Colour e-readers which add that special something to a basic function but can do so much more.
When you talk of e-readers most people think of those from Amazon. What many folks don’t realise is that there are other players on the market that offer impressive digital reading solutions. Kobo is one of them and have been my favourite for a long time.
This year Kobo released updated e-readers to the world, with coloured e-ink displays making an appearance. Kobo sent us the new Libra Colour and the Clara Colour to check out and we were suitably impressed with them, but be warned, don’t expect the display to look as good as your Android or iPad display. Read on to hear more.
Display + hardware
The Libra Colour has the bigger of the two displays at 7-inches while the Clara Colour is a 6-inch display. Both are E Ink Kaleido 3 displays with a 150ppi resolution. While not great, these are designed for reading, not for watching high resolution movies and they accomplish that well.
The Libra Colour display is compatible with the Kobo Stylus 2 but the smaller Clara Colour display is not. I’m not sure why this difference considering the only difference between the two is the one inch size difference.
The stylus support is handy to have, especially if you are using the e-reader for school or work and you can mark up, draw and write as required while reading documents. You can also make your own notes for later reference.
Both displays can be navigated by tapping on the display – the location of the taps can be changed in the settings to the areas you prefer to use. I like this option because sometimes while lying in bed reading I want something different to when I’m sitting on the couch reading.
I did notice that sometimes the display wasn’t overly sensitive to lighter touches when navigating around the e-reader. Another advantage of the physical buttons.
The Clara Colour lacks buttons so it cannot be navigated using hardware buttons like the Libra Colour can. Sometimes it is easier to reach and use the physical navigation buttons than the display and as such my preference is to have these buttons.
The front light (or backlight, whatever you prefer to call it) is a ComfortLight Pro which allows for not just altering of brightness but also the ‘temperature’ (warm or cold) of the display which is very handy at night where a warmer display allows for relaxation of the eyes.
The storage of both e-readers is 32GB which is enough for a lot of books (they can store up to 24,000 eBooks or 150 audiobooks based on 1.3MB per book and audiobook length of 6.5 hours with 28.8MB per hour) but if you stick a few comics on it that space will vanish quickly – although how many do you need on your device at any one time?
Comics look a bit faded on the coloured e-readers but it’s nice to have an e-reader which can do both e-books and coloured comics easily. It means you only need to take one device on holidays with you.
The batteries are of different sizes with the Libra Colour at 2,050mAh and the Clara Colour at 1,200mAh, both of which is enough for up to 40 days of battery life (based on 30 minutes of reading per day with the front light at 30% brightness and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off). It is interesting to see how much that extra one inch of display size (and maybe the stylus display drives?) must affect the battery life given both have the same expected battery life.
Nothing I’ve seen in this review has suggested to me otherwise which is great to hear because my Sage battery won’t last a week (there was apparently meant to be an update coming to improve battery life but I haven’t seen that in the last couple years I’ve been using it).
The Libra Colour comes with an IPX8 rating meaning it is “protected against the effects of continuous immersion in water.” The X in it means it has not been tested against dust/solid ingress but water is the main thing for an e-reader with many folks liking to soak in a hot bath and relax while reading on their e-reader. I’d suggest you don’t deliberately test this out though – I certainly did not.
The Libra Colour is 144.6 x 161 x 8.3 mm which is smaller than my Kobo Sage, mostly due to the slightly smaller display. This is not a massive issue as it is still larger than most Kindles that you see around, especially if you have decent eyesight.
For me, with my woeful eyesight (without glasses) I do need the text quite large to be able to read properly given that most of my reading is before falling asleep at night, when I do not want to be wearing my glasses. This results in less being able to be visualised on the page so I do need to turn the page more often – *shrug*.
This is a huge advantage of digital e-readers over normal books – you can alter the text size to suit your eyes. Can’t do that with a traditional paper book.
