Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: This is the Cadillac of Kindles

Amazon's new Kindle Colorsoft Scribe ($629) is the biggest and most expensive tablet the company has sold yet.

Luckily, Amazon packed a slew of features into this expensive slate. With a big 11-inch e-paper display that lets you view documents in color and a packed-in stylus you can use to highlight passages and jot down notes, you can get a wide variety of reading and creating done on this device.

There's also some level of AI assistance built in, just like there is on the Kindle Scribe. The Colorsoft Scribe uses it to do things like decipher your handwritten notes and summarize them as well as make them searchable, so you can search for something like "vet" and among the search results you'll find the "pick up cat from vet" from your to-do list.

Factor in the built-in backlight, and you start to see why this is one of the best e-readers I've tested in years. Of course, it's also more expensive than an iPad Air.

Is it worth it? The answer depends on what you plan to use it for. I'll walk you through what I mean in this Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review!

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: Cheat sheet

• What is it? The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (2025) is the first Kindle Scribe to let you read and write in (a limited set of) colors.
• Who is it for? This premium Kindle is well-suited for anyone who expects to read and write a lot and likes to do so in color. Students, writers, educators and anyone with $600+ to drop on a Kindle will appreciate it.
• What does it cost? The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is available to purchase via Amazon at a starting price of $629 for the 32GB model, though you can pay an extra $50 ($679) for the 64GB version.
• What do we like? The big, easy-to-read 11-inch screen and the thick stylus are nice, and colors look pretty good on the display, especially with the brightness maxed.
• What don’t we like? This e-reader costs more than an iPad Air yet does less. There's also no waterproofing (avoid the beach), and it's a little annoying that the homepage is full of ads for books and other things to buy on Amazon.

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: Specs

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: The ups

After using the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft for a few days, I'm impressed by how handy this device can be for the right person.

Big 11-inch e-paper screen makes reading easy

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft feels roughly about the same size as the Kindle Scribe (2024) I reviewed last year, but the display is actually bigger at 11 inches vs. 10.2 inches, so it feels even easier to read on than last year's Scribe.

The large e-paper display makes reading documents and comic books easier than on any other Kindle I've used to date. It also gives you enough room to work on documents while opening the expandable margin to take notes, and when doodling with the various colors, it's nice to have all this space.

However, one minor drawback about that is that I find the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft a little tricky to hold without smudging up the screen because the bezels are fairly thin. Not as thin as on an iPad Air, mind you, but still thin enough that if you have big hands or aren't delicate, you will find yourself accidentally tapping the screen occasionally.

I haven't found that to be a problem when doodling since you can typically rest your hand or wrist on the screen without triggering input, but it can be frustrating when reading because accidentally tapping the edge of the screen with your finger can cause your page to flip forward or back, losing your place.

Colors unlock a whole new world of entertainment

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft effectively marries the color e-paper screen of the Kindle Colorsoft with the expanded design and capabilities of the Kindle Scribe, and the screen has a special color filter and light guide (using nitride LEDs) that helps it display colors in a way that feels fairly bright and vibrant.

That effectively unlocks a whole new realm of use for the Scribe family, as you can now read (and annotate) comics, graphic novels and manga in color. And while your comics and images will likely look sharper and more colorful on an iPad, I never felt like I was compromising or settling while reading issues on our Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review unit.

However, I did sometimes need to flip between the two display modes (Standard and Vivid) depending on what I was reading. While you might expect Vivid to deliver better colors across the board, in some cases, I found switching back to Standard mode was better for parsing text or making out details in small images.

Likewise, I really appreciate the option to sketch and take notes in 10 different colors. Admittedly, two of them are black and grey, but the rest are more exciting options like aqua, pink, orange and green. I appreciate that you get some bright colors to work with on the Colorsoft screen, and they show up brighter than colors do on the comparable ReMarkable Paper Pro e-paper tablet I tested last year.

Premium Pen stylus is versatile and comfortable in the hand

I have big hands, which is often a problem when using modern gadgets because they're so gosh darn small. Heck, even this Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is a little too thin for my liking, as being less than a quarter-inch thick makes it tricky for my clumsy paws to keep hold of.

I can't make the same complaint about the thick, chunky stylus that comes with the Colorsoft, which magnetically attaches to the side of the device and is bulging with useful features. It's technically called the Kindle Premium Pen, and in addition to the tip, it has a screen-sensitive rear end you can use to "erase" what you've written, as well as a shortcut button on the side you can customize to your liking.

By default, the shortcut button enables the highlighter tool, so no matter what you're doing, you can quickly squeeze the pen to start highlighting a passage. But I changed that in the system settings so that when I squeeze the pen, I can drag it to turn the page forward or backward, and I'm loving using the stylus itself to interact with the tablet because it feels more accurate and responsive than my fat fingers. Plus, it cuts down on screen smudges!

