I’ve been looking for the perfect e-Ink tablet for a while, I thought my prayers were answered with the Boox Note Air 3, but I was disappointed in the muted/muddy colors. It’s not a good Black & White e-reader either because due to the nature of Kaleido 3, it cannot achieve true white. Their version of white is really grey.

I thought, for pure reading, why not take a stab at the Amazon Kindle Scribe? This is Amazon’s largest Kindle, but also their most expensive. I got it on sale for about $230 for the 64GB version with the “premium pen”. What sets the pen apart from the regular pen? It has an eraser, which I’ll admit, came in handy when I was taking some notes for testing.

Yeah, I think it works well as a note-taking tablet… but being so heavy I would have prefer take notes on a smaller device, like maybe 7 inches or less.

Why I really bought the Scribe is to read comic books, specifically manga, which are traditionally printed in black & white. As a Kindle e-reader, it works, it’s fine. There is no ghosting. It has great contrast. Things are really readable at 300ppi (the Boox, due to the color is at 150dpi). It looks okay without the glowlight… but looks great with it on. The Boox, it’s not usable without the front glowlight.

The Scribe is good at those two things, reading and note-taking. Oh, and I guess really good battery life (thanks to e-Ink low power consumption). That’s about it.

Now for all the problems with the Scribe.

Your PDF/CBR files

Getting your personal books or documents on the Scribe is a nightmare. The thing won’t open ZIP or CBR files. It will only open PDF and ePub (they’ve only recently advertised that they can now read DOC files). If you want to write on the PDF, you have to email it to the Kindle. If the file size is too large for email, you have to use a website “Send to Kindle” to upload the file.
You can transfer the PDF to the Kindle using a USB-C cord, but that’s cumbersome. Also, your PDF files will not display cover artwork. This is either a bug or Amazon is deliberately doing this so you will buy their books.

No Speakers

Can’t watch videos. Can’t listen to audio books. Can’t listen to music. If you want audio, you have to use Bluetooth to connect to a speaker.

No rotation lock
System options are portrait only… so if you’re reading it on landscape, you have to change your rotation if you need to access the system options.

No Apps

That means you can’t get your Google Books or Kobo Books on the Kindle. There’s also no OneDrive or Dropbox to make transferring files easier.

Cannot customize lock screen

Amazon does this to show you advertisements. You can pay extra to get rid of the ads.

Notes
There are many other annoying things, such as your notes aren’t automatically uploaded to your Amazon account. No, you have to email it to yourself. It’s like they’re working with 90s technology. What a manual process. I read somewhere that you have to turn on Whispersync, but I’m not doing that because I have multiple devices and I don’t want them all turning to the same page.

No Glideview

The “Glideview” technology was created by ComiXology, which Amazon bought and then dismantle. The Glideview is in the iPad’s Kindle app, but it’s not available on the Scribe.

UPDATE: Glideview is available on American comic books. I was reading manga on the Scribe, and, perhaps due to the backward nature of Japanese books, the Glideview did not work on manga.

Bad hardware

I’ve used a lot of tablets and I think the Scribe seems slow. It crashes sometimes, especially when it gets really slow… and then freezes and then crashes. It’s also heavy. It is also limited to 64GB storage (the maximum you can buy). No expansion, no SD card reader. No page-turn buttons. This hardware kind of sucks.

I hate to say it, but I can’t recommend the Kindle Scribe to comic book readers. Compare the Scribe to other e-readers, I have to say that the iPad is still king for media consumption. When you consider the standard 10 inch iPad (latest version) is about $300, it’s totally worth it. It has all the bells and whistles, and it can display true colors. The only downside is that it uses standard LCD screen (or the upcoming OLED display for the higher end models).

As for my quest, I am waiting for a new true color e-Ink to arrive.