Amazon's New Kindle Scribe: AI-Enhanced Writing and Annotation Features

Kindle Scribe hands-on: You can scribble on your books

AI and annotations help the Scribe more closely mimic real books and notebooks. Seventeen years is an odd anniversary to call out. But at an event launching four new Kindles, Amazon's head of devices and services Panos Panay reminded a group of media that "Kindle is 17 years in the making, almost to the day." Panay added that the device is currently seeing its highest sales numbers, and that 20.8 billion pages are read each month on a Kindle. But people aren't just reading on Kindles. Since the introduction of the Kindle Scribe in 2022, there has been even more development in e-paper writing tablets, with a notable recent product in the reMarkable Paper Pro. While that $580 device supports a color writing experience, Amazon's Kindle Scribe still only works in black and white. But it might offer enough by way of software updates to make up for its monochrome manner. Plus, being able to write on what's already a popular ereader makes that book-like experience even more realistic, and the Kindle Scribe represents what Panay called the "fastest growing category" of Kindles. You could almost call it a 2-in-1, since it's an ereader and writing tablet at once. "I have a lot of passion around 2-in-1s," Panay said at his presentation, and he used that term repeatedly to describe the Kindle Scribe. I haven't thought about it that way, but I was less worried about semantics and more about how the Kindle Scribe and its new features felt at a hand-on session yesterday. I'm the sort of person that needs to physically write out something while I plan a project. Whether it's lofty goals to get my life together or draft up a strategy for covering certain software releases at work, my hands grasp at the air for an imaginary pen and paper. For that reason, the Kindle Scribe and other writing tablets call out to me. I reviewed the original Kindle Scribe almost two years ago and since then Amazon has slowly expanded the feature set and made the device more useful. With the original Scribe, Amazon got a lot of the basics right. The latency and smoothness of the writing experience were close to feeling like pen and paper, and the device felt sturdy and slick. The new Scribe felt very similar in that sense, with little noticeable difference in the way the stylus interacted with the screen, and I didn't encounter any jarring lag in the brief time I had with it. Where the Scribe left me wanting more was software, and that's also the area Amazon appears to have focused on this year. Don't get me wrong -- it's not like the company didn't tweak the hardware. There are some refinements like new white borders, a smaller grip, different color options and an updated stylus with a soft-tip top that feels more like a conventional eraser. But inside the device lie the more intriguing changes. Most significant in my opinion is the new Active Canvas. It directly addresses one of my biggest complaints in my review, which is that the writing experience within books and publications was a little wonky. To quote myself, this was what I said in 2022: "You can also take down notes when you're reading an e-book. But it's not like you can scribble directly onto the words of your e-books. You can use the floating toolbox to create a sticky note, then draw within a designated rectangle. When you close the sticky note, a small symbol appears over the word it was attached to, but otherwise, your scribbles are hidden. No annotating in the margins here." All of that has changed with the new Kindle Scribe. When you're in an e-book, you can now just start writing on the page, and a box will appear, containing your scribbles. You no longer need to first find the floating toolbox and select the sticky note tool. Just write. It's so much simpler, and in the Kindle Scribe I played with it worked almost instantly. Not only is the box embedded within the text, with the book's words rearranging and flowing to accommodate it, but you can also resize the rectangle to take up however much space you like. The rest of the page will reflow to make room as necessary. I was particularly impressed by how quickly this happened on the demo unit -- it was more responsive than switching between notebooks on my existing Scribe. Plus, the box containing your note will stay in place instead of being hidden and replaced by a small symbol. It's clear that Amazon's earlier implementation