When it comes to ebook readers, one brand rules the roost. While efforts have been made by a number of companies to come out with gadgets to serve ebookworms their literary diet, none has been as successful as Amazon’s Kindle series. So much so that for many people ebooks are synonymous with the Kindle. So, how does the new Kindle Scribe fare?
One of the reasons for the success of the Kindle has been its sheer simplicity. In an era where gadgets talk of having AMOLED displays with 10-bit colours and high refresh rate, it seems right out of the nineties with its greyscale e-ink display. It is a touchscreen, but cannot play videos or animations of any kind and is not even the easiest to type on, as e-ink displays respond comparatively slightly slowly to touch than LCD or AMOLED ones. You cannot install any third-party apps on it and while it does have a very basic browser of sorts on board, its utility is limited. A Kindle ebook reader is primarily designed for reading books.
It is the one thing that it is designed to do, and it does so magnificently as we explained in an earlier article. In fact, the Kindle’s inability to do anything else is a bit of an asset as when you are reading on Kindle, you are not disturbed by notifications or calls, as can happen if you try to read on a tablet or a phone.
Amazon has made a few experiments with the form factor of the Kindle and has regularly improved the hardware but has by and large not touched the basic functionality of the device (apart from switching from type to touch a few years ago).
Moving beyond reading to writing
That changed a few days ago when Amazon launched the Kindle Scribe. In terms of change, this is perhaps the most radical makeover of the Kindle since it introduced touch more than a decade ago, with the Kindle Touch in 2011.
The Kindle Scribe is actually very unlike any Kindle that we have seen before. It features a 10.2-inch display, the largest seen on a Kindle ebook reader, and weighs about 433 grams — that puts it closer to a tablet than an e-book reader, although it remains almost square-ish in shape.
This is the first Kindle since the short-lived Kindle DX that is designed to be carried more in a bag than in an overcoat pocket.
Its size might be the first thing that will get noticed but the Scribe is not just a larger Kindle. It is also the first Kindle that comes with a stylus.
We could use snub-tipped capacitive styluses with older touchscreen Kindles too, but those were at best suitable for navigation and the odd typing session.
The stylus that comes with the Kindle Scribe is a very different one. It has a sharp-ish tip and is designed for writing on that e-ink display. You get two variants — the Basic Pen or the Premium Pen, which comes with a nifty eraser on the back (a bit like the Surface Pen). Both let you scribble on that larger display of the Kindle Scribe, making it, to use Amazon’s own tagline for it, “the first Kindle for reading and writing.”
The device itself will be released on November 30, but from what we know the stylus is incredibly easy to use. It requires no charging and attaches to the side of the Scribe. At the time of writing this article, the stylus of the Kindle Scribe will let users add handwritten notes and highlights to books on the device.
More interestingly, users will be able to use the stylus to make notes on PDF files and even add sticky notes on MS Word documents and other supported file formats. These documents can be sent to the Scribe through a desktop browser or through the Kindle app on iOS and Android. As per Amazon, users will also be able to send MS Word documents directly to the Kindle in early 2023.
Is the Kindle set to go Pro?
Just how well the stylus will work will be known only when the device is released and reviewed (there are no dates or prices for India yet), but even with the information we know so far, there is no doubt that Amazon is looking to take its ebook reader well beyond ebook reading, and bring it a step closer to being a more productive device.
We could always read MS Word and PDF files on a Kindle in the past, but what we could do with them was a little limited and anyway, typing on the touchscreen was always a challenge. The Scribe seems to be designed to address this.
A person with a Kindle Scribe can potentially add notes not just to books but also to documents sent to them and write directly on PDF files. Using the stylus also promises to be a lot more comfortable than the “tap, pause, tap again” typing process on existing Kindle readers.
Kindle Scribe changes the value proposition of the Kindle as we know it, moving it from a relatively passive viewing tool to a more interactive one that lets you do more, and not just with books but with other documents as well.
In some ways, it takes away the invisible “do not disturb, I am reading” sign that was suspended over any person reading on a Kindle. There is now the very real prospect of your reading now being interrupted by some sort of work.
Everyone likes big screens and even bookworms like to scribble
How effective the Scribe is likely to be as a note and scribble tool will, however, depend on the implementation of the stylus. E-ink displays are notorious for being a little erratic in this regard. Lenovo had very mixed results when it tried placing an e-ink keyboard in its Yoga Book five years ago, and it will be interesting to see how Amazon handles the stylus challenge, especially as no one has done more with e-ink displays than it has.
If Amazon handles it well and makes writing and sketching a smooth and speedy experience, the Scribe could well emerge as a sort of Kindle Pro edition, for those who want to have the option of the odd writing and editing session even when away from their computers.
Regular Kindle users also might like the idea of having a stylus to highlight and underline sections of books (which requires a fair amount of patience right now). The larger display will also attract those who want a larger surface to read on — magazines and graphic novels can appear a little cramped on the 6/6.8/7-inch displays of the existing Kindle devices.
Of course, the larger form factor also means a larger battery, ensuring that the Kindle Scribe continues the Kindle tradition of “use for days on a single charge.” There is immense potential here.
Is this the Kindle future? (You can get an iPad for less!)
For all its potential, the Kindle Scribe faces a massive challenge — its extremely premium pricing.
At $339.99 ($369.99 with the Premium Pen), the starting price of the Kindle Scribe is not only almost twice that of the Kindle Oasis, which starts at $179.99, but it is also actually more expensive than the base iPad, which starts at $329, but comes with no stylus.
The iPad is not as good for reading books as the Kindle, but it is a far more powerful productivity tool and is capable of handling video, gaming, and a whole lot more.
All of which makes us feel that while the Kindle Scribe is perhaps the most radically different Kindle we have seen for a long time, it is likely to be an adjunct to the main line of Kindle readers, which start at as low as $99.99, for the coming few years.
However, if the Scribe succeeds, we could not only see its own features and functions expanding, but also see the Pen making its way to other Kindle devices. After all, it took three years for Amazon to put touchscreens on all its Kindles. The Kindle Scribe could well be a precursor of what the Kindle and other e-book readers could become.
But a lot depends on how well it performs out of the traditional Kindle box. Is writing the right away ahead for the Kindle? Only time will tell.