The e-book business is booming nowadays and what could be better than creating an e-book reader exclusively for your company? That is exactly what Amazon did as well as Sony, Barnes and Noble and other big techie companies. Meanwhile, a new player wants to join the e-Reader bandwagon business. It knows the #1 rule of the game – quality at a lower price point. The Kobo e-Reader sounds like the best contender for Amazon’s Kindle 2 but, “Is it really better than Kindle?”.
The Kobo e-Reader was first introduced in Canada with a price tag of $149 CDN. It is pre-loaded with 100 Free eBooks from diversified titles that serve as warm welcome to the buyers (pretty nice huh?). The e-Reader measures (120 x 184 x 10)mm and weighs 221 grams which is thinner and lighter than the Kindle 2. Additionally, the Kobo e-Reader can be sync wirelessly via Bluetooth and allows its users to choose from 2 set of font styles (Serif and Sans-serif). Both are not present on Kindle 2 as well as other popular e-Reader gadgets. See chart below for more elaborative comparison.
More on tech stuff. The Kobo e-Reader is proud to announce the E Ink technology utilized by the machine giving its users the feel of holding a real book. The screen is glare free and has no reflection but still sharp enough to see texts and images well. It has an expandable SD card slot that can allow up to 4GB of memory and thus, increasing the capacity of the e-Reader to 4000 books.
The back has a quilted design for easier grab and traditional feel of a real book. It has an intuitive D-pad with 4 navigation buttons: Home, Menu, Back & Display, to skim over ebooks easily. The Kobo e-Reader presents an easy “sync n’ read” desktop application which enables its users to download, update and organize the eReader via their computers or laptops’ USB port. Kobo has a proprietary website where readers can choose and download from a library of over 2 million ebooks.
A free Kobo app can be used to instantly sync your e-reader with other mobile platforms like the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm. It also provided a user friendly interface called the “I’m reading list” that gives you access to books you’re currently reading for easier navigation. And when you’re done reading, the Kobo eReader will show you the image of last book you’ve read (nice visual effects).
The Kobo e-Reader will be available in the U.S. by summer of this year and the price range would probably be the same with Canada. We feel that it’s an all around book that pushed the e-Reader envelope in some ways and gained a couple of notches over Kindle. But, Is the fight with Kindle over? You can be the judge.
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Tags: amazon kindle 2, kobo, kobo e-reader features, kobo e-reader price, kobo e-reader review, kobo e-reader specs, kobo ebook reader specs, kobo ereader specs
Hi, there is an error in the table – the Kindle is 9.1mm in depth not 19mm. Huge difference ;P I read reviews from customers who bought the Kobo that it takes around 30 seconds to start up, which in my opinion is not very good as I’m an impatient person (and flipping a page is faster than that) but I like the design of the Kobo alot.