The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft Has Replaced My iPad—And Half of My Go-To Gadgets

Thinner than a magazine, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is both an eReader and writing tool (that you can use to draw, write or take notes). It comes with a premium (battery-free!) pen for said scrawling, and you can edit PDFs and Word docs with it. The Colorsoft integration adds subtle vibrance to each page and lets you draw more vividly—and highlight or color code things for better organization.

Fast Facts

• Battery Life: up to 8 weeks
• Size: 11”
• Storage: 32 or 64 GB, depending on model

Kindle excels for its paper-like reading experience. The screen has the grayish look of newsprint, with 300 PPI color e-ink that’s easy on the eyes. There’s less glare, and there’s more of a matte finish to the screen that makes flipping the pages feel more paper-like. As a result, while I often download books and never really read them on my phone or iPad, here, I devoured chapter after chapter. (And it’s easy to read whether you’re outdoors or in, though it’s worth noting that the Scribe Colorsoft doesn’t have Dark Mode yet. That’s expected to roll out as a software update in the future.)

Like other Kindles, you’ll have full access to the Kindle Library, as well as access library books via Libby, using the “Read with Kindle” feature. (You can also pay $12/month for Kindle Unlimited, granting you access to more than 4 million books, audiobooks and magazines.)

But the big improvement, to me, was less! Screen! Flashing! My daughter has a Kindle Colorsoft Kids, and while she groans that she can’t draw with her device, my gripe is that the screen flashes often as you pull down navigation bars and flip pages. While I know this is a feature of e-ink, meant to help reset the page and prevent ghost images or copy from previous pages from staying on-screen, it always feels glitchy to me, like the digital equivalent of a mosquito buzzing in your face. It’s much rarer with the Scribe Colorsoft, in my experience.

My Apple Pencil is always dead. And I hate that I have to plug it into my iPad to charge it. And that I needed to buy a special case to keep it tethered to my iPad so I don’t lose it. Oh, and it’s sold separately.

While the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is more expensive—and doesn’t offer the same degree of app integration and web browsing as the iPad—I appreciate that it excels at its tightened focus, and the pen is no exception. It doesn’t require charging, magnetically connects to the side of the device when it’s not in use and comes with a spare set of tips, so it always feels like you’re writing with a freshly sharpened pencil. I haven’t had any lag or flashing while writing or drawing, and you can choose from 10 pen colors and five highlighters to make your thoughts (or sketches) stand out.

As a result, I soon found I wasn’t just taking notes in books I was reading; I started creating notebooks for every facet of my life, so I could have everything from meeting notes to special projects within reach—and all easy to search. I even started designing my own planner on Canva to use with it, and I journal with it, eliminating a whole stack of notebooks that typically crowd my nightstand.

You can also share your notes to Alexa and have the smart assistant help summarize them, turn them into a priority-based to-do list or scan them for reminders or events to add to your calendar for you.

There Is a Bit of a Learning Curve

Kindle newbies have experienced it: Where is the back button on this thing?! Tapping the top to make the back button appear was less intuitive to me than the other features, and the occasional (yet necessary) e-ink flashing can be a bit of a drag, especially considering the price point. At $680, this isn’t a casual, impulse buy. You have to really think through how often you’ll use it and whether it really will replace your standard notebooks, planners and TBR stack. That said, the quality of the device—and its portability—helped tip the scales in my eyes. A cheaper gadget means nothing if I don’t actually use it.

From the moment I started using this, I found myself thinking, I wish I had this in college. Just the ability to annotate things I was reading, create notebooks for every class and student organization I was in, and read on the quad, would’ve been amazing.

Although adult me feels like it’s an even better gift for parents—it’s helping me prepare for the Maycember chaos, when work projects and my kids’ end-of-year activities hit a fever pitch, while offering moments of respite, where I can unplug and read or brain-dump ideas. That is, if my 7-year-old doesn’t try to steal it first.