Toronto-based Kobo has come a long way since its first eReader with the eReader Touch Edition. A diminuitive, fast and well-priced eBook reader that doesn’t only meet its competition feature by feature but also offers a number of unique features besides being the one of the smaller yet most capable eReader devices around.
The Kobo eReader Touch Edition ($129 available in Indigo Bookstores and Future Shop) will surprise users who have seen Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader since it is smaller and has only two buttons. Smaller and way thinner than a pocket book and tinier even than Amazon’s slimmed down Kindle 3, the Kobo eReader Touch Edition has provent to be the most totable eBook reading device we’ve tried and can be held with one hand for longer than any tablet or competing eReader we have tried.
The reason why there aren’t any buttons on the Kobo eReader Touch is because the eInk display is completely touch-enabled. This means you interact with the screen directly so there are no clumsy navigation bars or odd Next and Back buttons to deal with. The new pearl eInk display is one of the best 6″ inch 16-shade grayscale display’s in the market today. Definitely an improvement over last year’s kobo eReader WiFi.
Users can turn the page simply by pressing or tapping on the screen. This is a more natural way to navigate back and forth. This is a feature that other, more expensive eReaders sold in Canada do not have. Aside from this, the new eInk technology used in the Kobo eReader Touch refreshes faster and is clearer than previous reader we’ve used.
We also like the device’s design. We were skeptical about that quilted rear but found it to be oddly comfortable and gave the eReader a fair amount of grip. The device is well built and sturdy despite its small size and Kobo offers an assortment of unique carrying and protective cases for the device.
Compared to the Amazon Kindle 3, the Kobo eReader Touch has the same screen size, improved screen technology, the touch control and way fewer buttons as well as lighter weight all around. For Canadian users, Kobo’s huge 1.5 million eBook library is a no brainer since a lot of the titles are available straight away. There are also magazines and the ability to transfer PDF’s. Other outstanding features include the ability to add even more memory via microUSB cards as well as built-in web browser which is a nice-to-have feature.
Kobo has also spiced things up with the Reading Life application which earns users badges and achievements based on their reading frequency and also allows some social interaction since you can share the information with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.
For users that have an iPad, Android or PlayBook tablet, you can access your eBooks on those devices as well or on any of the major smartphones out there today thank’s to Kobo’s applications. We were thrilled to find a Game of Thrones 4-book bundle for $18.00 as well as a number of recent bestsellers that we put on our wishlist.
Moreover, Kobo has a range of available newspaper subscriptions including all the major local and national dailies and most have a 15-day trial period. We signed up for a few and found that the service does work quite well and there’s nothing like getting the meat of the day’s news appearing on your device early in the day.
The downsides that we found were mostly that typing on the eInk touchscreen isn’t as instantaneous as typing on a tablet or on a physical keyboard.
There’s a bit of a delay which means you need to type slowly to avoid errors. Reconnecting to a saved WiFi hotspot was also hit or miss but we were happy to see that the Koboe eReader Touch does pick up more hotspots than many of our tablets or notebooks. Initial eBook purchases from the device bring you to a “Billing Address” form that you need to fill up for tax purposes which is something we would have preferred to deal with on the Kobo website once we set the device up (see comment on typing).
The Kobo eReader Touch Edition offers so much for the asking price that it is one of this year’s outstanding bargains. We have memberships on almost all the eReader services but are frustrated by the fact many of the titles we like aren’t openly available because we are in Canada. No such inconvenience with Kobo. Battery life is outstanding and will give week’s worth of reading on a single charge.
The limitation is that the eInk screen is not backlit (neither are real printed books) but you can always get inexpensive reading light accessories. Our one wish is to see devices like the Kobo eReader Touch replace costly, heavy and environmentally wasteful textbooks. Students can carry tens of thousands of pages on a slim device and the cost of printing, binding, shipping and storing the textbooks could all be diminished bringing down the price of the textbooks themselves. That would be a revolution in reading.
