Amazon Is Releasing a Brand-New Kindle

Okay, am I the LAST person in the universe to know about the Kindle Scribe?

I realise I haven’t published a new blog post for a while (hoping to do better forthwith!) but I didn’t think I’d fallen this out of the loop. I can’t now remember how I learnt this, but a couple of days ago I discovered that Amazon will be selling a whole new Kindle model from 30th November. Emphasis on new.

Usually, Kindle upgrades are barely worth mentioning; like the Paperwhite Special Edition whose main draw is wireless charging, or a Kindle Basic which now boasts front-lighting. Those kinds of incremental changes are nice to whoever’s buying their first Kindle, but they aren’t enough to make someone who already has the e-reader buy a new one.

The Kindle Scribe, on the other hand, looks like it might be a gamechanger. At least, Amazon is clearly hoping it’ll be. It’s the first Kindle which will come bundled with a stylus and supports touchscreen writing, so you can mark up documents and write yourself sticky notes. The extent of this writing functionality will become clearer later, but it’s quite apparent that Amazon has been inspired by the relatively recent Kobo Elipsa. That’s a whopping tablet-like e-reader which also comes with a stylus and encourages you to write in it. I’ve been hoping ever since I learnt about it that Amazon would come up with its own variant, though I definitely didn’t expect one so soon.

I have the Kindle Oasis (reviewed here), and I probably won’t be upgrading straightaway, not least because I was forced to buy a replacement in June after my old one mysteriously stopped working. The £330 starting price (for the basic pen/16 GB model, its entry configuration) is also at least £100 steeper than the Oasis starting price.

However, I’ll be keeping a keen eye on developments, and hopefully will be reviewing it at some point soon!

Check out Amazon’s range of Kindles!