Kobo eReader
This is one in a series of posts that compares different EBRs (E-Book Readers). I have previously listed features of the nook, the Sony, the Kindle, the OpenBook, and the eBookwise. You can read those articles here.
First, I have to say that the information is somewhat limited at this point. You can pre-order the Kobo eReader right now, and some reviewers have them, but they haven’t put up a User’s Guide yet. In fact, they have a page that says it is tech specs (technical specifications), but it’s a bit sparse right now.
Overview: the Kobo is the least expensive of the major E Ink readers at the time of writing. It does not have wireless download of books, but it will connect via Bluetooth. Content comes from Kobo, and the device will be available in Borders stores (and other locations).
Price: This is the big attraction for this device (based on the news stories), so let’s talk about it up front. It can be pre-ordered currently (for May delivery) for $149…but that’s Canadian dollars. Right now, the two are pretty close, though, so that might be the US cost as well. If it is, it’s $110 less than either the 6″ Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s nook (sic). However the 5″ Sony Pocket Reader is $169…only $20 more. Sony’s 6″ Sony Portable is $299.
When you move away from E Ink, the prices get much lower. The OpenBook lists for $149 (although it has been on sale for a while from Walgreens for $99.99) and the eBookwise is available for $99.95.
Getting the books
Here’s where the Kobo is a stepdown from the Kindle/nook and Sony Daily Edition (which is $399). Those three all download books wirelessly (as do tablets, like the iPad). It’s one of the attractions of the Kindle in particular: free (in the US) 3-G downloading, which means you can get books pretty much where a cell phone would work.
The Kobo needs to connect to another device to get books. You can download the books to a computer and the “sideload” them to the Kobo. You get software to enable it to sync (so it’s less manual than using a Kindle). You can connect to a Blackberry with Bluetooth (which is very short range wireless), and transfer books from the SmartPhone to your Kobo. I think looking at this that you could buy books from your Blackberry and then Bluetooth them to your Kobo. That could make the experience close to the wireless of the Kindle/nook/Sony Daily, although obviously with a few more steps.
Book selection
This is a strength of the Kobo. It uses the Kobobooks site, which does have the New York Times bestsellers, and other current releases. It’s hard to tell how many books they have, because searches seem to be limited to 500 results. They do claim to have 2 million titles. One interesting thing: they make a point about having books not available on iBooks. Amazon currently has that as well, but except for Kindle exclusives, I haven’t seen them labeling books that way.
Kobo has reportedly signed agreements with the “Agency 5″. Like Amazon, they also carry books from Random House and other sources.
Other sources
The Kobo can read PDFs and EPUBs, and Adobe DRM (Digital Rights Management). Weirdly, they don’t list anything else…including txt, which is otherwise pretty universal with e-readers. My guess is that they are just failing to list some other formats at this point, but we’ll see. Would that be a huge limitation? Probably not, except for personal files. When they talk about personal files, they only mention PDFs. The free program Calibre will convert a number of file types to both PDF and EPUB.
Book prices
This is much relevant than it used to be, since books sold through the agency model should cost the same everywhere.
Free books
There are two hundred and twenty free e-books listed at Kobobooks at the time of writing. It appeared to me that fewer than twenty of those were current promotional titles. This compares to about 20,000 free books directly from Amazon for the Kindle, of which about 50-75 are promotional titles. However, the Kobo should also be able to read free books from a number of other sites.
Memory
The Kobo has 1 gig of onboard memory, which they say is about 1000 books at an average of 1 meg. That’s bigger than Amazon figures is average…they work it at 800KB. That doesn’t necessarily mean their book files are larger, they may just like round numbers. 
While you won’t be able to get books directly to your device wirelessly, the Kobo does have an SD slot, and will take cards up to 4GB. That puts it over the walkaround memory of a Kindle DX.
Battery life
This is one of the biggest advantages of E Ink devices over backlit devices (like the iPad and other tablets): the Kobo says it will last for two weeks on a single charge (or 8000 “page turns”). That’s comparable to the Kindle…better than the nook. Since the tech specs are incomplete, I don’t know if it is a battery a user can replace or not.
Size
The Kobo is actually lighter and smaller than a Kindle or a nook.
