The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is a great all-in-one e-reader with an uncomfortably high price tag

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft: Two Minute Review

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft offers everything you could want from an e-reader (mostly). Amazon has packed this device with all the key features of its other Kindles, but unfortunately, it costs a lot more as a result.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft covers all the e-reader bases, and this big supplement brings color to the mix so you can discover comics and the like. You also receive a fancy pen for annotating and taking notes. These features work well overall, but they’re not perfect.

Despite the combination of the “Scribe” and “Colorsoft” parts in the Kindle, you cannot use them in tandem. You can’t annotate or take notes when reading comics or manga, which is ironic considering it’s an all-in-one solution.

However, the 11-inch screen is large enough to mimic the size of some graphic novels. This means you also have enough space to take notes. The screen also captures images with great detail.

So, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is a great e-reader, but unless it’s on sale, I would only recommend it to people in a higher tax bracket.

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: price and availability

• From $629 / £569 / AU$999
• Launched in the US and UK on December 10, 2025
• Launching in Australia on June 10, 2026

No, I simply cannot recommend the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft to the average Kindle user. It’s just too expensive. Adding color and pen to your Kindle is a luxury that I would only recommend to those invested in Amazon’s e-book ecosystem or anyone with significant disposable income.

At its starting price with 32GB of storage, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft costs $629 / £569 / AU$999 (it launches in Australia on June 10). For 64GB of storage, that price jumps up to $679 / £629 / AU$1,099. As someone who just wants to read a book, this makes my wallet cry. But keep in mind that this is the high-end Kindle device.

You can divide the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft’s features into three categories – Kindle, Scribe and Colorsoft – and so it’s quite simple to distinguish its value proposition. The Kindle is just your traditional Paperwhite device for $159 / £159 / AU$199, then the Colorsoft adds a splash of color to that for $249 / £269 / AU$399, and finally you have the Scribe for $399 / £379 / AU$649, which is like the Paperwhite, except you can write on it. Combine all of this and you get the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft.

If for some reason you need all three features packed into one device, then obviously your only option in the Kindle ecosystem is the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft. But focusing on one key feature will save you a decent amount of money, so I recommend doing that before committing such a princely sum to this all-in-one device. Not to mention there are cheaper color e-readers, like the Kobo Libra Color ($219 / £199 / AU$359).

• Value rating: 3/5

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft Review: Specifications

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: design

• A little less portable, but more reading space
• Pen placement is difficult

The 11-inch Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is almost as large as some of the larger graphic novels I have on my shelf, which seems appropriate given its purpose. This makes it a little harder to carry around than the 7-inch Kindle Colorsoft, but it feels more authentic. And despite its larger 189 x 245mm body, it only weighs 400g and is 5.4mm thick, still making it more portable than some hardcover books.

As for the overall design, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft looks exactly like you’d imagine a Kindle to look like, except without that big bottom bezel. The bezels are still large enough for your hands to grip the device without obstructing the screen.

I reviewed the Graphite model with the white pen, but you can get the Fig colorway, which also comes with a Fig colored pen. I don’t usually say this about technology, but I think I prefer the black model, purely because the Fig colorway can be a bit distracting when playing.

At the bottom you will find the USB Type-C port for charging and the power button is located at the top right. Just below is the space where the pen attaches.

If you think the stylus might get in the way when attached to the right side, you’re right. It’s a silly design choice, especially when the stylus is small enough (155 x 8.8mm) to fit easily on the Kindle.

Overall, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is sleek and inoffensive. It’s thin and light, although a little harder to carry around than previous models, but who doesn’t want a little more reading and writing space? However, I’m frustrated with the pen placement.

• Design rating: 4/5

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: display

• There is color, but it’s not colorful
• Text and images are sharp

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft covers the black and white spectrum at 300 dpi and adds a splash of color at 150 dpi. The 11-inch screen couldn’t do much to improve the average book reading experience, but it didn’t have to. The text was crisp and clear, and the 36 white LEDs and 34 amber LEDs allowed me to have a more comfortable reading experience depending on the setting I was in.

As with other e-ink displays, the LEDs create a layer of color (white or amber) that slightly distorts the image on the screen. With black text this is perfectly fine, as the difference is negligible. However, when color is introduced, it is more visible.

The problem is that while it’s nice to have color, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft just isn’t as colorful as I’d like. I read “Hellblazer Vol. 1” and when John Constantine goes to Africa, there’s supposed to be these bright, bold pink and yellow hues, but they’re muted on the Scribe Colorsoft screen. Even in “Vivid” mode, color does not appear. Honestly, this is normal for an electronic ink screen. But that doesn’t change the fact that you won’t get the same experience as if you were watching a real graphic novel. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be able to experiment with color, but at this asking price, it’s definitely not worth it for the color alone.

