Amazon Kindle Scribe Colorsoft review: colour e‑ink at a premium price

Harriet L. Whitmore • August 21, 2026 06:02

It took six months for Amazon’s Kindle Scribe Colorsoft to make the trip across the Atlantic. Released in the United States ahead of Christmas, the online retail giant’s first colour e‑ink digital notebook landed in France in early June. And it certainly isn’t cheap: €650 for the 32 GB version and €700 for 64 GB.

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is clearly aiming at the reMarkable Paper Pro, which has been almost alone so far in the premium colour digital notebook segment. Thinner, lighter and boosted by AI: on paper (quite literally), it’s a tempting promise.

Kindle Colorsoft at the best price
Base price: €299

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At this price point, there’s one uncomfortable question: is colour on e‑ink a genuine upgrade, or just an expensive extra? And above all, do the promises on the spec sheet really hold up once you switch the device on in France?

Big screen, ultra-slim body

The first pleasant surprise comes as soon as you open the box: the device looks properly premium. The Fig colourway on my review unit plays a big role here - a deep, stylish purple that’s a welcome change from the usual anthracite grey (sold as Graphite).

On paper, the numbers are designed to impress - and they do. The body is just 5.4 mm thick, it weighs 400 g, and you get an 11-inch display where the previous generation topped out at 10.3. In the hand, it’s comfortable, and its minimalism is genuinely striking: aside from a power button, a status light and a USB‑C port, nothing protrudes.

The stylus is included as standard, which is a real win. Unlike some rivals, there’s no need to add a few extra tens of euros to an already eye-watering bill.

That pen attaches magnetically to the side of the tablet. You also get a charging cable and spare nibs in the box. The only thing missing is a protective case - and in Amazon land that’s still an optional extra, charged at a premium (from €120 for an official Kindle case, or €40 for a compatible alternative).

Decent colour, especially in Vivid mode

For its luxury reader, Amazon has built a bespoke oxide-based panel it describes as a high-contrast technology. The colours are intentionally muted so they remain comfortable over long working sessions.

In practice, the shades are perfectly acceptable, but you get a noticeably better result by switching on Vivid mode, which gives everything a bit more punch. Naturally, the first thing I did was load up comics: on a display this size, reading a full page finally makes sense. I no longer need to zoom in to read captions, and I’m no longer seeing the infamous yellowish pattern that spoiled early colour e‑readers.

The trade-off is clear, though: colour resolution is 150 ppi, versus 300 ppi on black-and-white models. Amazon itself also notes that the colour filter can introduce slight differences in texture or brightness compared with the monochrome Scribe. Text stays crisp; colour is more about organisation than spectacle. Still, 150 ppi is more than enough for enjoying comics, viewing charts in books, or marking up PDFs.

A superb stylus, but slightly limited tools

As a reMarkable Paper Pro user, I was keen to see what Amazon would do with colour note-taking. On the essentials, it delivers. The writing feel is close to pencil on paper, helped by the textured glass. The front light is genuinely excellent, and the stylus is responsive enough that there’s no distracting lag when taking notes.

You can indeed write or draw in ten colours (with five available for highlighting). Handwriting recognition is seriously impressive. My scruffy handwriting is read without fuss and converted into clean text. I can save that result in the handwritten document, and tweak the appearance (typeface, size, line spacing).

That said, the writing and drawing tools feel a bit too basic compared with the competition. For anyone who wants to build, layer and structure sketches, the reMarkable - and its layers - is still a step ahead. The biggest omission here is straightforward: there’s no layer management. Demanding creative users may feel short-changed.

On the other hand, Amazon deserves credit for the Active Canvas feature. When I annotate a book or a Word file, the printed text automatically shifts to make room.

A “smart” notebook - but not everywhere.

Amazon is betting on simplicity and AI to make this a clever notebook. “Summarise” can condense up to 15 pages of notes into key points, and “Refine writing” can turn up to 10 pages of scribbles into neat, clean handwriting. Natural-language search can dig through my notebooks and pull out answers, including from handwritten notes.