was a rudimentary workaround to allow people to write on fixed format media, whereas the new approach is more deeply integrated and thought out. And unlike what I said two years ago, you can now annotate in a new collapsible margin. Tapping the top right corner brings up options to pull up the column, and you can choose from having it take up about a quarter of the width or spread out to about three quarters. Content in the margin will be scrollable, so you theoretically won't run out of space. Now, this isn't a perfect replica of annotating on a real textbook, but it might be better since you won't have to scrawl all around the borders or write upside down just to squeeze in your thoughts. I'm not sure yet, as I really need to spend more time with it to know, but I like that Amazon clearly has taken in feedback and thought about how to add these requested features. The company also added the ability to use the Pen and directly highlight or underline within those books, and pretty much any Kindle title will support most of these features. They'd have to be content that allows for font resizing, to start, so things like PDFs, which are fixed, won't work with the Active Canvas. Word documents are compatible as well. I spend more time writing in blank notebooks than in actual books, and for those scenarios, Amazon is using generative AI in two new tools: Summarization and Refined Writing. The former is pretty straightforward. If you've handwritten 10 pages worth of brainstorming meeting notes, the system can scan all of it and collate just the highlights. You can have this be added as a page to the existing notebook as a summary, or save it as a separate document on its own. Refined Writing, meanwhile, is like Apple's Handwriting Assist on iPadOS 18 but on a larger scale. While Apple's software feels like it's about nipping and tucking stray words that are out of alignment, Amazon's takes your entire handwritten page and converts it into text in a script-like font. This works best if you tend to write in a single column with clear indentations and paragraphs. I tend to draw random boxes all over the place for breakout thoughts, and the system will not perfectly replicate that. For example, a two-column shopping list I quickly drafted on a demo Scribe was merged into one, and the checkboxes I drew were interpreted as capital letter Ds that were inserted at the start of every bullet. It might not seem immediately useful, but if you're the sort of person that's shy about their handwriting, this could save you some shame. More importantly, it can make you writing more legible in case you need to share, say, your screenplay treatment with a production partner. Or if your scrawled shopping list just isn't making sense to your partner. I also like that even after you've converted your notes into text, you can still erase them using the top of the pen and make edits. You'll have to run Refined Writing again to regenerate a neatly formatted page. Oh, and I appreciate the flexibility you get here. You'll have a few fonts and sizes to choose from, and can select the pages you want to reformat or have the entire book done up altogether. None of the notebook features are destructive, meaning you'll usually be able to retain your original written content and save the generated material as addendums. The AI work is done in the cloud, with your data being encrypted throughout the process. The Kindle Scribe also displays an animated page showing it's busy with the generative AI task, which in my experience so far took at least 10 seconds. It might be different on the original Kindle Scribe, which will also be getting these software features either later this year or, in the case of the expandable margins, in early 2025 when it arrives on the new Kindle Scribe. In its 17 years, the Kindle has done a lot to disrupt physical books, and since the introduction of the Scribe, it's been poised to do the same for notebooks. As someone who's relished being able to carry around the equivalent of a thousand books in a super thin device, the idea of replacing a bunch of notebooks with a Scribe is immensely intriguing. Amazon does find itself up against some stiff competition from reMarkable and Boox, but it has its sheer size and the power of its Kindle library in its favor. The Kindle Scribe will be available in December for a starting price of $400, and I hope to have a review unit in soon enough to see if I love or hate the new annotation and AI features.

