At its product launch event in Autumn 2022, Amazon unveiled a new kind of Kindle. It’s called the Kindle Scribe, and as the name suggests, you can write on it as well as read all of the company’s ebooks. It’s the first e-ink tablet or paper tablet from the company, but it’s certainly not the first to market.
Remarkable has made a bit of a name for itself in the space, offering its digital notebook.
Amazon Kindle Scribe vs reMarkable
Design
So, how does Amazon’s compare to the Remarkable 2, and which should you buy?
There are similarities and differences between both of these devices. The main takeaway is that they’re different sizes, which will make them slightly different experiences.
Amazon’s Kindle Scribe is a little wider but shorter than the Remarkable, giving it a wider aspect from looking at it front on.
You can see where the Remarkable 2 has a chunkier chin beneath the display, while Amazon’s has an even bezel around three sides.
Instead, there’s a thicker bezel on one side of the screen, ideal for gripping onto with a thumb or resting the side of your palm on when writing. And since it rotates automatically in the software when you turn the tablet, you can have it on either the right or the left side.
Check Price and Review for Kindle Scribe
What’s interesting about the bezel or frame is that Amazon went with its iconic black frame, marking a clear contrast between the display area and the frame.
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Whereas Remarkable has made the front the same color as the display, so that it blends in a little more.
It’s worth noting that Remarkable’s tablet is more than a millimeter thinner and is 30 grams lighter too, which makes it feel a little more nimble in the hand.
Both devices have four small rubber feet on the rear to stop them sliding around when placed face up on a surface for writing or drawing. And both devices are primarily designed to be controlled with the touchscreen because they only have one button, the power wake button. Both also have a USB-C port for charging and file transfer.
Display
So let’s get on to the important stuff, and first up is the display. Both these devices are similar because they both have a large e-ink display with a paper-like texture on the surface, so that when you’re writing on it, it feels a bit like writing on paper. It’s not rough, but it’s not shiny, so you get that little bit of friction. It even sounds nice too.
There are some differences, however, the key one being Remarkable’s tablet doesn’t feature any LEDs for front lighting whatsoever. That limits when and how you can use the tablet, or rather means you have to have some light in the room in order to see the display.
The Kindle Scribe has a total of 35 LEDs designed to illuminate the display when light levels drop. Plus, like the Kindle Oasis and Paperwhite, you can adjust the warmth to make it more comfortable to read at night, and you can schedule this warm light to come on at set times or automatically at sunset too. It also has auto brightness, so it can automatically adjust up and down the brightness based on the level of light in the room.
The other advantage of the Kindle’s display is that it’s sharper at 300 pixels per inch compared to Remarkable’s 226. It means crisper text and visuals with smoother lines. With that combined with the lighting, it’s just a better all-round display experience from Amazon’s device.
Software
Now moving on to software, hardware, and features. What’s interesting about these two devices is that they seem to be catered towards two different types of buyers.
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Remarkable’s paper tablet is designed to replace all of your notebooks, journals, written to-do’s, and anything else you typically use paper for. That means when you first boot it up, you’re guided through how to create a new notebook, and you can choose from any number of templates designed to mimic page formats you’d find in any number of different books.
You can have a daily to-do agenda template, regular lined and ruled pages, grids, dotted pages, as well as more niche formats like guitar tablature and blank sheet music templates. There’s a huge amount of flexibility.
You can also sign into your OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive accounts if you have a Connect subscription and get immediate access to your supported documents on those services.
And since Remarkable’s tablet has Wi-Fi, it connects directly to those cloud services.
With the Remarkable app for desktop, you can drag and drop compatible files into your tablet directly. You can also read eBooks on it, but it does again mean dragging and dropping ePub files manually.
Check Price and Review for Kindle Scribe
In contrast, Amazon’s devices are built on the Kindle platform. That means you get instant access to all of Amazon’s eBooks from the Kindle Store. It works just like any other Kindle, with access to millions of titles through Amazon’s own store. That ease of access is a key part of the reading experience and much simpler than the Remarkable for reading.
The Kindle Scribe also offers templates for checklists, lined paper, grid paper, and others. It offers a handful of different ruled and lined paper templates, plus to-do lists, a daily planner format, and blank, dotted, and grid paper. You even get sheet music, though it doesn’t quite offer the same number as Remarkable, so it does need a bit more to compete with Remarkable here.
But like the Remarkable, it also offers support for reading PDFs, Word files, and other documents. You just use the Kindle phone app or the “Send to Kindle” web browser tool to send any documents to your library and then read them or annotate them on your Kindle Scribe.
Plus, you can add sticky notes in any books that you’re reading and either handwrite or create text notes. Sadly, there’s no handwriting recognition or conversion to text on the Kindle Scribe.
With the Remarkable, you do get that feature and the option to convert a written page into text. With Kindle, however, you get audiobook support through Audible, as well as VoiceView screen reading, both of which work over Bluetooth using a pair of connected headphones. Kindle also has more storage available, so you can download a lot more to the device.
Another advantage of the Remarkable is that you can use the cloud service to see your documents on any device, whether that be a mobile or a desktop. But to get unlimited cloud storage, there’s a subscription involved. However, it’s very affordable and comes with a three-year protection plan for the actual tablet.
As far as actual latency goes, the writing experience is pretty smooth on both. E-ink being e-ink, it’s not super duper fast, but it’s enough that you don’t really feel lag, and it does feel natural on both devices.
Now, on the surface, it may seem that Remarkable 2 is more affordable when you go looking at prices. But when you factor in that you will need to buy either the standard marker or a marker plus, you’re realistically going to be spending a little bit more. And you also need to consider the subscription service that you need for additional cloud syncing options.
Amazon’s entry-level option includes the pen, and that starts at a decent price. You can pay extra if you want more storage or if you want the premium pen, which like Remarkable’s Marker Plus, has a built-in eraser on the back.
In the end, if what you’re after primarily is a tool to get you access to Drive and Dropbox files and something designed to replace your many different journals, to-do lists, diaries, and notebooks, then the Remarkable I think is the better option here.
It’s also lighter and thinner than the Kindle Scribe. However, Amazon’s big advantages are the tie into the Kindle ebook store, support for audio, and the LED front-lit screen, which means you can use it even when you’re not in a bright environment. Remarkable’s device requires light around you in order to be easily visible. Plus, Amazon gives you more storage space.
Now, we suspect the Kindle will be the one that makes the most sense to most buyers, but there’s definitely appeal to Remarkable’s minimalist approach. Let me know what you think of these two devices in the comments below.
