Archive for the ‘kobo’ tag
B&N and Kobo holiday sales results; Nook may be spun off & go international no comments
eReaders and ebooks were hot sellers this holiday season, and not just at Amazon. Barnes & Noble reports that sales of its Nook devices were up by 70% over last year, while digital content sales were up by 113%. B&N says that it sold more Nook Tablets than expected but that sales of the Nook Simple Touch were below projections.
B&N’s digital business may be surging but its brick and mortar stores are seeing little growth, even now that with Borders out of the picture there is less competition. B&N is forecasting a 1% increase in comparative store sales for 2012.
Barnes & Noble says that it is exploring options for separating its Nook business and expanding it abroad.
"We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our NOOK business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value," said William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble. "In NOOK, we’ve established one of the world’s best retail platforms for the sale of digital copyright content. We have a large and growing installed base of millions of satisfied customers buying digital content from us, and we have a NOOK business that’s growing rapidly year-over-year and should be approximately $1.5 billion in comparable sales this fiscal year. Between continued projected growth in the U.S., and the opportunity for NOOK internationally in the next 12 months, we expect the business to continue to scale rapidly for the foreseeable future."
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Kobo also reports a record breaking holiday season with a tenfold increase in new customers and a near doubling of total registered users as compared to the pre-holiday period. Kobo’s ereaders and ebooks are available internationally and some of its strongest gains were in Europe and parts of Asia.
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An internationally available set of Nook ereaders is not, of course, good news for either Kobo or Sony. The other smaller ereader manufacturers that have failed to compete successfully in the North American market will also not be overjoyed at this news.
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Kobo Touch update no comments
Kobo has a new software update for the Kobo Touch eReader. The new software version brings several improvements to the homescreen as well as faster page turns and search function. Text should be sharper as well.
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Kobo Vox gets software update no comments
Kobo has released a new software update for the Kobo Vox tablet. The update includes some bug fixes including:
- Fixed battery level misreporting.
- Improved Wi-Fi connectivity.
- Improved video streaming.
- Improved stability of device when waking from standby.
The reading app has also been improved:
- Reading menu has been improved.
- Built-in dictionary added.
- New background color – sepia.
- New font – Times New Roman.
Additionally, to help prevent accidental powering on of the Vox, the power button will now need to be depressed for 2.5 seconds to turn the tablet on.
The Vox will issue a notification when the software update is ready or you can check for it manually by going to the tablet’s Settings > About Kobo eReader > System Update.
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A tale of three tablets – Kindle Fire vs Nook Tablet vs Kobo Vox 1 comment
The three largest ebooksellers — Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble — all have new reading tablets out for the holidays. The Kindle Fire in particular has reportedly been selling very well — according to Amazon the Fire quickly became its bestselling product right after launch.
Rather than being full fledged tablets like the iPad or a Honeycomb-based device that might be considered a netbook or even laptop replacement, the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet are primarily platforms for consuming content purchased from their respective makers. But Amazon at least seems more than willing to take on the iPad head-to-head, as can be seen at the Kindle vs. iPad page at Amazon, which directly compares the features of the Kindle Fire and the iPad 2.
In some respects the Kobo Vox is the most tablet-like of the three, as it lets users install ereading apps from all three ebookstores and can gain access to multiple app stores. But the Vox suffers from sometimes laggy performance and a buggy web browser. Unless and until Kobo can fix the performance issues of the Vox with software updates it just isn’t in the same class as the other two tablets. Mostly I will be comparing the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire here, although I will be throwing in the occasional comparison to the Vox as well. The Vox was the first of the three to ship and I have already reviewed it.
Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire appear to be solidly constructed, while the Vox has a rather plasticky feel and suffers from a bezel that seems too wide. The Nook Tablet has the same designer looks as its predecessor, the Nook Color. The Kindle Fire is more plain-looking, but I don’t think it looks bad; perhaps functional with no nonsense is an apt description. At any rate I find the Fire to be more comfortable to hold and use one-handed. The Nook Tablet, while it is about a half ounce lighter, is larger than the Fire and feels like it really needs to be held in both hands. The Fire fits much more comfortably in my (rather large) hand.
The displays on both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire seem equally good to me (with one exception, which I’ll get to), with the Vox again lagging behind. All three devices have great angles of view. All three are equally useless in the sunshine, although they can all be read outdoors in the shade easily enough. The photo above (from left: Kobo Vox, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet) was taken outdoors in the shade of my patio on a sunny winter’s day.