Hands on: Amazon Kindle Scribe 2024: An excellent 2-in-1 eReader gets annotation and a healthy infusion of AI

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test. If the main thing holding you back from buying the 2-in-1 Amazon Kindle Scribe was that it wouldn't let you scribble on books or in the margins, I have some good news for you. Amazon's latest Kindle adds markup capabilities (of a sort) and throws in a subtle yet spiffy redesign for the big-screen eReader and notetaker and its stylus companion. There's even a small yet important helping of generative AI. Amazon unveiled the 2024 Kindle Scribe on October 16 along with a new Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, and its first color E Ink device, the Kindle Colorsoft. The Kindle Scribe lists for $399.99 and will ship in December. Amazon Kindle Scribe has never been your typical Kindle e-reader. At 10.2 inches, the screen is more than three inches larger than the biggest Kindle screen (currently the new 7-inch Paperwhite). In addition to touch, it supports high-precision pen input thanks to a Wacom Digitizer panel below the surface. The new Amazon Kindle Scribe 2024 edition doesn't change any of that. Size, weight, and specs are the same as last time, but the reader does look different all the same. The metal body is now a brighter green and, in an unheard-of move, Amazon surrounded the display with a wide white border. As Amazon's Kindle VP Kevin Keith told me, it is much harder to hide things like components and sensors behind a thick white bezel. Still, I get the intention; that white border is intended to make the thin and light e-reader look even more like a giant white piece of paper. It's a pretty good effect. The Pen probably got a bigger redesign, with refined looks and now an elastomer eraser nub on the back end that feels like a real eraser when used on the Scribe's screen. The E Ink display remains a wonder. It has just enough roughness to feel like paper and that's especially effective when you put the new stylus to work on it. There's just enough friction to feel like you're dragging a real pen across paper. When you combine it with the 300 ppi resolution and near-zero latency, it's easy to forget that you're writing and drawing on a digital panel and not real, if slightly gray, paper. These capabilities are largely unchanged from the original Scribe, though the redesigned pen does feel better in the hand, and the eraser is now fun to use. Though I was surprised that when I erased digital ink, the little rubber nub seemed to leave some actual elastomer crumbs on the display - this may be taking verisimilitude a tad too far. While my hands-on time was brief, it was enough that I could try out writing, reading, and drawing on the large display. It's all quite satisfying, but it's also not necessarily what defines this new Amazon Kindle Scribe. The new Kindle introduces Active Canvas, which finally adds some in-book notetaking to the Scribe experience. It was not live yet on most of the demo units I tried, but I got a few solid demonstrations and think that this will please those who thought the original Scribe was lacking this key feature. Active Canvas is simple. If you want to annotate a book, you can just start writing right on top of the section in the book. As you write, the text under where you're writing fades away, and then a box appears, and the book text automatically flows around it. You select a check to set the box, which you can then resize, but more importantly, that annotation remains anchored to the text in the book. I watched as an Amazon rep resized the font, and the annotation held fast. Amazon is also adding expanded margins for annotations that will similarly anchor to positions in the book. That feature, which I did see working in demos, will ship sometime after Amazon ships the Scribe. The Amazon Kindle Scribe wouldn't be a new product in 2024 if it didn't get a little dollop of AI. In this case, it's a two-pronged attack: Refinement and Summarization. Again, I could not try these features out for myself, but I did watch closely as another Amazon rep demonstrated them. Refinement seems tailor-made for me and my very messy handwriting. The Scribe has extensive note-taking features, but I find it fairly useless if all my notes are not organized or clarified in some fashion. The Refinement feature is a good first step. It uses a cloud-based generative AI to read and clean up my notes. The process, which starts with you selecting a little quasar-like icon in the upper right corner of the screen, takes 15-to-20 seconds and sends the encrypted data to Amazon's Bedrock Gen AI server. The system returns an incredibly cleaned-up version of your notes. They look handwritten, but that's because they're now in Amazon's custom handwriting font, which can be easily resized. This process certainly makes the notes more glanceable, but I think it's the Summarization feature that will change things the most for avid Kindle Scribe notetakers. It goes through the same process of selecting the AI icon, but you then have to choose if the system is to summarize the current page or all your pages in that note file. I, naturally, would always choose the latter. What's returned looks like a brief, handwritten, and concise summarization of what can be quite lengthy and messy notes. Unlike your own handwritten notes, it's the kind of thing that you might be comfortable sharing with coworkers. Amazon uses a variety of LLMs (large language models) to figure out all handwritten notes. When I asked Amazon Kindle VP Kevin Keith which LLMs it was employing he demurred, telling me instead, "We continually look for the best models, and that's what's great about Bedrock. You can change out different models." There was, by the way, no mention of Alexa AI or Alexa AI integration in these new Scribe tools, which is a shame but perhaps we'll see it in future Scribe and its Gen AI updates. Because Amazon Kindle Scribe uses Wacom digitizing technology, the Scribe Pencil needs no power source. So, while you can magnetically attach it to the side of the e-reader, it doesn't need that connection to juice up. The pen could be unattached for months and still work. That's pretty impressive when you consider all this pen can do. It's got a high degree of pressure sensitivity, tilt recognition, and a newly redesigned eraser. In my experience, the latency was essentially zero. It kept up with fast and slow strokes. It's fun to use, and that big canvas cries out for an illustration. It's also nice that the pen ships with the Kindle Scribe. Amazon Kindle Scribe is rated for 12 weeks of battery life, but that's if you keep the WiFi off. Your battery life will also vary based on how often you use the lights to illuminate the reflective screen in the dark and how much you annotate your books. Still, battery life will invariably be "weeks" and not "days" or "hours" with a Kindle. Unlike some of the smaller Kindles like the new Paperwhite and Colorsoft, the Scribe is not water resistant, so just keep that in mind if you take it to the pool or beach.

