Amazon's weird new Kindle lets you ink onto Microsoft Word documents

What you need to know

• Amazon has announced a new Kindle designed for inking.
• It's called the Kindle Scribe and costs $339 from Amazon.
• It features support for inking directly onto Microsoft Word documents.

Amazon has just unveiled a weird new entry to its Kindle line of devices, dubbed the "Kindle Scribe," and features the ability to ink into sticky notes, books, PDFs, and other documents using an optional digital pen. It has a large tablet-sized 10.2-inch e-ink display with a PPI of 300, and sports "months of battery life."

Interestingly, the Kindle Scribe also supports Microsoft Word documents, with the ability to ink into sticky notes within Word documents that you can send between your PC and the Kindle Scribe using Amazon's Kindle software. Additionally, Amazon notes that the ability to send Word documents to your Kindle Scribe directly from within Microsoft Word is coming in 2023:

"You can also import and create handwritten sticky notes in Microsoft Word documents, web articles, and other document formats with adjustable font sizes and layouts. From early 2023, you will be able to send documents to Kindle Scribe directly from within Microsoft Word."

The new Kindle Scribe is designed to be more than just a device for reading books. Amazon touts it as a device that's perfect for both reading and writing, even in direct sunlight, thanks to the e-ink display. It's an interesting move for the Kindle line and one that takes aim directly at the reMarkable 2, which has dominated the e-ink journaling market until now.

For now, the Kindle Scribe only supports inking on Word documents. Hopefully, in the future, we will see that support expanded to other Office format types, including OneNote. It would be pretty awesome to have an e-ink tablet with OneNote support. Just think of the battery life!

The Kindle Scribe is available for pre-order now for $339 and is expected to start shipping in the coming weeks.