The Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is having an expensive identity crisis

I've loved e-readers and E Ink devices ever since I got my first Kindle as a present way back in 2012. I used that Kindle Keyboard to death, before moving on to a newer Paperwhite. I've reviewed several generations of Kindle since, as well as taking on Kobo as my main personal e-reader platform of choice when not reviewing them professionally.

E-readers are most successful in their simplicity: everything fades away and you can read without distraction. Even though it's a digital device, a Kindle is a respite from the incessant 24/7 ping of your smartphone. The best Kindles get out of my way and let me plough through books.

This is all to say I was very excited to review the Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, an 11-inch tablet Kindle that merges the high-end Scribe and Colorsoft lines into a new model. I've previously used the Scribe line, which offers a large display and pen for note taking, as well as the recent Colorsoft, which is a Paperwhite with a colour screen, a Kindle first in 2024.

Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks with the device, it feels like several bridges too far for most prospective buyers.

First, the Scribe Colorsoft is the most expensive Kindle ever, costing from an eye-watering £569.99 for 32GB storage (64GB is £629.99). That puts it out of reach for all but the most dedicated E Ink fans.

It's also a hard sell for general tablet buyers when an iPad costs £329. Amazon is asking you to spend more than £200 extra on a tablet that does less.

But more pressingly, the Scribe line has morphed fully to be primarily a note taking device, a large digital notebook to store personal and professional scribblings on, with AI tools and cloud storage integration. This is a response to the boom in E Ink notetaking tablets from firms such as reMarkable and Boox, but on a Kindle, it serves to completely reverse the best part of an e-reader, which is for it to be distraction-free.

Yes, you can read your Kindle books on the Scribe Colorsoft. But the large screen is the least comfortable to do so on compared to the other current Kindles, all of which are cheaper and much more portable. Get a book up on here and there's so much text it feels like you're holding and reading the Declaration of Independence. Enlarge the font size and it looks comical - it's lose lose.

As a piece of hardware, the Scribe Colorsoft is excellent. The design is now symmetrical, unlike older Scribes' uneven borders, and the metal unibody frame feels every bit as premium as you would hope considering the price. The 'Kindle' branding on the front is subtle, but not so on the back. Thankfully, the word 'Amazon' isn't emblazoned anywhere, plus there are mercifully no lockscreen ads, unlike on some versions of cheaper Kindle models.

The tablet comes with Amazon's Premium Pen included with some spare nibs, which you have to replace from time to time as they naturally wear down. The pen can be used as a stylus for tapping about the software, or as an actual pen for scrawling on e-books or writing notes. The former is handy if you enjoy writing in the margins of actual books, but the experience isn't seamless enough.

Where rival Kobo lets you write anywhere on any e-book page on its competing pen-ready e-readers, Amazon does not. Instead, you can tap to pop out a window that covers up text to write in the margin. Or, you can write directly on the page, but when you tap the tick icon to save the note, it turns into a text box and the paragraphs of texts shift to fit around it.

Perhaps this will appeal to the notetaker in you, especially if you like things in neat boxes. But I would prefer it if Amazon offered the option to draw directly onto book pages like, you know, a book. The box method feels too clunky, and discouraged me from writing notes in books.

Maybe that's because Amazon doesn't want to sell the Scribe Colorsoft as a Kindle in the first place, despite the name. In all the marketing press images, there are no shots of the Kindle being used as an e-reader with a novel like with the Kindle Paperwhite. Instead, we are met with images of pie charts, annotated PDFs, notebooks with sketches and professional to-do lists.

This is an E Ink productivity tablet. When viewed through this lens, it's quite a good one, with the added bonus of it syncing your Kindle library. It also has excellent battery life - after two weeks of constant use I still had 50 percent left.

But compared to the similarly priced reMarkable Paper Pro, writing on the Scribe Colorsoft is not as satisfying. The resistance between the pen and screen feels less like paper, and though writing on the Kindle is more pleasant than using an Apple Pencil on a glossy glass iPad screen, I prefer the feel of the reMarkable tablets, which are surely the Scribe's main competing devices.

The advantage of colour makes more sense on a screen this size than on the smaller Colorsoft Kindles, especially for comic books and graphic novels. In fact, those after a Kindle for reading that literature will love it, if they can afford the punishing initial cost. Just remember that E Ink colours are naturally more washed out, so this is not a screen as vibrant as an OLED or LCD.

I personally didn't get much extra utility out of having a colour screen when using the Scribe Colorsoft as my work notebook, aside from being able to colour code with highlighters.

More useful is the front light, which makes note taking in the pitch darkness possible, if that's your thing. The recent reMarkable Paper Pure is cheaper at £359, but the lack of any kind of screen light could be a dealbreaker for some.

Amazon has also filled this Kindle's software with AI. That's hard to avoid in 2026, and you might find some of the tools useful, such as being able to summarise entire notebooks into shorter bullet point lists. I also found the handwriting recognition for converting to text accurate, and being able to link to Google Drive or Microsoft's OneDrive or OneNote is quite useful for personal or professional work, whether using the Kindle as a document viewer or annotating PDFs and Word files.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft holds an odd place in the Kindle line up. It's the most expensive Kindle ever made, but is the Kindle I recommend the least to avid book readers. Its price is down to the current cost of large colour E Ink panels, and maybe because of its niche place in the market.

If you like the idea of an E Ink tablet and you want to buy from a familiar brand, you will enjoy the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. It'll mean you can ditch your notebooks - and your paperbacks - and carry around one sleek device to do all your reading and writing on. For graphic novel fans, it's a great pick.

But it's far too expensive, and the large screen means it's not as portable as far cheaper Kindles, and if you really want a digital notebook tablet, the reMarkable Paper Pure will serve your needs for more than £200 less. The last-gen Kindle Scribe is also practically identical for features with a monochrome screen for £379.99.