AI features are nice to have

There are a few AI-driven features built into the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, and while I haven't had enough time with the device to thoroughly test them yet, what I've seen so far seems fairly benign and useful.

In the days I've had with the device, the Scribe Colorsoft has been able to decode my horrid handwriting at least 80-90% of the time. It's nice to be able to scribble down notes and be able to search them later, and I could easily see this form of AI assistance being a boon for folks who love to write by hand.

However, I haven't yet taken enough notes or spent enough time with the device to effectively test the new feature, which lets you "chat" with your notes. This involves using a chat interface to ask questions in natural language (like "what is the screen size" if you have a page of notes about a gadget, for example) and get responses back, with a link to the notebook the answer was sourced from.

In my early testing, I've seen a few (minor) errors in the answers, but again, this product just came out on December 10, so I expect (and hope) the software will improve with time. I also think I need to put down a larger quantity of notes to really put this thing to the test — it seems well-suited to pages and pages of lecture notes or fiction writing, for example, than the few hundred words I've gotten in so far. Stay tuned!

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: The downs

I'm quite fond of the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, but there are some frustrating aspects that you ought to know about before buying one yourself.

Costs more than an iPad Air, does less

I already felt like last year's Kindle Scribe was priced a smidge too high (for what you get) at $399, so the fact that Amazon is asking $629 for the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft feels painful.

I'm torn about how to discuss this because I don't know how much money and effort was spent fine-tuning the Colorsoft display for the Scribe, so I don't want to suggest that you're not getting what you're paying for here.

No, what I'm saying is that you get more for less with other tablets. Apple's 11-inch iPad Air M3 launched earlier this year with a starting price of $599, for example, and right out of the box, an iPad can do a lot more than a Kindle Scribe — including running games, playing music, streaming videos and downloading all sorts of apps.

Of course, the iPad Air doesn't come with a stylus included, but toss in a $129 Apple Pencil Pro and you have a faster, more useful tablet with a better stylus for roughly $730. That's more than any Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, but not much more, so I find it very tricky to understand who the Scribe Colorsoft is for.

Ultimately, I think it really only makes perfect sense for inveterate Kindle Scribe users who are already used to working within Amazon's ecosystem and want the added option to write, doodle and read in color. If that's not you, I suggest considering your alternatives before pulling the trigger on a new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft.

Annotating text is a bit frustrating

I haven't been a fan of the way you annotate text on the Kindle Scribe since I reviewed one, so I'm not surprised that it hasn't changed significantly on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft.

If you're not familiar, there are two main ways you can jot down notes when reading a document: my favorite requires you to open the expandable margin and write down notes there, then close it to hide them until you want to look at them.

The other way to do it is to use the Kindle's Active Canvas feature, which lets you write or draw directly onto a document and have your annotation appear alongside the text. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, I find it irritating to use because the Active Canvas inserts your annotations in ways that break up the text of the document.

So while you can write a note at the end of a paragraph or chapter easily enough, it's annoying to try and do things like edit a student paper because you can't easily annotate a single word or add in a bit of punctuation where it belongs — the Active Canvas automatically moves your annotations off the text and into blank spaces on the page.

This is in disappointing contrast to the ReMarkable Paper Pro ($579) I reviewed, which lets you basically draw a line or letter anywhere on the page and makes it appear to stay right where you made it, no matter how you scroll or adjust the page.

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: Verdict

The new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is, without a doubt, the best Kindle I've ever used. While I wish it was slightly thicker with chunkier bezels so my big paws could comfortably hold it, I can't complain about the build quality or features of this Kindle Cadillac.

Well, okay, I can complain just a little: I wish I could annotate text directly like I can on ReMarkable slates, without having to rely on the Active Canvas or expandable margins. But that's a problem common to the Kindle Scribe family, and it's hardly a deal-breaker.

However, the high price does feel like just that for a lot of people. You can get a ReMarkable Paper Pro with a high-end stylus for the same $629 asking price, for example, and while I think the brightness is a bit better on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft (and thus the colors look more vibrant), I prefer the experience of writing on any ReMarkable tablet over any Scribe.

And if the "feel" of writing on glass with a stylus isn't important to you? Then it's hard to know why you wouldn't want to go for an iPad + Apple Pencil combo (or a comparable Samsung tablet) instead of the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, given that you have to pay over $600 for this e-reader.

While I think the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is probably the best Kindle made yet and an impressive device, the high price and steep competition from comparably-priced tablets make it hard to give this expensive e-reader a full-throated endorsement.

But hey, if you've got $700 burning a hole in your pocket and you (or someone you love) wants an e-paper slate that lets you read and write in color, this is a great one!