maybe I use a blank page for the very first page which is my big brainstorm page and then the next page is lined because I'm making a list and then so on and so forth um so that you can really customize what you want to do in your notebook and right now you can't do that and that sometimes has been frustrating it's not the end of the world but it certainly is a feature that I hope they will add in the future I will say one um balancing factor of that con is that you can use the send to Kindle feature to um side load PDFs into your eReader on your scribe and with a PDF you can freely write all over it how ever you want and use the handwriting feature freely so you can create a custom PDF or if you you know buy like a digital planner or anything like that um you can load your PDF directly on here and then that is a way that you can have individually customized uh Pages within a single document uh but it's not in the notes app so I would like to see them add that for the notes app I have used that feature and I'm quite happy with it as a revision tool so if you're an author like me um I have loaded the most recent book that that I'm working on of my own of revising and it has been wonderful to get to read just like um printing out a copy for yourself and use highlighter and Mark notes and drop pinned cards and Mark it up and it's been great I've it's actually really helped my revision process and I've been enjoying working on revision uh on this um on and just a PDF that I shipped onto the device and it's worked great for that so with those pros and cons out of the way let's talk a a little bit about my summary thoughts and wrap this thing up should you buy a Kindle scribe well uh I think it depends like I said a lot on your use case if you know for sure that you're going primarily want an eink WR device for lots and lots of writing and that's mostly what you want to do with it then you might want to consider it the remarkable or the supernote a5x or some of the other devices that are really specifically tailored uh for handwriting and have better features for sorting organizing and interacting with your notebooks if you know for sure that you want a device that moves a little bit more into the iPad Direction and has the functionality of loading Android apps then you're looking at the books series um you're going to pay more for them but you can get a device that has a color screen you can get device that will allow you to load a whole bunch of different apps and functionality so if you know you want to use use your device a little bit more as a multiplatform workspace then you're probably looking more in that direction but if you like me want a device that sits really nicely in the middle between a really great e-reader and a very capable digital e in note-taking device then um yes I think the Scribe is a great deal I think the price makes it a really good entry point to the eink marketplace as a whole and so far I'm extremely happy with it uh I'm definitely not planning to return it I use it all the time and I certainly don't regret it as a purchase but I think it it helps that I was very clear as I went into buying it what I needed it to do and what I was okay with cutting some corners on so hopefully this review helps you if it did please leave a like on the video or a comment let me know what you think have you used the Scribe do you have one if so do you agree with my assessment do you disagree I'd love to hear your thoughts as well if you use a different device maybe give me your take on that in the comments and don't forget to subscribe to the story Castle channel for more deep Dives and discussions of writing craft and your favorite books movies and series every week

Channel: StoryCastle

Views: 20,935

Keywords: remarkable 2 review, amazon kindle scribe, remarkable 2 vs kindle scribe, amazon kindle scribe vs remarkable 2, amazon kindle scribe note taking

Id: FdUWo2SVu-Q

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 23 2024