Amazon Kindle Scribe (64 GB) - 10.2” 300 ppi Paperwhite display, a Kindle and a notebook all in one, convert notes to text and share, includes Premium Pen

1. It's an amazing e-reader=====================There's a few details that make this product the best big-screen e-reader on the market:- 10.2" screen- 300 ppi (highest pixel density on the market for its size)- integrated front light with adjustable warmthThe big screen is invaluable for reading anything with technical diagrams:- PDFs- e-textbooks- e-books that have diagrams and picturesYou can use third-party services to send news articles and blog posts to the device, and they appear with images intact. Again, the big screen makes the images a lot easier to view than on any other Kindle. And the e-ink display is much more pleasant to view than a tablet, especially in the evening.Put all of this together, and you've got an unparalleled e-reader for reading just about anything: news articles, novels, textbooks, research papers, whatever you want. I personally love sending blogs and articles to my Scribe throughout the day and then reading them before bed.2. Very basic e-writing functionality============================This is a Kindle that you can write on, not much more. You can create "notebooks", which are documents with as many pages as you need, and you can group them into "folders", but without any nesting (no folders-within-folders).You've got some built-in templates for notes like lined paper, graph paper, and todo lists.The note-taking experience is very basic: you've got a pen with various widths, an eraser with various widths, and a highlighter. To compare, competitors will offer things like pressure-sensitivity and layers. Put simply: the Kindle Scribe is not competitive with respect to sketching. You can still jot down notes though.I still use the note-taking a lot. I keep it at my desk to jot down ideas to consider later. I keep it on my nightstand so I can write down any thoughts that occur to me before bed or if I wake up in the middle of the night.Getting documents off the Scribe could be a lot better though. Competitors have integration for upload various cloud services. It's within the realm of possibility for Amazon to offer these features on the Scribe as a software update, but I wouldn't hold your breath. I would take this device at face value: a great e-reader with some note-taking functionality that doesn't get you much further than having a pad of paper to jot down your ideas.3. Security & privacy================The best way to send documents to your Scribe is through Amazon's Send-to-Kindle feature. That way you don't have to fuss with cables. Also, it's the only way for you to get PDFs that you can write on - there must be some pre-processing done on Amazon's servers for this feature.What this means is that you should only send documents that you are comfortable sharing with strangers. I haven't been able to find a privacy policy regarding information sent with Send-to-Kindle. That means that you shouldn't be sending:- personal information like phone numbers, addresses, financial information- anything related to your work, this includes graded papersI personally have no problem sending news articles and blog posts from the open Internet. I understand this might give Amazon a picture of my interests. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.Another important note about security: you can password-protect this device, but it doesn't encrypt storage, which means that if your device is stolen, a thief could remove the storage, plug it into their computer, and read anything on your device.In other words, this device has the same security profile as a paper notebook. You should treat it as such. It's very likely that your employer would have a problem with you taking sensitive notes about your work on this device. They probably gave you a laptop with encrypted storage for this reason.4. Conclusion===========It's an amazing e-reader. Unparalleled at this screen size. I use it all the time to read technical documentation and news articles.The note-taking is very basic and in my opinion useful, but not great for anything besides jotting down your thoughts for later review. It's certainly not for sketching - there are much better alternatives for that.The privacy and security of this device are very limiting when it comes to business use. Students should have no problem, and I personally have no problem keeping shopping lists and the like on it. But there's nothing protecting your files if the device is stolen, and the Send-to-Kindle feature doesn't seem to ensure any level of privacy.

Update January 4, 2025.I turned on my Kindle Scribe to jot down a note, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a new software upgrade that made my old scribe appear shiny and new. I'd read some articles that said the software upgrade was going to happen but I was skeptical because why wouldn't Amazon want to make customers upgrade to the newest model. The more I have used my scribe the more I like it. Now with the upgraded features I like it all the more. Now my scribe does most of the things I wished it could do when I wrote my first review. I am appreciative of Amazon making the updates in the new Kindle scribe available to us early adopters of the scribe. Because of what you have done I'll likely be a Kindle e-book/notebook customer for life.Review completed early 2024The Kindle Scribe does a lot but not everything I wish it could do. My first focused use of the Scribe was the notebook. I took notes from a physical paperback math book (not available digitally) and then worked practice problems at the end of the section/chapter using the Scribe as my pencil and paper. The scribe's screen froze on me many times and the only way to fix the situation was to restart the Kindle. This seemed to happen most often when I was using the lasso tool to copy and paste something to a new page. When taking notes, I'm disappointed that I cannot copy text and paste it into the sticky note. The only way to do this is to type or write the quote on the sticky note and if the note covers up the text you can't do that without writing the quote on a piece of paper and then typing it into the sticky note. When creating a new notebook, you can choose a template, however, every page in the notebook will have the same template. You cannot change templates within a notebook- that I know of. You can type a sticky note and write a sticky note in the same location, but you cannot write and type on the same sticky note. I wish I could paste a quote on a sticky note and then write my thoughts about the quote all on the same sticky note. Having to always tap the hand or the pen to switch from writing to the ability to turn to the next page is a nuisance. I found it interrupted my writing flow to have to tap to switch to the hand, then tap to turn the page, then tap to change back to pen to write. However, I will say that the more I executed this page turn/write sequence the less bothersome it became. I wish that a page turn tap could exist at the bottom corners of the page so all you'd have to do is tap to turn the page and then keep writing. I also noticed that with using the notebook, the battery drains faster. This is a Kindle I know listening and reading books is going to be great! I haven't done that much yet as I wanted to see if the notebook would meet my need to write notes and complete practice exercises. It can and it does a good job of that, I no longer need scratch paper when solving equations. I think with the integration of other apps like Readwise and Notion I'll be able to read write/type my thoughts, and consolidate it all into a central location that I can refer to when needed.Finally, I understand that the Kindle Scribe is a tool. As with any other tool you have to know when/how to use it to get the the most benefit from it. This is not at the level where it replaces the ease of writing with paper and pencil- in my opinion. (It probably took me twice as long to write notes and do practice problems on the Kindle vs writing with pencil and paper.) The Scribe does make it easier along with other tools to find what you write so that you can further synthesize your thoughts into concise, pithy summaries you can locate and review at a later date. At least that's what I'm hoping it will do. I concede that since this was my first time using the notebook, I had a bit of a learning curve. With time it may not take me as long to write with the Scribe. I rated the Kindle Scribe a 5 because it does what it says it will do. It just doesn't do all the things I wish it would do- yet. It does a lot, but don't throw your pencil and paper away.