The Clara Colour is just 112 x 160 x 9.2 mm in size making it quite compact and great for travelling. It is 26 grams lighter than the Libra Colour at 174 grams but to be honest, both are light enough to carry in your bag easily without developing any kind of kyphosis or scoliosis from the weight.
How is the display to use?
As mentioned above there were times when tapping the Libra Colour display to turn the pages did nothing and there were times when it reacted so slowly I ended up skipping a page. I’m not entirely sure why this was the case because it was difficult to replicate it when trying to figure out a reason so it was obviously not that much of an issue.
The Clara colour display did not have this issue so I suspect it was something to do with the stylus display driver on the Libra Colour. It wasn’t bad enough to make me stop using it though, just a minor frustration that I noticed on occasion.
The colour marking up with notes etc was incredibly simple, especially when using the Kobo Stylus on the Libra Colour. To highlight words, lines and paragraphs though you do need to tap and hold on a word using your finger rather than the stylus. The Clara Colour does not support marking up, only highlighting.
The colours used for highlighting etc, along with the colours of the display are incredibly subtle and muted compared to that on a smartphone or tablet but that is one of the limitations of an e-ink display (at this stage – never say never).
The displays are easy to read and I love the ability to change the temperature or ‘warmness’ of a display based on time of day and also your preferences.
File Support
One of the main reasons I love Kobo e-readers are their vast file support. It natively supports 15 file formats – EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ, CBR.
It also supports audiobooks BUT ONLY Kobo Audiobooks which is crazy. I tried to put a standard mp3 audiobook file on there, all to no avail. It also means that audiobooks from sources such as OverDrive will not work either.
One more reason I love Kobo readers is the multitude of ways you can put the books and other files onto your e-reader.
With the more advanced Libra Colour, not only can you drag and drop from your PC but also download from OverDrive, Google Drive, Pocket and Dropbox. The Clara Colour does not support Google Drive or Dropbox though. It is very handy and it makes me wonder why this option is not included on the Clara Colour and given its $260 price tag it really should be.
One software option hidden away inside ‘Beta Features’ is the web browser. It is very simple and can’t do much to be honest but it can be used to search quickly for the name of a book from Goodreads for example. I’m not entirely sure when you would use this all that much given that these days most people have an Internet connected device such as a smartphone or tablet nearby that has a fully functional browser.
Notebooks
Notebooks within the UI of the Kobo Libra Colour allow you to make notes (funny that) on the go and then export them. This is very handy but just how useful I’m not entirely sure. I just wonder who doesn’t have an Internet-connected device designed for this sort of thing nearby to use but I think it’s a great push towards a healthier digital lifestyle (ie. away from the distracting and mentally-taxing social media).
Now the advanced notebooks did convert my handwriting into text well, it did not recognise smiley faces so you’d have to insert these as a freehand drawing if you really wanted them in. You do not have the formatting that you’d get in a fully-fledged office program but it is designed for basic use only.
Interestingly, it was only during using the notebooks that I noticed any ghosting on the display. As you can see in the pictures below, the writing was still ‘present’ after it had been converted to text. I suspect that is a small software tweak needed where it should refresh the display once converting to text but doesn’t.
Audiobooks
Unfortunately, the only audiobooks that will play on either Kobo e-reader are those downloaded from the Kobo store which is incredibly disappointing.
Those that you have downloaded from there though will play as designed once you have connected a Bluetooth speaker or headphones to the e-reader. I tested with both a speaker and headphones and they both paired quickly and easily and played the audiobook as expected.
The audiobook interface is super simple as you would expect, similar to that on Audible but it was refreshing for those who like an audiobook on occasion. I just hope that they open it up to audiobooks from other sources too. They haven’t closed off the standard books to those from their store so I am not entirely sure why they have done so for audiobooks.
Accessories
Kobo offers some great stands/covers that you can purchase separately from the e-reader. They offer standard folio covers (SleepCovers) along with some that fold into a stand to help prop up the book while reading it.
