Kindle Scribe Colorsoft and Kindle Scribe (3rd Gen) Review (2025)

Smooth writing feel. Easy to use. Color version adds a lot of fun for annotators who want to highlight books or take color-coded notes. Great battery life on both models.

Still can't write directly on ebooks. Priced similarly to more powerful digital notebooks but lacking the range of abilities and accessories. Not a necessary upgrade if you have the second-generation model.

Amazon has been expanding its e-reader lineup over the past year to feature a panoply of color-screen options, and as of today, those options include a Kindle Scribe, Amazon's e-reader that adds digital notebook capabilities and a larger screen to make writing and drawing easier. The new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft arrives with a hefty price tag and bigger screen than the past iteration, and it doesn't arrive alone: a new third-generation regular Kindle Scribe will arrive with it, featuring a matching design but no color screen.

While I like both devices' new home screen and taller, slimmer design, I'm not sure they're worth investing in unless you're desperate for a color Kindle that doubles as a digital notebook. They're good devices overall, but in a saturated space of color-screen e-readers and digital notebooks with better price tags (or more features for a similar price), these new Kindle Scribes aren't necessarily a must-buy.

Generational Throw-Down

While I'm not surprised to see the arrival of a color-screen version of the Kindle Scribe, I am surprised we're already getting a new base Scribe after a new one arrived just last year. This is the third generation of this device, with the original launching back in the fall of 2022. Amazon says it's “always innovating and looking to bring those innovations to customers as quickly as possible," but it still feels like a fast move to replace it so soon.

There are plenty of changes to be seen when comparing these new Scribe models to the old ones, but aside from the color screen, the Kindle Scribe (3rd Gen) and Kindle Scribe Colorsoft are otherwise identical to each other. Both have the new 11-inch screen, with the taller and slimmer form factor that trims off the second-generation model's thick, one-sided bezel that functioned as a handle. Instead, both new Scribes feature a uniform bezel around the entire screen, and the power button has been moved to the upper right-hand side. Both also have a great battery life, though it's worth noting that while the new Scribe maintains the previous version's 12 weeks of battery life for reading, the Scribe Colorsoft has a shorter, eight-week battery life for reading. Both promise up to three weeks of battery life for writing.

There's a new homepage design I really like, which does well to highlight all the best features of the Scribe. There's a premade notebook accessible at the top, called Quick Notes, though you can't write straight onto it, even though it looks that way. Instead, you can tap on it and instantly enter that notebook, and it also provides a visual of what you last wrote. I like using it for the day's to-do list. Then there's a “Jump Back In” section on the right that has your last five things you opened, whether that was an ebook or a digital notebook. Below that, you have rows of books like you'd see on other Kindles, for what's in your library and what else you might want to read. It's a handy starting point, and I like that I can easily access notebooks and books that I've recently used without needing to open different tabs.

Speaking of tabs, the Notebooks tab has been renamed to Workspace—you can sync it with Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive to access your PDFs to mark them up, and you can export the annotated versions. It's a nice feature in theory, but I don't think it's that useful since you can't actually edit the document itself. If you wanted it to reflect, say, edits you need to make on a paper, you'd have to export your marked-up version and then edit your Google Doc separately. It's a fun option if you're strictly an editor, but as a writer, it feels too limited to be super useful.

Both Scribe models come with a stylus, which also has a new look. While the devices are taller and thinner, the stylus is shorter, thicker, and feels a little heavier. There's still a little shortcut button that defaults to highlighter mode (though you can edit it to be something else) and an eraser on the back, but I preferred the lighter feel of the old stylus. The writing feel is nice and smooth with a touch of resistance, though I wouldn't call it as realistic as other digital notebooks I've tried. I don't count that against it, either; I like the smooth feel, and it makes it easy to write in loopy cursive or sketch.

The Colorful Arrival

Of the two Kindles that arrived today, I will admit the Scribe Colorsoft is the more exciting release. It's Kindle's first colorful take on a digital notebook (and the fourth edition to its e-reader collection of Colorsofts), allowing Kindle to finally compete against the colorful options of our favorite digital notebooks from the likes of Kobo and reMarkable.

Like the Colorsoft and other similar colorful e-readers, the Scribe Colorsoft has 150 ppi (pixels per inch) of color, and 300 ppi for black-and-white. It has a new quad-core chip that promises to support both the color screen and various AI features that the Scribe has or will have soon (more on that below). You'll get 10 colors for your pens, including black and gray, and five highlight colors. You're able to use those colors both on the Workspace tab and on your ebooks, allowing you to highlight and underline in any color you choose.

You'll also get a new tool for drawing. You'll get the pen styles that we saw in the previous generation (pen, fountain, marker, and pencil), but now there's a new shader tool that lets you layer light shades of color on top of each other for a more detailed, almost watercolor-like look. I'm not sure this is a tool I'll use often—I wouldn't call the Scribe Colorsoft a true drawing tablet, and would still prefer to draw with Procreate on my old iPad if I were going to work on digital art, but it's a nice feature to have.

Bigger Brain

Both new Kindle Scribes have larger storage capacity (there's no 16 GB option anymore, just 32 GB and 64 GB) and a new quad-core chip that promises to support the various AI-powered features on the Scribe, including things like summarizing your notebook page or refining your writing, both of which you can do on the older Scribe. Newer AI-powered features like Story So Far, which summarizes books you're reading up until the point you've read, and Ask This Book, which lets you ask spoiler-free questions about books you're reading, won't be available until next year.

The usual problem with AI persists in that it can't promise accuracy. I tried summarizing a page about my workout schedule on the new Scribe Colorsoft, but the AI managed to remove one of my day's plans and had mixed results translating words like “lift” and “hoop” thanks to my cursive-like handwriting. As someone who writes a lot of notes, I usually don't find myself reaching for these summary tools. Maybe they're of interest to you, but to me, they're just bloat. I'm looking forward to seeing the summarization tools, but I'm hesitant to trust them.

Marginal Limits

What's not different is my primary complaint about the Kindle Scribe compared to other e-readers that have digital notebook capabilities: You can't write in the margins or directly on the pages. Instead, the Active Canvas feature, which allows for notes around but not on the text, is still the only way to write notes in your ebook of choice. It was something we didn't love about the previous model (8/10, WIRED Recommends), and I'm sad to see that the new edition didn't fix it. I'd personally rather see that ability than all these AI features. You can also add a sticky note or use the expanded margins feature, but it's not the same as how fun it is to write right on the page of my Kobo e-reader. Maybe the fourth generation will fix that for us.

Ultimately, if you already have the second-generation Scribe, I don't think you need to upgrade. The older Scribe will also get the new homepage added to it in 2026. It also bears mentioning that at this price point, you might as well upgrade to a reMarkable tablet, which has more capabilities and accessories to transform it into an e-paper laptop of sorts. What was once a great deal for an e-reader and limited digital notebook is now a pretty big investment for a still-limited device when compared with the competition. I'm sure the pared-down Scribe due next year (without the front light) will bring the price down, but having no front light is a pretty irritating cost if you're someone who uses their device at night or in a darkened classroom or airplane. Neither of the new Kindle Scribes is a bad device, but if you're looking for a great e-reader that doubles as a digital notebook, neither of them would be my go-to pick.