I was actually really excited about the Kindle Scribe I ordered, because it seemed to solve two problems I have with using my reMarkable:
- I don’t like writing my notes at the edge of a PDF, if there is even enough margin, because my work notes are the preliminary version of the final notes that go into my Zettelkasten. Simply highlighting something is not very useful, as some studies also suggest. I need to be able to write my own thoughts on a text, and that’s something the reMarkable 2 doesn’t allow me to do.
- Light š
Light is available, but otherwise, the Kindle Scribe has been a very disappointing experience for me. Of course, I don’t really want to throw money into Amazon’s pockets or store my data in their cloud, but the topics of “working through paper” and “reading” are of great importance to me. Since I don’t jot down anything confidentialā¦ one must choose the lesser evil. Perhaps someday there will be a solution that works without the cloud. But how good is the Scribe really?
The device arrived a day later than announced, and the box was slightly dented due to soft packaging:
The first comparison with the reMarkable 2:
The Kindle Scribe looks sleek, but not as refined as the reMarkable 2 Paper Tablet. The wide bezel feels broader than it appears in pictures, and it doesn’t necessarily sit better in the hand because of it. Integrating the power button on the left was certainly not the best ideaāI’ve accidentally pressed it more than once. The pen isn’t as firmly attached to the device as it is with the reMarkable or iPad.
What does feel really good, though, is the writing experience! In fact, I think it feels even better than on the reMarkable 2. I don’t feel any delay at all. The Kindle Scribe also seems relatively quick, definitely faster than the reMarkable 2 sometimes. But the user interface… oh boy. The first big irritation came when I tried testing a notebook. How do you exit it? Nowhere does it say you need to tap the screen at the top to reveal a menu that allows you to go back. And that mishmash on the homepage? No thanks, I don’t want that.
But the worst thing is that my great hope has not been fulfilled, because I can NOT create notes in every document the way I would like to. I could have read that here. The sticky notes for notes are not even for all Kindle books, but least of all for scientific papers, which are never “adjustable PDFs”. And so, in most PDFs and books, I can only type notes using the virtual keyboard:
In very few books I can do it the way it was seen in the advertising for the device:
I won’t keep the device just for the light. I can continue to work with my small reading lamp. But the thing with the notes, that’s still not solved š I hope that reMarkable will eventually allow sticky notes in PDFs.