Welcome to Capsule Considers, where we try out and review the latest products on the market and offer our honest, unbiased opinions, free from any obligation or expectation because if you’re parting with your hard-earned money based on any of our recommendations, we’re gonna make sure it’s damn well worth it. Here’s Kelly Bertrand’s Kindle Scribe review: How is it different from your stock-standard Kindle and is it worth the price tag?
I was anti-Kindle until I got a Kindle. I couldn’t for the life of me understand how you could just replace the glimmer that is opening a new book – the feel, the smell, the anticipation!
Surely the convenience of a Kindle couldn’t make up for the loss of that magic?
I was wrong – it totally could. My ‘lil Kindle and I travelled the world together and saved me from in-flight boredom, long airport transit waits and awkward solo-travel moments when you’re alone and need to do something with your hands. It was fitting that we finally parted ways thanks to the bottomless hole that is a plane seat pocket and the three glasses of bubbles that made me forget she was in there.
But thankfully the good people at Amazon must have sensed my loss and sent a similar – but also totally different – product for me to review for you, dear reader. The Kindle Scribe is, of course, a classic Kindle in the sense that it’s an e-reader and it gives you the ability to take your entire library with you wherever you go.
But it’s actually been more useful to me in my everyday life in a completely different way – the ability to write or draw, just like you would on paper.
The Kindle Scribe: Review
First up, what is the damn thing? Let’s start with the basics of the Kindle Scribe – the e-reader itself.
It’s a supersized version which is a positive or negative, depending on your preferences (it’s a little big for my tiny hands but I got used to it!). Ten point two inches is a huge screen (about 26cms) and it’s fantastic for the writing side, but it does take a beat to embrace the big (heh heh). Weight isn’t an issue though – it’s about 430 grams – and is only 5.8m thick.
It features the same e-ink paper-esque screen that Kindles are known and loved for – no glare, no screen blue light and no bright white – and automatically adjusts the brightness and colour tone to suit what time of day it is.
The reading experience is great, the words on page are super-clear and you can change font sizes easily so you don’t have to turn the page as much.
Of course, the Amazon Kindle library is unsurpassed for choice and can even keep up with my eclectic reading taste (I go from autobiographies to trashy chic lit to real crime to romance at the drop of hat).
The Scribe Part of the Kindle Scribe
But where I really fell in love with the Kindle Scribe was the functions I didn’t expect to really use, let alone like.
You can select from different type of notebook templates – thick lined, thin-lined, checklists, dot journals, calendars blank and more – to write directly on to. You can have as many notebooks as you like, and you can organise them into folders for easy organisation.
The writing experience is amazing – it really is like writing on paper. The Kindle Scribe comes with a stylus that you don’t need to charge (thank God – there are WAY too many things I my house that need charging!) and the act of writing, doodling and annotating is brilliant.
If you’re a notes in the margins kind of person, you’ll love the digital sticky notes to add handwritten notes to your books, which are then organised into one place to keep pages clutter free.
Now, the truly jazzy stuff – you can import documents straight from your computer to the Kindle (the Send-to-Kindle feature) and write directly onto PDF documents. AND, you can convert your handwritten notes to text, which you can then send to your computer. MIND BLOWING.
The real appeal here is that for me – someone who writes a lot of notes both for work and to keep my life organised (hello type A personality!) – the Kindle allows me to stay focussed. It’s not a tablet – you can’t just get distracted and open social media or a web browser – and it’s been designed to mimic books and paper as much as it can, without the bulk.
It’s pricier than a normal Kindle – from $619 – so you have to be damn sure that you’ll be using ALL of it’s functions before you part with your hard-earned $$.
But for me, it’s become a valuable tool in my arsenal of tech and I have to admit, I’m obsessed!