Kindle Scribe (2024) hands-on: AI and a new pen make this tablet much more remarkable

Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate. When the original Kindle Scribe debuted last year, it was the first of Amazon's ereaders with pen support, turning what was a device for consuming into one that could be used for creation. The 2024 Kindle Scribe -- introduced along with three other new Kindle tablets -- has refined that original design, with a newer, more responsive interface, a more pen-like writing experience, and some AI-enhanced features to make more sense of your handwriting. It looks to supplant the ReMarkable as the best e-reader for writers; I had a chance to go hands-on with the new tablet to see how it could compare. The Kindle Scribe will go on sale on December 4, 2024, for $399. It will be available in two colors: black and a metallic teal, which really pops when you see it in person. The tablet will also come with a color-matching pen, which attaches magnetically to the side of the device. That's a bit of an increase from the original Scribe, which cost $339 with 16GB of storage and came with a Basic Pen. Amazon also offered the original Scribe in 32GB and 64GB capacities for $389 and $419, respectively. Like the original, the second-gen Kindle Scribe is roughly the size of a piece of paper, with a bezel that's slightly thicker along one of the long sides, so you can grip it while you're writing. Unlike the ReMarkable tablet and the new Kindle Colorsoft, the Scribe is a black-and-white affair, with a 300 ppi resolution. Overall, the tablet felt very comfortable to hold, and its display was incredibly easy to view, even in direct sunlight. The Premium Pen has gained a bit of heft since the original, but also was very easy to use. Amazon modified both the tip of the Pen and the screen on the Scribe to give it a more pen-like writing experience; even the eraser on the end of the Pen has been updated, and feels more rubbery, so that when you go to erase something, it's as if you were using an old Ticonderoga #2. While we wait for Enhanced Alexa, Amazon is introducing AI into its tablets. While a much more limited form, the AI capabilities on the Kindle Scribe look to be very useful for writers who have chickenscratch for handwriting or take copious notes. Within the Notebook app are two AI-powered features. The first, called Refined Writing, will analyze all of your handwritten notes, and convert them into something more legible. The second feature, called Summarize, will also look at all of your writing, and then distill it into a one-page summary of all the key points. In my hands-on time with these features, they seemed to work well, though it took anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds for the notes to be analyzed and results returned. For both features to work, the Scribe has to be connected to the Internet, as your notes are uploaded to the cloud to be analyzed -- it's not done on the device itself. However, Amazon said that your notes are encrypted. Note-taking looks to be much improved on the second-gen Scribe, as the notes and annotations you make within a book are much less disruptive overall, and are kept in the proper context. As you're reading a book, you can simply start writing overtop a sentence or paragraph, and the Scribe will create a small box with your handwritten note, and then automatically flow the text of the book around it. Moreover, your note will remain attached to that particular paragraph, so that it will retain its context if you resize the text of the book. You can also now write notes in the margins of your books too; just tap a small icon on the right (or left) side, and a blank column the length of the screen appears, allowing you to write freely. As with the other notes, this too will be pinned to the spot in the book where you started writing it, so you won't lose its context if the book changes. For those looking for an alternative to an iPad for note-taking, the Kindle Scribe could be what writers are looking for. At $399, it's $100 less than the just-announced iPad mini, and $180 less than the ReMarkable tablet. What I'm most interested in checking out more fully is the Scribe's AI-powered features; if it can reliably convert my truly awful handwriting into something that's legible -- and then summarize those notes well -- then the Scribe could become something more than a glorified notebook. We're hoping to get our review unit soon, so stay tuned.

