But that may have to do more with the publishers than with e-tailer. While "Gone Girl" costs $9.99 in English, it costs $9.59 in Dutch and $17.79 in Swedish. Oddly, Kobo appears to charge different prices for the same book in different languages. Amazon charges an average of $10, while Barnes & Noble e-books cost $10.47. Among the most recent top 10 e-book fiction bestsellers, as listed by The New York Times, Kobo titles cost an average of $12.19. But you won't find any newspapers or magazines - or any great prices. Just as with Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite and the Barnes & Noble Nook GlowLight, you can sync your Kobo content with apps for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android devices.Ĭlick to EnlargeKobo's e-book library has more than 4 million titles, including kids' books, comics, fiction and nonfiction. Fortunately, I didn't see any of the ghosting of previous pages we'd noticed on last year's Kobo Aura HD. Both the Kindle and Kobo presented a distinct flash every five page-turns, which was a bit distracting. Turning pages was responsive and nearly instantaneous, thanks to the 1-GHz CPU, although the Kindle Paperwhite was even faster. I can see all that as helpful for students. You can also search the dictionary, Wikipedia or Google for a phrase to get more information. You can highlight it, add a note or share the passage via Facebook. Long-pressing on a word underlines the passage in question. There's also a menu button to let you check your annotations, search the book for almost anything, change your reading settings or open the dictionary. These settings let you hop forward by leaps, change font size or check your stats. Tapping at the top brings up the settings bar, as well as book-related settings on the bottom right. Tapping left or right to turn pages is totally intuitive. It's inconceivable that you'll not find the perfect setting. Knowing that reading during my lunch hour or commute may earn me an award might make me read more.Ĭlick to EnlargeThe Kobo Aura H20 offers 10 fonts in 24 sizes, as well as weight and sharpness settings for those fonts. I like earning badges, as my years of dedication to Foursquare (pre-Swarm app) would testify. However, it might be a way for parents to check on a child's reading habits. Telling me that I'm 5 percent through a chapter, have 11 hours of reading left before I finish a certain book or read for an average of 30 minutes per session isn't going to make me read more. The stats are interesting, but not particularly motivating. This last category contains your awards and data-driven stats, along with a dictionary. A search bar for the device sits above these boxes.Īt the bottom of the page sit buttons to open your library, bookstore or Extras. Kobo also shows you the last time your library was synced and a brief breakdown of reading stats (how many books you've finished and how many hours you've spent reading). You'll see the book you've read most recently, the book you read before that, a button to see recent book recommendations, a button to see Kobo's most popular book and the most recent book you've downloaded. You can click on the home icon to get back to the main screen.Ĭlick to EnlargeMost of the home screen consists of rectangles containing various pieces of information. When you tap the top left, a quick-settings menu opens, showing the battery and Wi-Fi status, the brightness level and a settings button to delve further into the options. The main settings and controls are along the top edge of the home screen. The Aura H20's unique interface is graphically appealing and easily navigated. (The Kobo has no auto-brightness setting.) In that setting, the Kindle offered the best reading experience. However, when I set all three e-readers' lights to 50 percent, the Kobo was so bright that it was distracting in a brightly lit room. Of all three devices, the Kobo looked sharpest when displaying "Gone Girl" (Crown, 2012) by Gillian Flynn. That's brighter than the 333 lux we measured on the Kindle Paperwhite, but less than the 490 we recorded on the Nook GlowLight. We measured 374 lux of brightness on the ComfortLight from the Kobo Aura H20, with the light turned up all the way. Both of those devices feature smaller, 6-inch displays.Īll three e-readers come with built-in front-lights for nighttime reading. That's considerably sharper than the 1024 x 768-pixel resolution, with 212 ppi, on both the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and the Barnes & Noble Nook GlowLight. Click to EnlargeThe Auro H20 packs a 6.8-inch Carta E Ink HD touch screen, with a 1430 x 1080- pixel resolution, showing 265 dpi.
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