If you love e-books, you can forget the monotone screen. Now you can add colour to your e-book reading, mark-up and note-taking experience with the new Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour.
Kobo’s new Libra Colour and Clara Colour bring the features you knew and loved from the mono versions including the screen sizes and waterproof design and add the brand new E Ink Kaleido touchscreens.
Now you can see your library and individual in full colour while still maintain the glare-free paper-like look.
The new Kobo Libra Colour also adds stylus compatibility so you can mark up your books, highlight passages and create notes to organise your thoughts.
And being colour, naturally you have the choice of colours for your highlighter and writing.
Kobo Libra Colour is available in black or white and has a 7-inch E Ink Kaleido touchscreen display and has an area to the right of the screen so you can hold the device without blocking any of the screen.
It also has page up and down buttons so you can manually turn the pages of your book instead of swiping the screen left or right (you can do that too).
It has a slightly curved form factor, so it fits nicely in your hand with the page turn buttons at your fingertips.
You might be thinking why you need colour when reading text – well you don’t but the attraction is not only seeing your covers in colour and your coloured highlights, but you can enjoy colour illustrations and images.
It also opens the possibility of attracting younger readers with colourful illustrated children’s books, older readers with comics, graphic novels and coffee tables books filled with brilliant images.
The Kobo Clara Colour has a 6-inch E Ink Kaleido and a more compact unit that can easily fit into a bag or a large pocket.
The new Kobo’s offer an excellent reading experience – the screen looks just like paper – it can be read anywhere – in bed at night or outside in the sun – and there are no notifications to distract you from your book.
Onboard the new Kobo Colour e-readers is the ComfortLight PRO which can reduce blue light during the day. You can also choose to read in dark mode.
And with colour – your library of book covers never looked so good.
Now we know many people like to read with a highlighter or pen in their hand so they can highlight and circle passages and write notes in the margins.
There are a few other e-readers that now come with the ability to write on the screen including the Kindle Scribe, but Kobo has a patent for the ability to write and highlight within an e-book which makes it just like the experience you’d have with a physical book.
The stylus does not come with the Kindle Libra Colour and can be purchased at additional cost.
The Kobo stylus can be used as a pencil or as a highlighter. Users can simply write on the screen and annotate the text and, with the press of the button, it makes it possible to select and highlight passages.
It also has an eraser on the top like a regular pencil so if you make a mistake, you just rub it out like you would on paper and it disappears.
The Kobo Libra Colour can also be your journal and notebook.
There are several templates to choose from including simple ruled lines, planners, calendars and much more.
Users can group notes into notebook to easily organise their thoughts, plans, recipes and anything else you’d like to write down.
All your notes can also be backed up to the Kobo Cloud and connected to Google Drive and Dropbox.
The Kobo Clara Colour does not have stylus compatibility but you can still highlight passages in different colours using your finger on the touchscreen.
These latest Kobo devices can also play audiobooks.
With built-in Bluetooth you can pair your headphones and earphones to the devices like you would with your smartphones so you can listen to your books instead of reading them.
The Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour are made from recycled and ocean-bound plastic.
They are also waterproof so you can read them anywhere even by the pool, at the beach or in the bath.
The Kobo Libra Colour has 32GB of internal storage which is enough room for up to 24,000 books while the Kobo Clara Colour has 16GB and room for up to 12,000 books – that should get you through your next holiday.
Many Kobo owners are unaware the devices can be used at your local library to borrow e-books from your local library with Overdrive and Libby integration.
The Kobo Libra Colour is priced at $359.95 with the Kobo Stylus 2 priced at $119.95. The Kobo Libra Colour Sleepcover is available in Butter Yellow, Dusk Blue and Black and are priced at $49.95. The Kobo Libra Colour Clear Case is $39.95.
The Kobo Clara Colour is priced at $259.95. The Kobo Clara Colour/BW Sleepcover is available in Misty Green, Candy Pink, Cayenne Red and Black and are priced at $44.95. The Kobo Clara Colour/BW Clear Case is $34.95. The Kobo Clara Colour/BW Basic Sleepcover in Cobalt Blue is $34.95.
They go on sale on April 30, 2024.
