Kobo has been growing in the United States and last year they basically redid their product lineup. From a series of Android e-reader tablets to the regular e-readers. The Kobo Aura comes in at $150 and it is there top of the line e-reader, this combines the best of both worlds. It has a high-end design paired with a great screen and some unique features. It is a 6-inch reader that comes in at $150 and this market has few products in it. It features the backlit or goo display technology and Kobo’s exclusive partnership with Pocket is in shown in full force. At $150, is the Kobo Aura the best e-reader it can be?
Design
For starters, the Kobo Aura has a very attractive design, a very nice one. It takes some lessons from the very high-end and pricey Kobo Aura HD, but puts it in a more affordable package. When you pick it up, it feels like a book, or I would even say a very light one. The Aura is built extremely week and the facts come out good when you hold it. It has a soft touch back, that is not smooth, but has some grip to it. This gives a nice feeling, it lets you get to know the product and helps you from dropping it. It gives you that nice feeling similar, to when you are reading an actual book. On the sides of the back, it sticks out a tiny little bit as well, kind of like a concave or convex, this provides you some more grip. The main color of the device is a nice dark gray or some would call it black. On the back hand side you will find a dark white “Kobo” logo that is built-in to the device and is pushed down a little bit. You only have one other logo on the device, that being a “Kobo” logo on the front side. This provides the pop of color, if you want to call it that, it is a very simple and modern design. When you look at this in comparison to the original Kindle from Amazon, it is a worlds away better. You have a light gray lining going around the top side of the device. You charge the device and can set up the device via the micro USB port on the bottom. Next to the charging port, is a micro SD card slot. On the top you have a power button slider and a button for the ComfortLight functionality. Kobo hit the ball out of the park with the design on the Aura.
Hardware
The Kobo Aura features a 6-inch display, that is E-Ink with capacitive touch. Gone are the days, when you need physical buttons to turn the pages. It has a large 265 pixels per inch and this makes the display incredibly sharp, this is combined with a 212-dpi. Reading on the Aura is great, with some other e-readers the text can become fuzzy, I did not experience this at all on the Kobo Aura. Page refreshes are a thing of the past, I did not witness any page refresh that interrupted my reading. The screen stays very sharp and it enhances the customer experience. ComfortLight works via LED light that is guided through a nano-printed fiber-optic film, this makes sure the light is even across the display. This comes in handy for reading in bed or at night.
Powering the Kobo Aura we have a 1GHz processor and in terms of e-readers this makes the device quite fast. Opening up books is done at a very quick rate and the processor inside is the fastest on the e-reader market. Start up time and shut down time could be faster, but for the industry it is pretty good. Each page turn happens very quickly and thanks to their work with E-Ink page refreshes are gone.
Inside the Aura you have 4GB of internal storage and this can hold about 3,000 books. Keep in mind that many of your books are stored in the cloud now, for safe keeping. Physical storage is always nice to see, you can expand on this storage via the micro SD card slot.
Software
The e-reader interface across the board is very similar, it is nice that they have moved to be a more touch friendly space in the past few years. Kobo’s interface is called Reading Life and its goal is for you to enjoy your reading more. The home screen is presented with a metro type user interface, with differently shaped boxes, one for your last book read, the top 50 books, new books, recommended, your last sync, and you can customize it a little bit. By tapping a button in the top corner, you can get a run down of your settings, battery, light status, WiFi info, and more. It gives you an easy way to access the important stuff, while most of the tech heavy stuff is hidden.
The big feature of the Kobo Aura is the new Pocket integration. You might know Pocket, as its old name of “read it later”, it lets you save articles for reading later. Essentially, this technology you enjoy on your other content devices is now available on your e-reader. This is an exclusive integration with Kobo and no other company has it as of right now. When you add something to your Pocket account, it syncs, and after that it is on your Kobo. You can choose to save it for later, archive, favorite, share it, and more.
Bottom Line
The Kobo Aura is a great e-reader and is currently the best one on the market, but the big question is $150 a correct pricing. While to some, it might seem high, you do get a lot of unique features. You will have to way these features, up against the features of the other e-readers on the market. Right off the bat, if you want the really great Pocket integration and full set of features, look no further than this device. This is combined with a very sharp 6-inch display and a very comfortable design. Through Kobo’s work with E-Ink they basically have eliminated you noticing the page refresh and it is by far the fastest e-reader on the market, thanks to the 1GHz processor. If you are in the market for a feature full e-reader, I would highly recommend the Kobo Aura. For More Information On The Kobo Aura, Please Click Here. We would like to thank Kobo for providing us with a copy of the “Kobo Aura”.