Content portability
There are free apps to read Kobo books on iPhones, Blackberrys, Android phones, and the Palm Pre. Oh, the Android one says it is “coming in 2010″. It looks like you can also read them on Macs and PCs, and they say you can read them on tablets. I presume you could not read them on a Kindle (legally), since they should contain a type of DRM that the Kindle can’t read.
Other
The Kobo has a control sort of like the 5-way on a Kindle, except that it is a blue pad instead of a joystick.
It has a feature a lot of people want on the Kindle: it will retain the cover image of the book as a sleep screen. Other people don’t like that, though…it can be nice that people don’t know what you are reading sometimes.
They have a “chapter page count” feature, which appears to be able to tell you “how many pages” you have left in the chapter…another nice feature.
They show you the books in your library several ways…including on a “bookshelf”, like iBooks (but not in color, of course).
There are five font sizes (the Kindle has 6, to be 7 later this year)…and two font styles.
The back of the device is textured, which should make it easier to hold. There are also a number of skins available.
Grayscale is 8 levels…below the 16 on the Kindle or the nook.
The device will also come with 100 public domain books already on it. That’s an interesting strategy: it gets things going for people who are less comfortable with computers, but you aren’t choosing which books. I think most people would just as soon select the books themselves, but I do think others will enjoy just turning on the device and being able to start reading.
Summary
Overall, I think this is a reasonable option for people who don’t mind being tethered. My guess is that the Kindle will come down in price, but right now, the Kobo is considerably cheaper. No text-to-speech is a concern, and I haven’t seen anything indicating that there is dictionary lookup. The availability of books seems to be pretty good. I think this device will carve out a small section of the market as a no-frills E Ink contender.
More information
Tip of the day: if you click on a footnote and are taken to the end of the book, click the Back button before going Home (which you should do when you finish your reading session). Otherwise, your “furthest page read” may set to where the footnote was, not where you were reading last.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
April 11, 2010 at 4:52 am |
I can see getting these for my 13 and 12 year old kids. I’d like to control what books get loaded on their e-readers and this seems like a perfect solution. There is a persistent rumor that Borders is going bankrupt though. What will that mean for the future of the Kobo?
April 11, 2010 at 2:18 pm |
Thanks for writing, threeundertwo!
It would certainly make it harder for them to get e-books on their own…although, since the Kobo displays PDFs and EPUB, that opens it up for all kinds of possibilities (especially illegal copies gotten from the web). If they don’t have their own computer access at home, that would mean they would have to initially download them somewhere else. For similar reasons, some people deregister their children’s Kindles: that prevents them from buying from the Kindle store or surfing the web. The latter would not be an option with the Kobo.
Borders actually did quite a bit better recently. They had been on the “retail death watch” for a couple of years: they had a big loan they kept renegotiating, and it was coming due right about now.
New financing was announced just in the last month, and they did lay-off a bunch of people: that’s actually usually seen as a good thing by marketwatchers. Losses were down in recent reports.
The Kobo purchase was fairly recent, and I think that may be motivating some of the more positive assessments.
Kobo doesn’t really need Borders….they were doing fine before. If Borders got back in serious straits, they could sell Kobo.
I think buying a Kobo at this point is probably safe in terms of continuing support.
I’m just guessing, though.
April 12, 2010 at 12:00 pm |
The price definitely puts it in a great range for kids, right in there with iPod nano and DS costs. I’d put it up on this years birthday list for DD, except then we can’t share books unless we trade devices…. hmmm that’s something to think about.
Looks a bit copycat, and the blue pad’s a bit odd looking, but not bad at all.
April 12, 2010 at 1:17 pm |
Thanks for writing, danielle!
I agree with the look of the pad! I didn’t mention it, but it looks to me like something that should be removed when you are unpacking the device.
I think the color makes it look…cheap, for some reason, and I suspect people with limited tactile sense may find it harder to work.
Yes, that issue about sharing books is a major one! Part of that might depend on how old your children are…it may not be so much that you want them to read the books you read, but do you want to read the books they read? If you have a seven year old, you could probably read the books pretty quickly. A twelve year old? It would be tougher for you to borrow the device and read the book…because the books are longer and more complex. That means you won’t be able to review the books as easily (for content)…and you won’t be able to share in their experiences and discuss the books for fun with them. I read more than thirty Animorphs books…because my offspring was reading them.
