The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft surprised me

I spent the last few days with the new Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, and here's everything I gathered.

Price, specs, and availability

You can get the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft on Amazon for $630. It comes in classic charcoal Graphite or a purple-leaning Fig color. The entry-level model includes 32GB of storage, with a 64GB upgrade available for an additional $50.

It weighs 400 grams with an 11-inch display -- 0.8 inches larger than the Kindle Scribe 2, and much more akin to a traditional piece of paper. It has a new front light system with mini LEDs that help the lighting look more even.

The Kindle Scribe Pen is included and is slightly thicker and more rounded than its predecessors. It has no internal battery, and Amazon packs 10 replacement tips in the box. It also features the same grip button that highlights when held, and you can program it for various actions. The eraser end feels more like a real eraser on paper than any stylus I've tried.

Amazon doesn’t explicitly state battery life beyond "long," but it promises up to weeks of reading or writing on a single charge. If you're just reading, I'm confident the battery will outlast any artistic endeavors you attempt with the 10 colors and five writing tools.

First impressions of the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft

Bezel begone, now with magnetic madness

While announced earlier, I was still surprised to see Amazon ditch the asymmetrical look and remove the wider bezel from one long side of the tablet. Now, the bezel wraps evenly around the 11-inch display. At first, I worried about not having a screenless grip area, but my concerns disappeared when I realized my thumb wasn't accidentally turning pages every time it grazed the screen. The tablet's lightness also makes it easy to hold without a firm grip, and I quickly stopped thinking about the bezel altogether.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft weighs just under a pound and is only 5.4 millimeters thick, which is thinner than an iPhone Air. It's a nice little marketing dig at Apple's newest brainchild, but not anything revolutionary in the tablet world where things are getting so skinny that I wouldn't be surprised if a sheet of printer paper eventually became the new standard.

However, the tablet is noticeably thinner than the new stylus, which is where my attention immediately went. The magnetic connection between the pen and the right side of the Scribe is shockingly strong. It audibly snaps into place when the rounded pen rolls across my desk and requires real effort to remove. You can actually lift the entire tablet by the pen (please don't).

Unlike the older Kindle Scribes, I can't just leisurely pull the stylus off casually -- I have to hold the tablet with one hand and pull the pen with the other. It's a welcome improvement for anyone prone to losing their stylus, though I do wish Amazon found a middle ground between "falls off instantly" and "requires a crowbar."

On the stylus itself, compared to the first-gen Kindle Scribe's more slippery feel, the Scribe Colorsoft's texture has almost more friction -- like it's rubbing on real paper. My only qualm is that the older model erased full pages faster, but after a few days with this new one, I'm willing to sacrifice that for the more natural writing feel.

Software status

You'd think the digital ink was in the pen itself

Kindle Scribes are known for their fluidity. Otherwise, they'd never stand a chance at being true notebook replacements. Paper will always have the tactile advantage, but the Scribe Colorsoft is a worthy contender with latency under 12 milliseconds. It's a delay any untrained eye likely won't even notice, and even I had a hard time detecting it with my nose inches from the screen.

The Scribe Colorsoft is loaded with more memory, Amazon's Oxide display tech (also found in the Paperwhite), and a new 2GHz Quad Core processor that's responsible for that barely-there delay, plus making page turns 40% faster. When I opened my current read, Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stepahnie Garber, I was impressed with the quick refresh rate. I wanted to give it a whirl with something more appropriate for the tablet called 'Colorsoft,' so I downloaded The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse from Kindle Unlimited and tapped through as fast as I could -- the illustrations blinked past me as I tore through the heartwarming story, and I was ultimately satisfied with the speed.

Do the colors live up to the cost?

The colorful Kindle Scribe Colorsoft

Let's get one thing straight -- the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is selling for $630 and the regular third-generation Kindle Scribe is selling for $500. That places a $130 premium squarely on the addition of color. I'll say what you're probably thinking: are a few extra shades really worth $130?