Presumably if you are looking at purchasing one of these reading tablets rather than a full-blown tablet, reading ebooks is one of the primary uses to which you plan on putting it. All three provide a good ebook reading experience, although the Kobo reading app has less features (except for its social reading features, which are probably the strongest). I still prefer reading on an e-ink display rather than on a backlit LCD, but sometimes one wants the color. A backlit screen is also good for situations like reading in bed when a lamp would disturb someone else.
The Fire reading app gives you more type faces to choose from, while the Nook Tablet gives you more background colors. On the Fire I usually read with the sepia background in the daytime. It’s not that I’m a particular fan of sepia, but Amazon only gives you three background color choices. Amazon pairs the sepia background with a brownish black font that is slightly less contrasty than the darker black font B&N uses with its sepia background. I do wish Amazon would offer more background/font color choices. This is increasingly important depending on how light sensitive your eyes are. B&N’s first Nook for iPad app let users set their own background and font colors; I wish we could have that ability again — I was able to come up with some color combinations that were very comfortable on my eyes.
Both the Nook and the Fire let you access device settings and brightness controls from within your ebook. This is convenient as you don’t have to close your book to tweak the brightness level or turn off the Wi-Fi.
The annotations menu of the Nook is more attractive and includes a Share button for sharing quotes on Twitter or Facebook. 
With the Nook Tablet, B&N finally lets its customers read books in landscape mode if they so choose. This feature will also be coming to the Nook Color with an impending update. Other features such as searching and backtracking seem to be adequately supported in both devices. Pagination is better on the Nook as in addition to telling you what page you are on and how many pages the book has it also tells you how many pages are left in the current chapter. All of the Kindle books I’ve opened on the Fire still use the old location system and percentage read instead of showing real page numbers, even when real page numbers are available when the same book is read on an e-ink Kindle.
Shopping for books works well from both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, with each eagerly recommending new titles you might be interested in as well as providing easy to find links to bestseller lists, etc. I find especially the Kindle Store display is nicely done on the Fire, but one complaint I have about it is that you cannot add a Kindle book to your wishlist from the Fire.
You can add to your wishlist at B&N from the Nook Tablet and from the e-ink Kindle ereaders you can add to your Amazon wishlist; so I’m not sure why Amazon left the ability out on the Fire. Perhaps Amazon is hoping that we’ll just hit the Buy It Now button since we can’t use the Wishlist? Using the Add to Wishlist button is good discipline for those of us who already have way more ebooks in our virtual stacks than we can possibly read.
Another ability the Fire is in need of is the ability to make new categories or bookshelves to better organize your library. At the moment all you can do is place titles from the Carousel onto the Favorites shelf on the home screen. The Nook Tablet does let you create additional bookshelves and so has a big leg-up when it comes to keeping your library neatly organized.
Another area in which I think the Nook is superior is the virtual keyboard. The keys on the virtual keyboard of the Kindle Fire are too close together when in portrait mode, causing me and my big fingers to make frequent typos. The keys on the Nook Tablet are spaced further apart and I have no problems typing on its keyboard. In landscape mode the Fire’s keyboard is larger and is easy to use.
The Kindle Newsstand now includes a number of digital magazines that are optimized for the Kindle Fire and faithfully reproduce the print editions. The overall presentation is similar to that of Barnes & Noble. Tapping the screen brings up a sliding strip of page thumbnails for rapidly scanning through the magazine. There is a text view mode that make articles easier to read. On both the Nook and Fire you can adjust font size, background, type face, etc. when in text view mode.
While the presentation is similar on both devices, the Nook Tablet seems a bit more polished. Pan and zoom and sliding the thumbnail strip seem to generally work a little bit more smoothly on the Nook, although I did have the magazine app become unstable once, forcing me to reboot. The Nook also adds a couple of embellishments like a 3D effect to the thumbnails and page curls when turning magazine pages.
As for stability issues, I’ve found both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire to be quite good. On the Nook Tablet I did have to reboot on the one occasion mentioned above. I had to reboot the Fire once when I started a game app and the buttons on the in-game menu were unresponsive.
