Electronic devices called eReaders are becoming pretty common. They are, essentially, low power tablet computers designed specifically for the purpose of reading. Most of them have a display using technology called ePaper that differs significantly from LCD technology. ePaper is extremely easy on the eyes, making it like reading pages of a book. Another advantage is the device doesn’t have to use power to leave the image on the display so they become very very low power devices, capable of lasting days to weeks.
I had been considering jumping into the whole eBook thing for a while, and even began doing some reading of eBooks on my netbook. Even with the display brightness turned down, I could not find a comfortable viewing experience with the display, and the netbook itself did not lend to being a good reading device. I wanted to hold off buying a dedicated eReader because I was hoping to either get one at a really low price or maybe spend more on the newer color ePaper devices that were coming much later. When I found a device that was less than $200, I jumped on it.
Enter: Kobo.
At the time that I ordered my Kobo, the price was $150, which made it around $100 cheaper than the other popular alternatives (Kindle and nook). Now, Kobo doesn’t have the price advantage anymore. I would recommend reading my article on why I continued with the Kobo despite the price drops before receiving it.
Now, I’ve had the Kobo for a little while now, but I wanted to wait on reviewing it until the recent firmware update was available and I got to play with it because I wanted to make a review that included the current edition in case some of my concerns were already addressed (some were).
Design
The first thing to note about the Kobo is it is a VERY basic device. It has a total of 6 buttons, 1 data/charging port, and a SD card slot. There is no keyboard, no touchscreen, no complicated mechanisms, none of that. From the very beginning, it was designed to be an eBook reader and that’s pretty much it. It has no wifi or 3G mobile connectivity. It’s thin and light. It’s easy to hold. All of the reasons I listed for choosing the Kobo apply here.
Build Quality
This is an important consideration for a device that is going to cost over $100, in my opinion. It needs to last. The Kobo feels pretty solid and durable. The back is a pretty hard rubberized plastic and the front feels like a pretty sturdy plastic. The buttons feel solid and pretty well integrated. The ePaper display is plastic instead of glass so it should be harder to break. However, it’s not going to be scratch resistant by any means.
Look And Feel
I’m honestly not a fan of the color scheme. The white and gray are okay, but the turquoise buttons are a little distracting, especially the big navigation button. I’ve seen images of an all gray model that I would have preferred, but I think it was a prototype model. It’s light and easy to hold and use. The only complaint I have is the placement of the navigation button. I think it would have been better placed in the middle rather than to one side.
Ease Of Use
Because of its simplicity in design, it’s very easy to get into and use. In fact, as soon as you receive it you can start reading any of the 100 included books. I used The Art of War by Sun Tzu (commentary by Lionel Giles, but that’s not noted…it’s from the Gutenberg Project) to get started. Unfortunately this was a terrible book to get started with because it was not properly formatted (it has chapters but for some reason this information was missing in the file) but still a good read.
The software on the device is pretty easy to use, but I have to admit that some things are not as intuitive as I think they could be. As an example, if you are reading a book or have new books on the device, the default home screen is the Now Reading screen and you access the library through two small selectable links above the book list. This was not obvious to me at first, but I found it pretty quickly. Given my ability to figure things out quickly, and how this was not obvious immediately, it does concern me that another person might not catch on quite as quickly. There are a few other little things here and there that struck me this way.
One of my major complaints, however, is the inability to “close” a book quickly. Once a book is opened, the only way to close it without connecting to a computer is to skip to the last chapter then page to the end (at least as far as I can tell). Kobo could definitely use a “Close Book” option in the menu as paging on a device with an ePaper display is not fast.
Loading Books
One of the really great things about the Kobo is how service agnostic it is. It only supports two eBook formats, ePub and PDF, but pretty much all book sellers these days sell their books in ePub format (the exception is Amazon, I believe, which uses a proprietary format for the Kindle). Additionally, no extra software is required to copy books to the Kobo. Once connected to a computer via USB, the Kobo presents its storage as disk drives. If the Kobo has a memory card installed, it will show a separate drive for the card. This makes putting books on it a matter of copying ePub or PDF files to the Kobo like copying files to another folder.
Since I’m in the USA, my Kobo is provided through Borders, which provides a branded version of the Kobo bookstore software to purchase books. This software makes it very easy to find books, buy them, and load them on the Kobo. Loading books in this way doesn’t actually load an ePub file onto the device in the same way as using the drive. Instead, it is loaded into the Kobo’s internal library. The books purchased from the Kobo book store as well as loaded through the software from the Borders library do contain DRM.
Performance
I really didn’t expect much in performance. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if some things might have been a little frustrating. I figured as long as I can read books reasonably, it should be fine. In fact, the performance is pretty good in this area. However, performance is severely lacking in other areas.