More conventional - but still very useful - integration with Google and Microsoft cloud services makes importing and editing documents easier. I can now connect to OneNote notebooks to export my notes. Another way to send documents to the device is email, using Send to Kindle.

As of today, all AI features are available in our language, with one notable exception: “send to Alexa”.

That feature is designed to send notebooks to Amazon’s AI for more advanced processing. On the menu: turning rough notes into to‑do lists, creating reminders, or generating events directly in my calendar.

Battery life and ecosystem: quiet strength (with an asterisk)

Battery life remains one of this e‑reader’s biggest strengths. From a full charge, I managed just over three weeks in real-world use - daily note-taking, reading books, PDFs and comics. I used the AI features less consistently, except for handwriting recognition, which I triggered at least four times a week.

Amazon claims up to eight weeks for reading only, and two weeks for writing, with a full charge taking under 2 h 30 using a 20 W USB‑C charger. That’s still very respectable, but it quickly becomes obvious that colour comes with a meaningful energy cost. The monochrome version of the same device is rated between 12 and 16 weeks for reading, versus 8 for the Colorsoft.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon does everything it can to keep the focus on buying books from its own store. It works, and it becomes very (too?) easy to pick up books on impulse (speaking from experience). You can also download free samples to read the opening pages - a bit like flicking through a title in FNAC, but without leaving the sofa. Buying from the French Amazon store remains possible from abroad, which is a genuine benefit when travelling.

Audible on Kindle: the French silence

The Colorsoft spec sheet lists support for Audible audiobooks, which Amazon also owns. In theory, it’s simple: go to the “Audible” tab in the shop, buy a title, then listen after pairing Bluetooth headphones or a speaker. Easy, right?

Yes - and no. In practice, no Kindle in France shows an Audible tab, which makes listening to Audible audiobooks impossible. This isn’t a hardware limitation: the Bluetooth chip is enabled and works perfectly for reading assistance features. It looks much more like a software restriction.

So why? We asked Amazon France, and received no answer. That leaves us with guesswork. The simplest explanation is also the most mundane: Amazon enabled Audible on Kindles in the United States first and then never bothered to unlock it in French firmware. Not strategy - just inertia. That would also explain why no Kindle, not just the Scribe, has ever had the tab here. But let’s assume there is intent.

First, there’s France’s heavily regulated book market. Rules around fixed pricing for digital books and specific VAT rates make it harder to integrate bundles (text + audio deals) that Amazon offers elsewhere, and complicate direct sales from the tablet. Even so, that argument only goes so far: Audible runs perfectly well in France through its own app. Regulation mainly gets in the way of bundles, not the mere presence of a tab.

Next come strategic choices that some may find questionable. In the United States or the United Kingdom, the Kindle and Audible ecosystems are tightly integrated. In France, Amazon has chosen to keep Audible as a largely separate platform and app from the standard Kindle catalogue. Why? No-one seems to know.

Finally, Amazon France may be clinging to the idea that the so‑called “French cultural exception” means Audible listening should remain a smartphone activity. A tablet showing a book can’t possibly lower itself to being a basic audio player - that’s a job for the phone.

My take on the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft

The Kindle Scribe Colorsoft is an excellent e‑reader and note-taking device to which Amazon has added a layer of colour. It’s elegant, has impeccable front lighting, and includes one of the nicest styluses on the market. It delivers over three weeks of battery life in mixed use and sits on top of a well-developed ecosystem. Colour is pleasing - particularly in Vivid mode - and it shines for comics and annotation. Some will criticise the 150 ppi limitation; I don’t, because the reading experience remains excellent, even in colour.

Two underlying reservations remain. First, the writing and drawing tools are a touch underbaked, leaving the reMarkable - and its layers - ahead for demanding creative workflows. Second, the Colorsoft Scribe’s very high price (from €650, after all) is €130 more than the monochrome version, which includes the same stylus, offers better battery life, and keeps text just as sharp.

So the real question isn’t “is it good?” - it is. It’s “do you genuinely need colour, and can you live with features that are still missing in France?”. If yes, it’s currently Amazon’s best colour notebook e‑reader. If not, save yourself the €130.

Kindle Colorsoft at the best price
Base price: €299