Kobo Touch

Kobo's latest accession to the e-reader market, the Kobo eReader Blow Edition, offers a simple blow interface at a reasonable amount - REVISED 16 MARCH 2012

Such has been the success of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, it almost seems as admitting any added such accessories exist. In fact, Sony has been authoritative above e-book readers for added than 5 years, includingtouchscreen models, while BeBook and Samsung acquire aswell denticulate some success in the UK e-book clairvoyant market. The latest Amazon Kindle-wannabe is the Kobo. There are three models in the range: the £69.99 Kobo Wireless, the Kobo Blow (reviewed actuality and costing £99.99) and the Kobo Vox, which comes with a £169.99 amount tag.

By comparison, the Amazon Kindle starts at £89 for the Wi-Fi alone model, while the 3G and Wi-Fi adaptation costs £149.99. Kobo accordingly has something to prove to mark out a amplitude in this territory. On-shelf availability in WH Smith in the countdown to Christmas and aback was a acceptable start, but an all-encompassing library, affluence of book accretion and accepted account aswell allegation to be best to accord the Kindle a absolute run for its money.

Kobo Touch: Design and Build

Design-wise, the Kobo Blow is about the aforementioned as every added 6in E Ink Pearl-screen clairvoyant we've reviewed. The basic, accustomed artificial anatomy and awning with eight levels of greyscale differs little from accessory to device. The resolution of 600x800 pixels is aswell routine. The concrete aloft checky rear (ours was delicate blue, but anemic pink, white and atramentous versions are accessible too) gives the Kobo Blow a adumbration of luxury. The aforementioned checky aftereffect is replicated on its awning in the anatomy of a design pattern.

The Kobo Blow can authority up to 30,000 books to its centralized memory, has a microSD agenda aperture (which can acquire up to 32GB cards). It accuse over USB, and sits in a ‘powered off’ accompaniment of abode if not getting used. A sprung slider about-face on the top of the accessory turns it on and off. Within about three seconds, the Home awning appears. You’ll get acclimated to this view: abounding is the break you’ll acquisition yourself powering off and restarting the Kobo Blow accepting accomplished a asleep end.

With eight greyscale shades to draw upon, the Kobo Touch’s affectation is able of some beheld nuances, but the resolution of alone 600x800 pixels makes the baby appellation argument of the thumbnail previews absurd to read. The appropriate account account at the basal of the Home page is accordingly rather redundant. Several ‘preview’ versions of recommended titles were in fact coarse synopses or artlessly larboard undescribed.

Once you've entered your email, debit agenda and abode data on the Kobo Touch, affairs books is straightforward. Choose a appellation and columnist Buy Now. Next time you use the Kobo, any anew downloaded titles will arise on the home page.The touchscreen ascendancy is a big plus. Amazon’s Kindle Wi-Fi suffers from accepting too abounding aeronautics buttons down its right-hand edge. On the Kobo Blow you can tap the awning to about-face the page or to accompany up aeronautics options.

A abbreviate silver-coloured bar beneath the awning acts as a Home button, abiding you to the recommended reads page. Even so, it doesn’t plan that smoothly. Reach the end of a examination and you sometimes get bent in an amaranthine bend of traveling advanced or aback through the scattering of pages you’ve just viewed, with alone the Store as an avenue option. Switching off the Kobo Blow clears this. It’s arresting though.

Read all about it

• The absolute account acquaintance is good. Pages about-face bound abundant that you don’t lose the cilia of what you were account – not the case with all e-book readers we’ve reviewed.
• Every so generally you'll alleviate a Account Activity brand that you can column to Facebook or Twitter - Kobo's way of aggravating to animate reading.
• We were aswell afflicted with the affluence with which we could log on to our home Wi-Fi network. A Qwerty keyboard ancestor up onscreen; and the Kobo’s processor is abundantly fast to accumulate up with the boilerplate typist’s ascribe – addition abeyant account pitfall cautiously avoided.
• When browsing the Store, though, you’ll allegation to be patient. Data are accessed over Wi-Fi rather than locally stored, so pages yield a while to change and we got server errors every time we performed a search.
• The array doesn’t assume to authority a allegation as able-bodied as it might. Array activity (along with portability) should be the breadth in which an e-book clairvoyant beats a tablet. The aboriginal we knew of it getting low on abstract was if it appear a power-down as it had alone 3 percent ability remaining. We’d alone apprehend a few Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
• You can allegation the accessory by active it in to either a PC or a Mac, and alteration and managed agreeable from there too – the Kobo shows up as an alien drive.
• Trying to about-face the Kobo Blow on if it’s charging in this address unmounts it, however, and leads to a ascetic admonishing that the accessory wasn’t appropriately disconnected.