• Display rating: 4/5

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: performance

• Relatively smooth
• The response times you expect

You’re not looking at a racehorse here; It’s a little pony, and it doesn’t matter. You don’t need all the performance in the world to make an e-reader work.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is relatively smooth across the board but still suffers from slightly slow response times when browsing. This isn’t a big deal, since most of the experience comes down to turning a page. I had to restart my Kindle once because it simply refused to connect to Wi-Fi no matter how many times I tried, but the problem resolved itself after that.

When doing more complex tasks like annotating or taking notes, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft kept up with all my movements and requests without issue. Zooming around pages also seemed smooth, although there was still a slight annoying delay in refreshing the image, as I could clearly see the ghost of an image from the previous screen.

• User experience rating: 4/5

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: software

• Surprisingly fast performance on E Ink
• Smooth zoom, whether in color or black and white

Everything important about the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, or any other e-reader, comes down to the software experience. I’m generally happy with what this Kindle offers, and it’s not much different from other e-readers.

You have the essential elements that allow you to adjust the layout, font, spacing, etc. There are little things like the “Popular Highlights” and “About This Book” information, which are neat. Then there’s Word Wise, which defines unfamiliar words but also requires a lot of work: it identifies words that are too simple, even at their lowest level, instead of focusing exclusively on college-level vocabulary that most people would struggle with.

One of my favorite software features is the ability to isolate comic panels. Double-tapping a comic panel will make it full-screen and then you can easily navigate to subsequent panels. When he comes to news page, it will show you the entire page and then break down each panel to full screen. This is super cool because you don’t need to zoom in to get a closer look at what’s going on. However, it’s not perfect. I noticed an issue when reading “Attack on Titan” where when there are two panels and text spread across them, sometimes the Kindle won’t combine the panels and cuts off the text.

Another nice feature is the ability to simulate page turns, which I like in theory, but doesn’t seem the best in practice. The problem is that it’s a fade in and fade out effect instead of a true flip animation. It looks a little more natural when reading a book because it’s a quick fade between texts, but it’s a much uglier transition with comics because there’s a lot of ghosting. It looks like it’s fading in pieces, and it was visually unsatisfying to the point where I turned it off.

To highlight the “Scribe” part of this Kindle, the process of taking notes and marking up is quite smooth. The pen has an eraser on the back and a shortcut button on the side (defaults to highlighting). When reading a standard book, there are two prominent icons, one on the left and one on the right. The left-most icon allows all of your pen settings to customize the appearance, switch between highlighters and erasers, and even insert notes and outlines between text.

The right side of the screen is where you take your notes; It can enlarge and split the screen with text or hover over it, and wherever you write notes, it will attach a note symbol next to the nearest text. This is quite intuitive, since you can change the layout of the book, so naturally this would move your notes space. You can even enlarge the size of the notes to fill the entire page if you want, to leave plenty of space for writing.

There are plenty of features for people interested in the “Scribe” part, and they work pretty seamlessly overall. There’s even a workspace section where you can take full notes unrelated to what you’re reading. In this workspace, there are two AI features, one that can summarize your notes and the other that can “refine writing,” which essentially turns your notes into a text font that you can customize.

The only missing feature I noticed is that you can’t take notes in the comics. That means no drawing, taking notes, or even highlighting.

• Performance rating: 4/5

Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: battery

• Light readers can last for weeks
• Heavy readers can last for days

According to Amazon, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft can survive eight weeks if you read for 30 minutes at slightly less than half brightness. I’ll spare you the math: that’s 28 hours of reading. For light readers, you could probably extend this for a few weeks. Heavier drives will probably kill this battery within a few days.

I spent several weeks with the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, reading about an hour each day, and didn’t need a charger until near the end of the month. This lends credence to Amazon’s battery life claim.

The reading time you experience will vary greatly depending on the brightness of your screen. If you read at near-zero brightness, you’ll get a lot more longevity with the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft.

Unfortunately, the battery does not charge quickly. When I first received it, the battery was completely dead and I had to wait quite a while before the Kindle showed any signs of life. This will make you think it’s broken, so I don’t recommend letting it die.

• Battery rating: 5/5

Should I buy the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft

• Revision testing period = four weeks
• Tests included = books, comics, manga

I spent a month oscillating between books, comics and manga. I read “The House Witch”, “The Time of Contempt”, “Hellblazer Vol. 1” and “Attack on Titan,” most of which were available on Prime Reading. I spent about an hour a day reading. Logging into my Amazon account and getting them on the device was easy. Comics and manga take a little longer to download than books, but not significantly.

For the “Scribe” portion of the review, I highlighted parts of dialogue and wrote little notes to myself to return to later, because either the text was impeccably well written or it was just a funny line. I also drew webs between the text – just silly doodles right in the middle of the book.

First revision: May 2026

Rami Tabari is an editor for Laptop Mag. It reviews all forms of laptop as well as all kinds of laptops. f cool technology. You can find him sitting at his desk surrounded by a laptop collector’s dream, and when he heads towards civilization you can catch him watching a really bad anime or playing some sort of painfully difficult game.

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