A device with a large screen E Ink just as well at home, with documents and books released by Amazon in the era of economic downturn, and this is not the Kindle Scribe that Amazon unveiled on Wednesday during the mass rollout of smart products.
It was Amazon Kindle DX (opens in a new tab), 9.7-inch E Ink Reader released in 2009. It wasn’t as slim, light and bright as the Kindle Scribe with 300ppi backlight. There wasn’t even a touchscreen, but rather a physical keyboard and navigation buttons. The Kindle DX was considered Amazon’s future in the field of E Ink books, especially for textbooks.
The device’s large screen and the ability to store thousands of books would mean the end of students struggling under the weight of stuffed backpacks filled with gigantic and expensive textbooks. The Kindle DX cost nearly $ 500, but most expected typical school and school textbooks to be half the price at Amazon’s online bookstores.
After one update in 2010, the Kindle DX died a quick and bland death. I was never sure why, but I figured most Kindle readers read novels while on vacation and don’t care about or need a tablet-sized device that only offers a black and white screen and can “even play video.”
The 2010 release of Apple’s iPad essentially sealed DX’s fate
In this regard, the new Kindle Scribe can be the same kind of misfire. However, despite the economic similarities, 2022 is not 2009, and the Kindle Scribe is much more technically advanced than DX.
The biggest innovation, at least for Amazon, is the Kindle Scribe stylus, which is priced at $ 339. First, it is reassuring that Amazon has not used the DX pricing model: more expensive or go home. Second, joining a stylus that’s arguably smarter than a regular piece of plastic is a little brilliant. This is what makes the Kindle Scribe cool, desirable, and, aside from obvious design differences, quite different from Amazon’s last attempt at the E Ink tablet on the big screen.
Even here, however, the Amazon is treading familiar territory, albeit not necessarily its own.
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In 2017 I tested the first ReMarkable tablet, 10.1-inch, 350-gram E Ink and stylus-capable tablet. It had 226ppi and the look and feel was as close to a piece of paper as you could get without pulp. ReMarkable worked closely with E Ink to create a version of electronic paper that offered a response time of 100 milliseconds, which gave the impression that the E Ink that appeared on the page was flowing out of a ReMarkable stylus. This stylus, incidentally, required no batteries, drawing energy from the screen through inductive charging. Another ReMarkable 2 tablet is even lighter and thinner (4.7 mm).
The parallels between the Kindle Scribe and ReMarkable 2 are not, well, remarkable, as they reflect advances in the display, processing, materials, and technology of the E Ink stylus in the 13 years since Amazon introduced the Kindle DX. That ReMarkable first appeared there is a credit to them, but now also a problem.
Amazon has taken 15 years to perfect its eBook reader business, offering a range of products that start at as low as $ 99 (often on sale for $ 69) and cost the same as the Kindle Oasis $ 249. The 10.2-inch Kindle Scribe is more affordable than the original DX, though not as cheap as the $ 279 ReMarkable 2.
Amazon now has the means to allow this more expensive and mostly niche ebook reader to soak through and gain market share, while the tacky ReMarkable start-up will need some sloppy innovation. He needs to remind consumers that he was here first (as if it mattered) to survive.
The weird thing is that my excitement for the Kindle Scribe is almost entirely based on my experience with ReMarkable 1. It’s fun to draw with a stylus on E Ink. It can look and feel like paper. ReMarkable has always been smart enough to harness the processing power of a paper-like screen for greater usability.
The technological arc often goes up, but it also travels back in time to long-forgotten setbacks to create something fresh and new. It’s fun to watch and try a new thing, but it’s always worth remembering how we and everyone else got here.
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