One of the new features of the Kindle Fire that received a lot of attention pre-launch is Amazon’s Silk web browser, which uses Amazon’s cloud servers to speed up the browsing experience. I found the web browsing experience on both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet to be generally good and both browsers to be quite quick. I’ve done a number of comparison sets and in one series the Nook will be faster more often while at a different time the Fire will win the series by connecting quicker more often. The relative performance of the two tablet’s browsers seems to just depend on the vagaries of the Internet at any given time. Overall the Kindle Fire does seem to be slightly faster more of the time, but the difference is not usually dramatic.
The Nook Tablet has 16GB onboard memory, of which only 1GB can be used for content not purchased at B&N. There is also a microSD card slot. The Kindle Fire has 8GB of built-in memory and beyond that depends on storage in Amazon’s cloud. Personal documents and other content can be stored in the user’s Kindle archive and downloaded to the Fire, Kindle ereader or other devices equipped with a Kindle app as needed. Music can be stored in the cloud and streamed via the Amazon Cloud Drive. Storage is free for music purchased at Amazon.
When listening to music with earphones both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire have much better sound quality than the Vox. Between the Fire and the Nook, the Kindle has the stronger bass, while the Nook Tablet to my ears has somewhat clearer mid-range and highs, but slightly muddy bass. The Nook Tablet’s sound quality was also marred by a faint but ever-present and annoying background hiss. The Fire has an equalizer in the music player’s settings that can be played with to tweak the sound a bit. Overall, I think the Kindle Fire has the best sound.
Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire come with Netflix and Hulu Plus apps. Netflix worked fine for me on both devices, but the picture quality seems slightly better on the Nook Tablet — colors are just a little brighter and the picture is a little sharper. The Netflix app is the only place I’ve noticed any real difference in display quality between the two, and I expect that this could be fixed at some point by an update to the Netflix app for the Fire.
The Kindle Fire also has access to Amazon’s streaming video services, and for Amazon Prime members there are over 10,000 movies and TV programs that can be streamed for free. While I was not able to get a Netflix app to work properly on the Vox, it does support more video formats than the Nook or Fire. Users of the latter two devices will likely be spending time with Handbrake or a similar program in order to sideload their own videos.
Apps have the capability to make a device useful for more than just reading and watching video, and when it comes to available apps, the Amazon Appstore has more titles to choose from than B&N’s Nook app store. The Vox enjoys the greatest access to apps as it can gain access to the Amazon Appstore and other app sellers in addition to the Getjar store app it comes with.
I’ve only tried a couple of games but, as expected, performance on the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet was a little smoother than on the Vox. The better displays of the Fire and Nook also make for a better gaming experience.
The first video below is an overview of the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.
The second video below compares the digital magazine reading experience on both tablets, as well as graphic novels, video on Netflix and YouTube, and a bit of game playing on the Kindle Fire.
So which is the best reader tablet?
To my mind the real choice here is between the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, as the Kobo Vox has issues. Kobo will possibly be able to improve the performance of the Vox and, if so, it may yet prove to be a contender. The Vox’s strong point is that it is not tied to just one content provider. Its weak points are lower performance and a less vibrant display.
I wish I could say that it is a clear-cut choice as to whether the Kindle Fire or the Nook Tablet is better, but I can’t. Both are quite nice for what they do, and both have their own strong points. B&N has been doing the reading tablet thing longer and in some ways the Nook Tablet is a bit more polished, but I would expect Amazon to catch up quickly via software updates. The Nook Tablet has some stronger specs, but the Kindle Fire is backed up by a stronger ecosystem.
To some users, the Nook Tablet’s on-device memory will be more appealing than Amazon’s cloud features. The Nook Tablet will also probably be a better choice for rooting. The Nook Tablet’s better battery life (up to 11.5 hours vs 8 hours) is also appealing. In the end though, I think the choice for most people will depend on which company they prefer doing business with. I like both devices and think that either one will be a good choice if you don’t need the capabilities of a more powerful and more expensive tablet. The Kindle Fire, at $199 does have a price advantage over the Nook Tablet, which is $249.
Personally, I have to say that I prefer the Kindle Fire for my own use. Partly this is because it feels more ergonomic than the Nook Tablet to me, but also because I just like the Kindle platform and the Kindle Store better. Most of my ebooks are Kindle books, and while I still prefer reading them on an e-ink display, the Fire is great when you need color and/or video.
It should be noted that the Kindle Fire does not have all of the abilities that the e-ink based Kindle ereaders have when it comes to organizing and handling text-based content, but that will hopefully change. Since the Fire has been selling so well I would expect and hope for Amazon to bring its capabilities up to the level of the rest of the Kindle family.
