Taking notes on the go can be a bit inconvenient on a phone, and carrying around a stack of paper with you in the form of a notebook can get heavy pretty quickly. Luckily, e-ink screens are a great alternative, and if you’re already familiar with the Kindle line of products, like the Paperwhite and Oasis, then you’ll very much love the Scribe. Not only can it be used as an e-reader, but you can use it to take notes as well, which is a great feature on an already solid device. While it usually goes for $340, you can get the version with the basic pen and 16GB of storage for $270 directly from Amazon, while the premium pen version is going for $295 instead of $370, both of which are excellent deals.
One thing that you’ll appreciate about the Amazon Kindle Scribe, regardless of whether you want it for e-reading or note-taking, is the larger 10.2-inch screen. That means you can fit a lot more text on there, requiring less taping to go to the next page when reading and a more comfortable note-taking experience. It has 300 pixels per inch, so it’s still a sharp and excellent resolution for a bigger screen, and it even has the same backlighting you’d find in other Kindle devices, which you won’t find in something like the reMarkable 2.
That said, it does lack some of the integrations that reMarkable 2 has, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, although you can send documents to an email, which is still a handy feature. The Kindle Scribe can also connect with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so you can use it to go online as well as listen to audiobooks through a connected pair of headphones. As for note-taking, you get a lot of various templates, from sheet music to ruled pages, so there’s a lot of variety, although not as much as the reMarkable 2. Also, the basic pen doesn’t come with an erase tip, whereas the premium pen does, so it might be worth the extra $25 to go for that feature.
There’s a reason that the Amazon Kindle Scribe is the best smart notebook, and we think it’s well worth grabbing for the discounted price of $270 from Amazon, which is almost a steal at that price.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.