When loading a new book onto the device and unplugging it, it has to read through the files and set up some metadata information so that it can be displayed in the library interface more smoothly. The boot process is slow, but not to the point of unusable. However, the process of loading new books is damn near infuriatingly slow. If you make a change of more than one book, it can take quite a long time to refresh the library. As of this writing, I’ve been waiting about half an hour for it to refresh after adding a new book from O’Reilly, removing some PDFs, and adding a couple of publications (loaded through Calibre). One might think it might have crashed, locked up, etc, but experience tells me this is not the case. It can take quite a long time if there are enough changes.
The book I bought from O’Reilly is a large book. It seems that the Kobo does handle it well. It takes an unacceptably long time to process at boot, as well as an unacceptably long time to load it for reading. Some of the page turns take longer than I feel should be tolerable.
If I were to grade the performance using an academic scale, it would receive a big fat red F. The performance is tolerable once you can get it into a book, but it’s a complete failure getting to that point.
Battery Longevity
I’m not a power reader. I like reading, but sometimes it can be hard for me to get into it. However, since getting the Kobo, I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve read 2 books in the last few weeks, which is more than I’ve done in quite a while. I haven’t really put my Kobo through its paces on battery drain, but I have gone several days without recharging without a worry.
eBook readers a rated in page turns when rating the battery longevity. The reason for this is because the majority of power draw is from screen refreshes. When the screen is idle, for the most part, the device is idle and consuming next to no power. In fact, it may even enter a low power mode without you even noticing. In fact, when you turn off the Kobo (and possibly others) it is still displaying something on the display despite the device being turned off.
Note: Originally it showed book cover art, now it shows a powered off notification. Many complained about this and the cover art may be returning in a later update.
Many of the major eReaders now are rated around 8,000 page turns. Realistically it won’t reach this as this is a maximum. However, depending on the size of the books, it can still go several books before needing to be recharged (prior to the latest patch there was a battery drain bug that reduced page turns to possibly around 1,000…but it should be fixed now). I have a tendency to recharge portable devices often so I don’t really see myself facing a dead battery situation.
The firmware update introduced some power save features that I don’t like, however. After 15 minutes, the device sleeps. In going into sleep mode, it switches to cover art. A little longer and the device turns off. There is no way to turn this behavior off. Before the update, I preferred to leave it on as I didn’t feel the drain was so much that it would come close to dying before I could charge it again because I wanted quick access to my books. Now, I’m forced to suffer through all of the load times, which, as mentioned, are horrendous.
Updating The Firmware
I mentioned before that I wanted to wait for the current firmware to be released before reviewing the Kobo. I wanted to do this because some things were addressed in it that might change my review and I didn’t want to put out misleading information that was quickly outdated. As an example, battery drain was addressed. I don’t think I faced the issue, but others did and it was worthy of a mention. Additionally, the included 100 books cluttered the internal library. This was addressed by introducing the ability to hide them so you can only see your books. Another major issue addressed was the confusion around the charging indicator. Originally it would show nothing while it was charging except for a note on the display, and would later show the red LED once it was done. This was changed to show the red LED while charging and blue when done.
Updating the firmware was an easy process, but only because very well designed instructions were provided. The instructions were included with the desktop software and provided easy to understand instructions and diagrams. However, the process itself, in my opinion, is overcomplicated. I feel like many device makers have caught on to the idea of simple update processes, but the Kobo is a massive step backwards by introducing multiple boot modes and convoluted button combinations. I think a shining example to follow is Cowon, where the process is very simple and almost completely stupid proof: Copy the provided files to the device’s root storage, reboot device.
A Note On PDF Support
Kobo separates ePubs from PDF files. ePubs are “Books” and PDFs are “Documents” regardless their purpose. They are processed differently, handled different, read differently, and there is nothing provided to convert between the files if I want to read a PDF eBook as though it were a “Book” and not a “Document.” I absolutely hate the PDF reader on the Kobo. It’s poorly implemented and not very eBook friendly. All of the PDF eBooks I’ve loaded so far had fonts that were far too small and PDFs don’t play well with the idea of resizable text, so the only option is to zoom in (like on a computer). Until I find a good PDF to ePub converter that seems to put out well formatted ePub files, I’ll be avoiding reading PDFs on the Kobo.
Get It Or Avoid It?
I actually wish I cancelled my pre-order as soon as I saw the other devices drop in price. I probably would have gone for the nook instead. Unfortunately I don’t think I can return it (though I will be looking into it).
I absolutely love how simple the device is and how much the company connects to their users. However, the performance of this device is absolutely terrible. I can’t really find any info on the hardware specs so I don’t know if the problem is software or hardware. I do know that I would not recommend this device to other people in its current state. The features are great for reading, but getting past the performance problems is very hard.
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