I tried the new Kindle Scribe and these are the exciting new features you'll love | Stuff

The Kindle Scribe is slightly different to other Kindles because it's not just about reading, it's about writing too - here's all the best bits about the new 2nd gen model Amazon has given its Kindle family the biggest makeover in its history, refreshing the compete line-up. It starts with the entry-level Kindle which is faster and brighter. Then there's the new Kindle Paperwhite which is faster with a larger display. That's joined by the Kindle Colorsoft which adds a colour display and then finally you have the big one, the Kindle Scribe. The Kindle Scribe is slightly different to other Kindles because it's not just about reading, it's about writing too. For some people, Scribe might only be about writing, but it has versatility that other Kindles don't. It has found popularity with students, for example, who want to annotate textbooks, while creatives love being able to come up with ideas, without creating stacks and stacks of notebooks or waste paper. The Kindle Scribe (2nd gen) gets a healthy update in its new guise, but fear not: if you own the original Scribe, you'll be getting some of these features via a software update in the future. While the hardware is much the same as it was before in terms of the design, the new Kindle Scribe has a white bezel. This is designed to boost the notebook feeling of this device, like when you've got a fresh sheet of paper in front of you. It's supposed to help the device blend into the background so you can focus on the writing and I did find to felt more open and inviting. The previous Scribe came in a grey colour, but now there's a lovely green model too. The display of the Scribe is designed to feel like paper with a texture to the surface that's distinctly different to a tablet. When you swipe your hand over the screen it's smooth, it doesn't feel like you're slightly stuck to it as you might with on the glass surface of an iPad for example. Combined with a new pen - which comes with five tips - the feeling is designed to be more like writing on paper. Amazon told me they went through 50 different surfaces before they reached the optimal finish for the Scribe. That includes the fine detail of the friction when you swipe the pen over it, which makes it sound like writing on paper. The response is instant too so it really feels like you're writing directly on the surface. When it comes to annotating books, the Scribe now offers two clever elements. The first is something called Active Canvas. This allows you to write directly on the book that you're reading or studying. You can just grab the pen and start writing over the top. The "Active" part of the equation comes into it because the text can then flow around your notes. That means they're not hidden away - your own thoughts become part of that existing text, so they're always there for you, exactly where they are supposed to be. Or you can open up a margin and take notes down the side of the page, expanding it across the text. The good thing about both these annotation methods is that if you change the font size of the book, for example, your notes stay on the right page, because they're anchored there. That's right, the Kindle Scribe now features artificial intelligence. But it's not just thrown in to the mix because it's trendy. There's a new feature called Refined Writing that's AI-powered. Rather than taking your notes and converting them into text, Kindle Scribe now offers to turn them into cleaner writing. There are several styles, but importantly they still look like handwriting. It's a little like Smart Script that's in iPadOS 18, but it doesn't happen in real time you have to select it to make it happen - it then magically converts your notes into neat writing. The second AI feature is Summarize. Yes, that seems to be what AI is good for, appearing in Apple Intelligence, Google Gemini and everywhere else. But here it makes perfect sense: if you scribble a load of notes during a meeting, you can tap the Summarize option and it will sort through your notes and present a concise written summary for you. You can then share this summary or add it to your notebook, so you don't have to read through all of your scrawl. Both these latter options use AI in the cloud, so there's a brief pause while it processes, but from the demos I've seen, it's quick, accurate and looks useful. The new Kindle Scribe will be available from 4 December, priced at $339/£379.99 and is available to pre-order now.