It’s been eighteen months since Amazon released the Kindle Scribe, and I still can’t figure out their motivation behind it, or why it’s on sale all the time at what seems to be unusually low prices.
The Kindle Scribe is the only Kindle currently on sale at Amazon, and it starts at $239 for the 16GB model with the basic stylus, which is $100 off the regular price. The 32GB version with the premium pen is $279, which is $110 off. Plus Amazon is giving an additional $40 off when purchasing two.
Most people probably don’t think there’s anything unusual about those prices, but compared to similar 10″ eNotes on the market and compared to past and current Kindles the price of the Kindle Scribe is much lower.
Most other 10″ eNotes never come close to $300, much less $239. The Kobo Elipsa 2E is currently on sale for $349 ($50 off) and that’s the lowest price it’s ever hit, and this is only the second time it’s been on sale in the past year.
Onyx’s 10″ Note Air3 sells for $399, and it set a new low price for Onyx when it came out. The color version costs $100 more, and Onyx almost never does sales; they just discount them when they’re getting replaced by a new model.
The Remarkable 2 also starts at $399, pretty much the standard price for most 10″ eNotes. Bigme sells a black and white 10″ model for $389.
So how is Amazon regularly selling the Kindle Scribe for under $250? It’s not like they can make a fortune off of people taking notes. There’s also the fact that the Kindle Scribe is the only black and white model with a 300 ppi screen; all the others listed above have lower resolution 227 ppi screens.
The price of the Kindle Scribe doesn’t make sense when compared to other Kindles either.
Right now the Kindle Scribe is only $50 more expensive than the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition. The Scribe has a much larger screen, it comes with a stylus, it has a premium metal housing, and it adds notetaking functionality.
Six months ago Amazon was still selling the 8GB Kindle Oasis for $249 with ads (the Scribe doesn’t have ads), and the 32GB model was $279 with ads, and Amazon kept selling them for full price up until the end despite the Oasis’s hardware being outdated by a couple years compared to other models. For most of its run, Amazon rarely put the Kindle Oasis on sale. They only did so a couple times a year, usually on Prime Day and Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Some people have been hoping for a Kindle Scribe Mini, or something to fill the gap between the Kindle Paperwhite and the Scribe now that the Kindle Oasis is gone, but how would they price it with the current Scribe on sale all the time for only $50 more than the Signature Edition Paperwhite?
The low price is good for customers, but it doesn’t make sense on multiple levels.
All I’m hoping is that they don’t come out with the Scribe 2 this year, and make me regret buying the Scribe 1 a little over a month ago.
And over stock, and over aggressive thinking on how many Amazon would be able to sale.
Normally I’d agree it was an overstock situation, but it’s been out for over a year and they still keep having to discount it. I suppose it’s possible they signed order commitments for that long…but it could also be dumping trying to crowd competitors out.
Yes a possibility
They must be getting some great data from those notebooks and PDFs to subsidize these models!
I’m only half-joking. I’m annoyed that you need to upload books to their servers to be able to write on them. This would be a great device for notating sheet music or legal documents, my two main eye-straining activities, if not for privacy concerns.
Who else offers 300ppi and stylus support in this price range?
I agree with you and I don’t think that it’s a joke. They must be selling the devices for less with an aim to harvest data (handwritten notes) from them. The fact that exporting the notes can only be done by sending them via Amazon is simply unacceptable for us.
This is was our main reason for getting a RM2 and never ever connecting it to the Internet. It’s very easy to export notes from RM2 by connecting it to PC with a cable.
Nobody dares to say, so I’m going to be the one: Amazon probably phasing out from it’s e-reader business. Which wouldn’t make any sense after dominating the whole sector since e-readers exist.
Or more new models coming at the same time and they need the space for big stocks.
The Kindle business was always a Bezos passion project; now that he’s no longer running things, I suspect the new management is trying to make it ‘make financial sense’ at the expense of everything else.
I got the scribe on sale finally, because even with $100 off Canadian it’s still a pricy device.
I also worried another model would come soon but honestly with how much I love it once it came I can’t imagine it being much better (please keep in mind I dont do much notetaking beyond what it offers)
The screen is so clear and contrasted on mine and that’s with having had the Voyage (which I still use).
I use my smaller models out and about but I use my scribe at home and on lunch breaks at work. I love it so much
If you discount all possible explanations and say the relatively low price for the Kindle Scribe “doesn’t make sense,” then it doesn’t make sense. But Amazon obviously has a reason for offering the discount. I suspect that in the present case, a Scribe Two is coming soon.
I think it absolutely makes good business sense. It’s the razor and blades model. They want to be competitive. The paper white is the obvious champ sales wise for ereaders, but they drop the scribes price to suck up more sales . They make their money selling you boooks and kindle unlimited subs. The cost of the reader means nothing to Amazon. I would bet we see a color paperwhite before a new scribe. The scribe is in a good place now vs the competition.