I just wrestled my way through a throng of wide-eyed journalists, creators, and influencers at Amazon’s big devices event happening today to fondle the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft with color E Ink display. Amazon’s hardware chief, Panos Panay—having brought Microsoft’s Surface into this world—knows a thing or two about making great tablets and stylus pens for them, and during Amazon’s keynote, he repeatedly described how paper-like the writing experience was. So, does color make a difference?
As always, this is just my first impressions and is not a review of the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. I won’t get to review it until the color e-reader launches “later this year.” Still, I have some early thoughts about the hardware, the color display, and the writing/drawing experience.
The hardware has all of Panay’s fingerprints all over it. Whereas the 2024 Kindle Scribe was more of a minor refresh, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (and the non-color version with and without a front light, which I’ll talk about in a bit) is a full-on redesign. At 5.4mm, it’s a hair thinner than the 5.65mm iPhone Air and just imperceptibly thicker than the 5.3mm 13-inch iPad Pro and 5.1mm 11-inch iPad Pro with M4 chips. I didn’t try any bend tests beyond some light flexing, but the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft seemed rigid enough to withstand accidental sits if it’s buried underneath a throw on the sofa.
It’s also noticeably lighter than the 2024 Kindle Scribe: 400g versus 433g. This is something you have to feel in person to understand the weight difference. This is also something that’s important for a device that you may find yourself holding in one hand as your other is wrapped around the stylus.
The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is shorter but wider than the 2024 Kindle Scribe. You may have noticed the bezels around the E Ink display are all symmetrical; one side is no longer thicker than the other. Depending on how you prefer to hold your e-readers, you’re either going to love that the thick bezel is gone or hate it because you no longer have as much space to rest your thumb. The two colors—Graphite and Fig—look nice. I do miss the Metallic Jade colorway, though.
Amazon and Panay threw out a mouthful of tech jargon like a “custom-built oxide-based display” and were heavy on the superlatives in effusing about the colors the E Ink screen could produce. In reality, the colors are more muted than what you’d find on an iPad or Android tablet with an OLED or LCD screen. The 10 “pen colors,” “5 highlighters,” and “shader tool for subtle gradients” are more pastel than vibrant. They’re easy on the eyes, but some people may feel they’re a bit dull. If you’ve seen the regular Kindle Colorsoft, you’ll know what to expect in terms of color reproduction.
It’s also subtle, but the 11-inch display on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft felt a lot larger than the 10.2-inch one in the 2024 non-color model. A bump up of 0.8 inches diagonally may not seem like a lot on paper, but it’s roomier when you take the included “Premium Pen” stylus and start writing or doodling on the display.
So, is the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft and Premium Pen combo like writing on paper? I wouldn’t say so. Don’t get me wrong, the stylus is very responsive and the digital ink comes out of the tip with next to no visible latency, from what I could tell, but the E Ink screen doesn’t have the kind of resistance or scratchiness of an actual pen or pencil on paper. The display is still too smooth. That’s not bad at all, and it’s miles better than dragging a rubber tip on a glass iPad screen, but reMarkable’s Paper Pro and smaller Paper Pro Move feel a little closer to paper-like if you ask me. But we’re really splitting hairs here. So long as there’s no lag for handwriting, highlighting, and drawing—again, there was none in my brief demo—the notetaking experience is not at all hindered.
There are things I couldn’t get a feel for—the weeks of battery life, the storage (32GB or 64GB), the importing of documents from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for markup, exporting notebooks to Microsoft OneNote, etc.—but the key selling points of the hardware all seem improved. I’ll need to really compare it to the reMarkable Paper Pro since they both cost the same $630.
The cheaper and less interesting Kindle Scribe with and without a front light are exactly like they sound. One has a front light that you can turn on and off, and the other doesn’t, which means you can’t use it in the dark. They have the same specs as the Scribe Colorsoft, only the E Ink screen is black and white. You can see that both models have a white bezel compared to the Scribe Colorsoft. If you’re not interested in color on your Kindle Scribe, these are fine.
From a few minutes of playtime, the hardware seems solid. What remains to be seen is whether consumers can stomach the pricing. The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft costs $630 (32GB) and $680 (64GB). The Kindle Scribe with front light costs $500 (32GB) and $550 (64GB). The Kindle Scribe without a front light costs $430. All 2025 Kindle Scribes come with a Premium Pen bundled in the box.
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