• With its Kindle Scribe, Amazon is expanding its range of digital readers.

  • Behind its 10.2-inch screen, this large format model also acts as a digital notepad.

  • Sold for 369 euros, it's a good

    e-reader

    , but its notes section deserves to be improved.

Amazon's Kindle family is growing.

Literally and figuratively.

Newcomer, the Kindle Scribe and its 10.2-inch

e-ink

screen allow, in addition to reading digital books, note taking and drawing with its stylus.

Can this field, already marked out by Kobo, or even ReMarkable, succeed for the web giant?

20 Minutes

took up the pen and tested the Scribe for a few days.

A screen cut for manga

Impressive with its 10.2-inch screen, or nearly 26 cm diagonally, the Kindle Scribe is the largest of Amazon's e-readers, whose range now includes five models, sold from 99 euros to 369 euros.

This last tariff is that of the Scribe.

At this price, not given, Amazon offers a very large screen, especially cut for comics and manga, but also a stylus for taking notes and drawing.

Stylus that is passive (not Bluetooth).

Reading with one hand: difficult…

Quick to configure, the Scribe can be learned in about ten minutes using small pop-up windows which open on the screen in turn and which explain its various functions.

But anyone who's ever had a Kindle in their hands will find their way around instantly, with immediate access to any library of digital books already created on their Amazon account.



Digital reading opens a new chapter here, with large pages of which you can modulate the body of the characters by simply zooming with two fingers, or even adjusting the brightness and the lighting temperature.

The resolution (300 dpi/pixels per inch) of the screen offers real comfort of use.

Despite everything, the size of the reader and its weight quickly got the better of our attempt to read with one hand.

Quickly, the 433 grams of the device impose their constraint, so that the Scribe is more convenient to use placed on a support or on the knees.

The absence of a button to turn the pages is done in favor of a simple flick of the finger, with flawless responsiveness.

Notes in windows

Stylus in hand, it becomes possible to annotate the pages of a book or document.

Simply select a word, a sentence or a paragraph with the tip of the small pencil to open a

pop-up

window inviting us to highlight the selected text, but also to annotate it.

This last option selected then opens a large window in which you can type text from a virtual keyboard, or simply write it with the stylus.

The finished note can then be closed and automatically saved, or even sent to a correspondent by

e-mail

(it will turn into a PDF file).

Limited annotations

The existence of notes on a page on the eReader screen is materialized by an icon at the end of the selected text, but the note does not appear as such.

And it's really a shame!

We would have liked to be able to take advantage of the famous Scribe stylus to be able to make annotations on the side of a page, circle words, in short, scribble as long as necessary, as one can do on a paper book...

In its press release, Amazon boasts of “automatically organized notes so as not to clutter the pages”.

Certainly.

But that means calling each note or note folder to access it.

For their part, .DOC and .DOCX documents, which can be sent to the tablet (using an

e-mail

address provided for any Kindle account*) suffer from the same problems.

As for .PAGES documents from a Mac, these are automatically retorted.

The annotations offered by the Kindle Scribe therefore have their limits.

Drawing-board

The device is more satisfying if, in addition to reading, you want to use it to actually write text, make

to-do lists

, and even compose music: 18 note models are offered, from a simple blank page to a score.

And there, the Scribe is really very pleasant to use, offering almost natural writing, with five possible line sizes for the stylus, which glides on the screen as on a sheet of paper.

We, who never draw, even took real pleasure in making a few scribbles!

Attention, direct printing from the Scribe is not possible.

Immortalizing your masterpiece on paper will first have to go through sending a file (PDF) on a computer or via the Kindle application on a smartphone or tablet (which automatically synchronizes with the Scribe).



Verdict?

This Kindle Scribe has all the advantages of a great reader, and, helping format, has a good chance of being appreciated by manga readers.

Please note: the open e-Pub** format is not taken into account as usual (unless a laborious conversion is made).

The annotations that can be made have, as we have seen, their limits, and deserve to be optimized in their approach.

The digital notepad functions of the Scribe are totally satisfactory, even if you can only work in black and white.

The autonomy of the new Kindle (from 10 to 12 weeks with 30 min of reading per day, and from 2 to 3 weeks with taking notes) remains a major advantage compared to a tablet.

Sold from 369 euros (with stylus and 16 GB of memory, but without protective

cover

), the Kindle Scribe remains expensive for an Amazon product.

In addition to the Notea from Bookeen, its real rival, the Elipsa from Kobo, allows you to really note

e-books

(with handwriting recognition and conversion to typed text).

At equal size (but with a resolution of 227 dpi), it offers 32 GB and comes with a protective cover.

For 20 euros more.


* “Send to Kindle” emails support the following document formats: Adobe PDF (.pdf);

Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx);

Rich Text Format (.rtf);

HTML (.htm, .html);

Text documents (.txt);

Archived documents (zip, x-zip) and archived and compressed documents;

MOBI (.azw, .mobi) (does not support newer Kindle features for documents).

** Supported formats: Kindle Format 8 (AZW3);

Kindle (AZW);

TXT;

PDF;

unprotected MOBI and PRC (native formats);

HTML;

DOC, DOCX;

JPEG;

GIF;

PDF;

TXT;

PNG;

PMP and EPUB (via conversion).

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