That answer depends on your budget and how much color matters to you, but I'll get to that in a minute.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft comes loaded with ten color choices: Black, Gray, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua (my favorite), Blue, Purple, and Pink. They're vivid and distinct, not washed out grayscale mutations like some other E Ink displays I've encountered. They have a calm, slightly chalky nature that reminds me loosely of watercolor pigment. The hues sit in the same softness family (so the orange will go with the blue) but remain easy to distinguish.

The only two shades that look remotely similar at a glance are Blue and Purple -- though that might be because I'd been staring at screens for 12 hours. Once side-by-side, they're clearly different.

The colors are beautiful -- I'm impressed with the aesthetic I'm developing with my color-coded notes, and it's quite easy to quickly switch between them, thanks to the faster refresh rate. However, $130 is a jaw-dropping premium to pay for color-coded notes if you aren't attached to the idea. If you truly can't live without different colored notes and are itching to add a Scribe to your workflow, I'd say it's worth it. But if you're unsure if you'd even use the colors much in the first place, keep reading this review to gather more thoughts.

You can choose between five writing utensils: Pen, Fountain pen, Marker, Pencil, and Shader -- excluding the highlighter tool. There's also five different thickness options, but I tend to stick with the default middle thickness. My two favorite tools are the Pen and the Fountain pen, and I particularly enjoy writing in Green and Aqua.

The Shader seems to be similar to the highlighter, and I don't see it being a very popular tool for someone looking to just jot down notes throughout the day.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft's new look and skills

A familiar but optimized layout

The old Kindle Scribe layout felt siloed. It took several taps to get from one section to another, which created ample opportunity to forget what you were going to write down in the first place. This is why the very first thing that caught my eye was the 'Quick notes' section on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft's homepage, which is a dedicated shortcut for those fleeting two-second thoughts.

The rest of the homepage is the hub I didn't know I was waiting for. The layout provides quick access to all the major features, including a 'Jump back in' section for recently opened notebooks or e-books, as well as a row of 'Recently added' e-books and files sent to your Kindle account. You can scroll down to see more recommended content from Amazon, though I rarely venture past the top.

It's night-and-day compared to the older UI. Still, the siloed tabs are available at the bottom for anyone who prefers them: Home, Library, Workspace, More, and a shortcut to your last opened notebook or book.

At the top sits an AI-powered search bar. If you're cringing, bear with me. It's actually useful. The AI indexes everything you've written on the Scribe (yes, hand-written) and can group together various topics to answer specific questions about them. When I typed, "What articles do I have planned for Thursday?" it surfaced the two pieces on my docket. I can see this being incredibly helpful when recapping calls, tracking tasks, or digging up financial notes.

The suggested questions are even more baffling when you click into the search bar.

Amazon also conveniently added cross-compatibility with Google Drive and OneDrive. The integration is long overdue, but I'm glad that Amazon finally realized that people keep their documents... everywhere. "Send to email" is still available but now feels less essential.

A "Send to Alexa+" feature is also arriving in early 2026, letting Alexa reference your notes in conversation. Hopefully, that means you'll never forget the grocery list again.

Should you buy the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft?

Passes with flying (but expensive) colors

I must say, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is nearly perfect. If my only real hesitations are the stylus magnet being too strong and the ultra-realistic friction of erasing, it's hard not to recommend it to anyone wanting a colorful E Ink tablet.

But the truth is that $130 is a steep price for 10 colors. Yes, the Scribe doubles as a gorgeous 11-inch screen perfect for graphic novel readers too, but it's still an undeniable leap.

If price isn't an issue, I'd say that every color-coding note-taker should scramble to get their hands on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. If you're uncertain, I have a strong feeling the Colorsoft will hit holiday discounts in late 2026 -- especially since the regular Kindle Scribe received one of the biggest markdowns of the entire lineup this Black Friday.

But at full price, it's a hard buy for a 'single use' device. All its capabilities appeal to my color-coding nature, and the response rate makes me forget I'm writing with E Ink in the first place. I think it's one of Amazon's best Kindles to date, which says a lot considering I've been a user since 2009.

This device was provided to Pocket-lint by Amazon.