The Kobo eReader Touch Edition is a vary compelling eReader specially with WiFi and touch as standard features. Kobo’s great ecosystem, constant innovation make this a serious player and it is going International starting this July. Check out their Kobo’s library and if they have the books you want then this could be an awesome Summer gift for yourself or someone who loves reading.
Kobo Touch Canada Reviews by Canadian Reviewer
Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla From www.canadianreviewer.com
I could not live without the ability to make collections, so for me, it had to be the Kindle My boyfriend has a Kobo Touch and I have a Kindle 4 and they have the same size and form factor. The sole difference, other than the buttons on mine, is that I can do collections and he can’t
I have both Kindle Touch and Kobo Touch. Tried both and I prefer the Kobo Touch personally. Display quality is very close. Some pros and cons based on my personal preferences:
Kindle:
pros- longer battery life (approx. 2 months), audio capable, better response on touch screen, multi-touch for changing size, better dictionary
cons- heavier, limited fonts, no epub support, I find the user interface is less friendly and fewer choices (e.g. must go to home for settings, fixed refresh page, no page number, need a few clicks to “go to” a page, cannot set power save option, limited spacing option (3 only)
Kobo:
pros- lighter, supports epub, slightly faster in page turn, user friendly interface (e.g. setup menu bar is available on any screen, “slide to page” bar, can import fonts, easy one touch bookmark, option to set from 1 – 6 page refresh rate, option set set sleep/power off time, slide bars to change line spacing, margins, justifications)
cons- shorter battery life (approx. 1 month), no audio, sometimes requires multiple taps to turn page, must have book cover (since the home page shows only 5 books with covers, if your book doesn’t have it, you can’t tell which book is which)
I mainly read epub books from free sources or library, so any options related to the bookstore side are not needed by me and don’t do me any good. I find Kobo is more useful in customizing the screen and most important it supports epub. Lighter is also a factor since it’s quite noticeable after long reading.
For the sake of Kindle Touch compare to Kobo Touch Canada, I will tell you that Kindle Touch also has one touch bookmark. Just tap the upper right corner of a Kindle page to set a bookmark (the corner “folds down” as a visual indication there’s a bookmark set); tap again to unset it. Hope this help your Decision.
I choose Kindle Touch for my Canada ebooks reader !!!!
For Ereader in Canada, My experience are
1) The Nook is not officially available to Canada and can’t be shipped outside the US (at least, not without involving one of those reshipping services), but if you make a cross-border shopping trip you can get one.
However, the B&N e-bookstore is also not available to Canadians and you’ll have to fake using a US billing address to buy stuff from them. But you can buy books from other stores in Adobe Digital Editions ePub & PDF format, as well as DRM-free e-books. B&N also use a slightly different ePub DRM-scheme for their own books, and thus you technically have access to the broadest variety of stores to shop from.
2) The Kindle is available to Canada, but not within. All Kindles have to be ordered via the US Amazon store and shipped up here. Similarly, you buy your e-books from them at the US store, in US dollars. Kindle International Model For Canada Now have 4 version >> New Kindle 4 Non-touch wifi, Kindle Touch wifi, Kindle keyboard 3g and Kindle Dx
Kindle Canada use a proprietary format, and while you can get DRM-free Mobipocket books (and convert DRM-free other format e-books to work on the Kindle), for anything that’s copy-restricted (like bestsellers from the major publishers), you’ll either have to buy them solely via Amazon or learn to break and remove the DRM (still not illegal in Canada, despite the efforts of our current Conservative government, though I wouldn’t count on that lasting much longer).
3) The Kobo is a pretty nice deal for Canadians – It’s Canadian in origin, especially now that they’ve updated it to use the new Pearl e-ink screen. You can go in and try them at Chapters/Indigo stores.
The Kobo store charges in Canadian dollars and you can use Chapters gift cards to pay for your purchases, as well as use discount coupons to take the price down on much of their e-catalogue though sometimes even after coupon, the price will still be cheaper elsewhere.
You can also shop at any ADE-DRM or DRM-free ebookstore, such as the Sony Reader Store.
