A few months ago, I reviewed my first modern e-reader. At the time, my wife thought that e-readers were an insult to ‘real’ books and could never be as good as the real thing. It didn’t take long for her to see some of the benefits and soon she was asking for her own. For that reason, I jumped at the chance to review the new Kobo Libra Colour. What I didn’t expect when it arrived was that it would come with a SleepCover and a Stylus 2. Even before opening it I regretted promising to give this to my wife and the pain only grew from there.
First impressions
The packaging for all three items is mostly cardboard and the soft plastic, the eReader and case are all made from recycled plastic. Everything seems to be both made from recycled materials and recyclable which is a lovely quality. Further all of the boxes are covered in stamps demonstrating their compliance with every possible global metric and standard. I have definitely never seen a piece of technology that has passed so many reviews and evaluations.
The Kobo Libra Colour has a 7” screen and two buttons on the side which can be customised but default to previous and next page. The e-Reader is incredibly light, weighing less than 200g and the cover weighs about 125g. This is much less than the weight of most of the books that we like to read but both the book and e-reader are designed to be easy to grip and I can imagine getting used to the feel of them very easily. The eReader has a USB-C charging port on the right side of the device which is always accessible and comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable.
The stylus is even more interesting. I’ve never really thought of using a stylus with an eReader but the pictures show that you can use it to highlight text and write notes which seems like an obvious and very handy idea. The Stylus, eReader and SleepCover are covered in magnetic surfaces so it is very easy to keep them all together. The Stylus 2 comes with 2 spare nibs. It has an eraser on the back, a button on the side and a ‘redesigned’ tip. It doesn’t come with a cable but has a USB-C charging port and can be charged with the same cable as the eReader. This isn’t too annoying for me as both the eReader and the stylus have incredibly long battery lives. Switching between them isn’t going to be like trying to share a phone cable.
Setup
The case was very easy to attach and the stylus worked as soon as I pulled it out of the case but the eReader was a bit more versatile. There are so many different ways to set up the Kobo Libra Colour. When you turn it on you are encouraged to connect it to a Kobo account and you are given a QR code for starting a new account. Unlike most devices, it doesn’t ask you for photos of your 5th birthday or the address where you were conceived, it just asks for an email address and a password. You are also encouraged to connect it to Wifi. The manual recommends connecting the device to a computer and transferring ebooks that way. You drag and drop items in, like a thumb drive. That was where I started, but I soon discovered there are so many other fun ways to load it up.
Firstly, you can sync a Google Drive account with the device and load pdfs and ebooks into that. You can also connect it to a Dropbox account. They also have a program built in called ‘Pocket’ which allows you to save articles and documents you find online to your Kobo device. However, this is expected to be scrapped in a few months to be replaced by ‘Instapaper’ so I can’t really talk to either of these programs. Finally it comes with Libby – a library e-book service used by most libraries in Australia, and Overdrive – Libby’s parent company which also has a wide range of educational and entertainment services for eReader devices. Ultimately, it feels like they have tried to make the device as open and accessible as possible for people with any level of tech know-how.
In Use
This is my first time using an eReader with coloured e-ink. I have always loved greyscale e-ink for how gentle it feels on my eyes and was sure that coloured ink would be more annoying or uncomfortable. However, the Kaleido e-ink was very easy to adjust to and I can see why it’s handy for reading graphic novels, making notes or just enjoying a good fantasy map. There are so many clever and subtle features to the Kobo Libra Colour but my absolute favourite are the adjustments they make to protect your eyes.
Firstly, you can set a bed time on the Kobo and it will reduce blue light and increase ‘candle’ light colours to better prepare your body for sleep. It also has an automatically adjusting sensor for ambient light and adjusts the colour palette to best match that light. It is very easy to toggle brightness and if you want a classic e-ink experience you can drop the brightness to nothing and have no back light. The screen seems to almost completely block sunlight glare and there are no notifications or distractions within the device.
Apparently it is also ‘waterproof’ which is a legal term I haven’t seen on a product for a long time. It is bluetooth compatible, allowing you to use wireless headphones when reading audiobooks. Like most modern eReaders, you can adjust the font size but with the Kobo Libra Colour, you can adjust the margins and the font style, at least on ePub documents. It comes with 32GB of storage in the device but there’s nothing stopping you from filling a Google Drive or Dropbox account with enough comics and audiobooks to choke a desktop PC.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed using the stylus, even just clicking through menus and turning pages as I read. The drawing function worked on quite steep angles and felt very natural, however I found the highlighting function a little more difficult and frustrating. I did enjoy having an eraser on the end and that worked quite well. As for the experience of reading itself, it was great but not noticeably different to any other stylus I have used.
Finally, I like the case. Without the case there’s no way to trigger the eReader to go into sleep mode, aside from leaving it alone for a while. The lid can be folded into a fun stand, it’s solid protection and it adds some colour to a product that is otherwise only white or black. It’s optional, but nice.
Ultimately, what stood out to me about all of this was the accessibility of every function and the ease of navigating through the menus. On eReaders, I’m used to scrolling through giant menus and hoping not to accidentally skip past the option I want to select. The Kobo Libra Colour features a touch screen and very simple menus that are extremely user friendly.
Gripes
I can think of very few things not to like about the Kobo Libra Colour. The SleepCover case is available in a wide range of colours but the Stylus 2 only comes in black or white, which is a bit dull. I found it difficult to highlight the sections of text I wanted to but maybe I just need a bit more practice. I wish I had more to complain about but it’s a really great product.
Conclusion
Well, I hope my wife is happy. The Kobo Libra Colour is gentle on the eyes, very user friendly, versatile and a joy to use for anything you could use an eReader for. The Kobo Libra Colour retails for $379.95 which is a pretty standard price for eReaders these days. The SleepCover costs around $50 and the Stylus 2 costs $119.95. I feel the stylus is a very optional extra but might be a necessity for someone using their Kobo for research. If you want an eReader, it’s hard to think of a reason to buy anything else.