The SleepCovers start at $44.95 for the most basic Libra Colour version but add an extra $5 for one that includes a folding stand in its design. Clara Colour SleepCovers start at $44.95. SleepCovers are actually great value and although I’d prefer them to be cheaper the ones with the included stand in the design are incredibly useful.
There is of course the Kobo Stylus as well. There is a special cover/folio case that has a stylus holder too. For me I think the stylus could be of great value if using the e-reader for marking up, such as reading and making notes on articles, grading papers and editing articles. While the Kobo e-reader is not perfect for this task it is good that the stylus extends the uses of the Kobo Libra Colour meaning you may be able to get away with carrying one less device.
The Kobo Store and Kobo Plus
The Kobo Store is Kobo’s version of the Kindle Store but although Kobo doesn’t say just how many books it has we know it has more than 1.5 million, it doesn’t seem to have quite the same coverage that the Amazon Kindle Store does. This is not a huge issue if you know where to buy the book you can relatively easily transfer the book from another device to your Kobo.
As for Kobo Plus I’m still yet to be convinced. Kobo Plus has over 1.5 million eBooks and 150,000 audiobooks but for some reason there are very few of the big-name books or big new releases. While Kindle Unlimited doesn’t either, it does give you the option to buy one for free each month.
For this reason I’m not convinced that Kobo Plus is decent value for your hard earned. You are more likely to get better value out of OverDrive which uses your local library’s online ebooks and is normally fairly extensive.
Kobo Plus Read and Kobo Plus Listen are both $13.99 per month or you can opt for both of these for $16.99 per month. You can get a month free trial though if you sign up so that may be an option for those undecided.
Use it forever
Forever may be a bit of a stretch but Kobo wants to extend the life of your e-reader with a design that allows it to be taken apart – and repaired. They have partnered with iFixit to allow users to buy and replace their own batteries, circuit boards and screen replacements.
The overall goal of this program is to be more environmentally conscious. Not only are the new Kobo e-readers made with recycled plastics and their retail packaging from 100% FSC-certified recycled paper, printed with soy-ink but the tablets themselves should have an extended lifespan due this repairability.
Verdict
The Kobo Clara Colour is a great little device. Compact and incredibly portable, it is a great e-reader, but that is all it is. It is unfortunate that Kobo has limited the ways to add books to the e-reader as it would have been nice to see Dropbox and Google Drive support for it too.
This e-reader is for those who are either on a budget or only want their e-reader to read books (and listen to audiobooks if you want to get them from the Kobo Store). The black and white version of the Kobo Clara is just $20 cheaper than the Clara Colour which is makes the colour version a no-brainer in my opinion. At $259.95 it is still not cheap but one of the cheaper e-readers on our market here in Australia.
The Kobo Libra Colour though is an e-reader that does it all. It is compatible with the Kobo Stylus 2, it has colour, it has support for Google Drive and Dropbox and has physical buttons (and gestures on-display) for navigating. You can browse the web, mark up articles or assignments etc, make notes in the notebook, read e-books, listen to audiobooks — everything possible in an e-reader.
There really is no equivalent Kindle to the Libra Colour with the Scribe supporting stylus use but is a massive 10.2-inch display (you may as well buy a tablet at $549 for the Scribe), the Oasis is the same size and has physical navigation buttons but doesn’t support stylus use and neither of them are coloured. The Oasis is also much more expensive at $559.
The Libra Colour RRP is $359.95 which I think is a great deal. It may be $100 more than the Clara Colour but it can do so much more. If you are looking for an e-reader that can do everything and do not care about using Kindle Books then the Kobo Libra Colour is for you.
Kobo Libra Colour retails for $359.95 AUD, Kobo Clara Colour for $259.95 AUD, and Kobo Clara BW for $239.95 AUD at www.kobo.com/ereaders and select retailers. The Kobo Stylus 2 is currently available and retails for $119.95.