Kobos do have this flaw where the current firmware does not support following inline links, so if you read e-books with footnotes (academic nonfiction, for example), you’re kind of screwed. But hopefully they fix that in the new firmware that goes with the Touch models. They also have this thing where the built-in dictionary can’t be used with non-Kobo purchases, but again that’s something they’ll hopefully fix soon.
4) Sonys are kind of pricey but have nice features if you want a higher-end model. I have no personal experience with them, but as with the Kobo, you can shop at any ADE-DRM or DRM-free store.
5) Amazon Now supporting Overdrive library ebooks in the US. In the meantime, if you want to read library e-books, you’ll need either an ADE-DRM supporting reader, or have the willingness and the skills to remove the DRM before you convert to a Kindle-compatible format. I hope This Kindle library ebooks will be available in Canada soon.
Personally, as a Canadian myself, I think that either the new Kobo Touch or New Kindle Touch would be best. And I’m leaning slightly in favour of the Kobo, which offers a good feature set at a good price, and the convenience of being available directly within Canada.
There is One point for Canadian Ereader buyers about Kobo VS Kindle in Canada.
The Kobo store charges in Canadian dollars, and regularly puts out discount coupons which Canadians can generally use on just about any of their books.
The Amazon store charges in US dollars (you can use gift certificates to minimize the CC foreign currency fees if you stock up when the exchange rate is good) and the discounts tend to be irregular and haphazard in comparison, although sometimes there are better deals because of a publisher promo or whatnot.
For the Kobo ereader, The best compare in Canada is Kindle 3 wifi
The Kindle 3 wifi is simply a much better reader than the Kobo — better screen, built-in dictionary, many more features, better bookstore, more content.
But its a mistake to write off the Kobo — it’s got great features and some exclusives which keep it in the running. It allows you to access ePubs, and DRM ePubs such as those at local public libraries. Its bookstore is actually pretty good in terms of content and has localised content, such as several hundred titles from Dundurn Press in Canada. It’s cheaper: at $128 without shipping charges (in Canada — drop by a Cahpters/Indigo) vs the $139 + shipping for the Kindle 3.
The best of both worlds: buy one of each and enjoy the merits of each and the exclusives of each. That was my choice.
For The French speaking Canadian, If you need a French dictionary in your Canada ereader >> Don’t buy Kobo Touch
Because at this time Kobo only have an English Dictionary.
I love My Kobo Touch Canada very much, The Most favorable on Kobo that Kindle doesn’t have is I can borrow ebooks from my local Canadian library with it, shop around for deals on novels and pay in Canadian dollars. But The New Amazon Kindle Touch Screen look Greats, May be i will try to Touch that on the Staples.
When you Comparing the ebook prices in store of Kobo and Kindle, Kobo always much more cheaper, but also keep in mind when comparing prices that currently Kobo charges sales tax and Amazon doesn’t, but the Amazon ebooks prices is in US dollars.
Example : My friends in Ontario & British Columbia were charged 13% HST sales taxes on Kobo ebooks. Some of my friends in Toronto pay taxes only 5%
I am a big fan of the Kobo Touch because, My Major of Reading is to borrow ebooks from my local library in Toronto, Shop around for the deals on ebooks Using canadian coupon code that often offers from kobo store to canadian, And the last I can pay in Canadian dollars without calculating for the US exchange rates.
The Major point Advantage of Kobo Touch compare to Kindle Touch in Canada is on the point of library ebooks.
For Kobo Touch you can borrow ebooks from any Local Canadian libraries easily beacause all those library file format are major in ePubs that can read with Kobo.
For Kindle Touch, Amazon ebooks library borrowing main on Cloud Overdrive that little support in Canada. Also for ePubs format, Kindle can read it, but Users need some knowledge to convert that to your Kindles. Method most talk all over the world and you can easily learn that by google, Once you have learn and do that one time – The next time would be easily.
I still prefer Kindle more than Kobo in Canada due to it’s popularity and Technology.
Cheers,
Alicia
Nowsaday Kobo has developed too much,Especially in Canada – their home store.
The Kobo ereader now can competitive side-by-side with Amazon Kindle and Sony in Canada.
And they are growing up everyday to beat the kindle !!