Oh, and they were pretty good, too. Not an option for books under copyright if one of you is Kobo and one is Kindle, except, as you say, if you switch devices.
I’m guessing a Kindle device at a lower price will be available by the second quarter of 2011…and possibly, much sooner. I’d have a tough time waiting if I had school age kids, though…a year is a long time in kid years.
May 5, 2010 at 9:04 pm |
This kobois now also available through walmart at least here in Canada for $149 that’s a mayor step for them.The nearest thing to this is the prs 300 from sony, no audio and transferring books manually from computer to it. ‘only’ 512mb on it and no memorycard slot but nice and rugged.
offcourse it sells for 239 or so. but good battery live.
Ooh and if you think about sharing it… it would be like trying to read the same book at the same time, at least in my houehold that doesn’t work lol.
and that’s just me and the wife..can’t imagine with kids
June 5, 2010 at 5:33 am |
I guess you would call having to plug into the computer “tethered,” but the Kindle seems more tethered in that you are locked into Amazon! It’s my beleif that Kobo will capture the mainstreat but the Kindle will still have a huge spot as the Cadillac of eReaders.
I’ve spent over a month using the Kobo and made my own honest review. http://tinyurl.com/24n6utz
It’s not perfect, but for a basic reader it’s awesome!
June 5, 2010 at 1:14 pm |
Thanks for writing, mrjonahemery!
Yes, when you have to plug a cable into something (for file transfer or download, for example), that’s called “tethering”.
I’ve heard other people say that about being limited to Amazon with a Kindle, but it really isn’t true. It’s a common belief, though. I’d say the majority of books I read on my Kindle come from other sites, and I’ve heard that from other people as well.
The limitation is on books with DRM (Digital Rights Management). With those, you are limited to books formatted for the Kindle, but there are many books out there without it (including new and well-known books from places like Baen and Fictionwise). Any popular book you want will have been formatted for the Kindle anyway, and Amazon’s prices tend to be very good, so it’s sort of a moot point.
I also use my Kindle a lot for personal documents…many of us do. It’s been a great help with work documents, especially when I’ve had it read them to me aloud in the car.
Thanks for the pointer to your review! I don’t leave links to ads in comments, but to an article like that, it’s fine. I haven’t held a Kobo myself, but it seems like a reasonable option…all EBRs have limitations, of course.
I am shocked that it takes thirty seconds for your device to boot up! I’m hoping that’s a problem with yours…that’s a very long time. My Kindles only take a few seconds, and I’ve had the same experience with a nook.
I also am disappointed with your comments about controlling what you can see on the homescreen. When we are finished with books we get from the Kindle store, we can just remove them from the device. If you have Whispernet (most Kindle users do), you can retrieve those books in under a minute: I’ve demonstrated getting a book from the Archives, putting it on the Kindle, and putting it back in the archives…all in under a minute, right in my dentist’s lobby.
We can also sort them and create “Collections”, which are somewhat like folders in terms of organization.
However, your description of the e-reading experience is evocative, and I’m sure people like it on the Kobo just like they do on the Kindle, nook, or Sony. If you don’t mind the tethering, it does seem like it would be a good device for a lot of people.
I don’t know about it “capturing the mainstream”, though. There were already about ten EBRs (E-Book Readers) in the US market when the Kindle was introduced. They’d never really ignited the market…I think the tethering was one of the major drawbacks. One thing the Kindle did was open the market to people who were just book readers and not techies…you know, people who hate cords.
Another thing was that Amazon’s book reputation convinced a lot of them: the popularity of the Kindle may have removed that conceptual barrier for a lot of people, though.
Thanks again for writing!
May 24, 2011 at 3:37 am |
[...] First, they are reducing the current Kobo wireless to $99. That’s right, it’s an E Ink EBR (E-Book Reader) for under $100. Amazon didn’t choose to do that with their ad-supported Kindle, but could have, I think. Amazon has responded to price drops from Barnes & Noble before, but I don’t think this on its own means an immediate price drop on the Kindle. For more information on that model, see this earlier post. [...]
December 2, 2011 at 8:04 pm |
EReader…
[...]Kobo eReader « I Love My Kindle[...]…