I sold my Nook Color to clear some room on my desk (and in my wallet) for the Nook Tablet. If you are wondering if you need to upgrade from the Nook Color, I would say it is probably not necessary for most users. Especially in view of the fact that the NC will be getting what sounds like a major software update in the very near future. The Nook Tablet does have a faster processor, more onboard memory and improved battery life, and will therefore probably make for a more attractive device to root than the NC. The Nook Tablet will also be better for video as it does support more formats. The incoming software update will bring Netflix and Hulu Plus to the Nook Color.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to decide between the Nook Color and the Nook Tablet, I would spend the extra $50 for the tablet. The better specs will provide some future-proofing.
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Kobo launches 2012 Book Club no comments
Kobo has announced a new program for owners of the Kobo Touch and Kobo Touch with Offers ereaders. The Kobo 2012 Book Club will offer a free ebook to members each month during 2012. Owners of the Kobo Touch ereaders in the US and Canada will be enrolled automatically in the program when they register their new ereaders before Mar 31, 2012.
Some of the publishers that will be providing the free ebooks include: e-Reads, F+W Publications, Gooseberry Patch, Harvard Business Review Press, Kensington Publishing and New Word City. The three ebooks that will be offered in January are:
- Pride and Prejudice – The Wild and Wanton Edition by Anabella Bloom & Jane Austen
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads: On Managing People published by Harvard Business Review Press
- Star Wars Vs Star Trek by Matt Forbeck
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Kobo Vox reading tablet – review & video no comments
Kobo managed to beat both Amazon and B&N to market with its tablet offering. Like other Kobo readers I’ve tried before, the Kobo Vox feels like something of a work in progress. When I first turned the Vox on I was greeted by a firmware update that was already available and took awhile to install itself before I could use the tablet.
The Kobo Vox is a bit blocky in appearance and feels rather plasticky. It is slightly thicker than both the Fire and the Nook Tablet. A more rounded edge would probably have made Kobo’s tablet look a little more elegant, and the lip of the case is not perfectly flush with the screen, which gives an impression of somewhat cheap construction. The Vox features Kobo’s trademark quilted back with a nonslip coating which does make it comfortable to hold.
Kobo has thoughtfully placed the speaker on the edge of the Vox, so it does not get muffled when the tablet is laying on its back on a table. Sound is not very loud over the speaker, but is more than loud enough when earphones are used. I did find the bass rather lacking when listening to music with earphones. The Vox will probably not be the best choice for listening to music.
The display of the Vox is nice, although it is nowhere close to the display quality of the Nook Color/Tablet or the Kindle Fire. The viewing angle is good. In spite of any hype you may have seen about the display being suitable for outdoor use (“Enjoy Reading Outdoors with the Most Advanced 7 inch AFFS+ multimedia touchscreen with anti-glare”), it is pretty useless in full sunshine, although it can be read in shade.
I often found the Vox to be a bit laggy when loading apps or in transitions during games. Things like orientation changes and pinch-to-zoom generally work quickly and smoothly. YouTube videos played well for me.
The web browser on the Vox is a bit hit and miss. When it is working properly it seems quick, and features like pinch-to-zoom and orientation changes work smoothly. Sometimes the browser stops working though, and every site I try to load gives me a Webpage Unavailable error, even when the Vox is well connected to my Wi-Fi network.
Sometimes hitting the menu button and closing all except the current window will fix this problem. Sometimes clearing all of the cache, history and cookies has also worked, but occasionally the only way I can get the browser to work properly is to reboot the Vox.
For reading the Vox comes with the Kobo for Android app. One of the Kobo ereading platform’s strongest features is its social reading suite. Reading Life shows your reading stats and awards, While Pulse lets you share your thoughts and comments about a book with other Kobo users. Pulse will also reveal some statistics about the Kobo book you are reading, such as how many other people have read the book and what comments they have made about it. Notes and highlights can be shared on Facebook. Both Reading Life and Pulse are included in Kobo’s Android app. All of the social reading features can be turned off if that is your preference.
Other than the social reading features, I find that the Android app from Kobo is in some ways a bit vanilla. There is a night mode, but no options for differently colored backgrounds other than black. Font size is selected by means of a slider rather than by icons that show the relative size of different fonts, which I prefer. The largest font is about the same size as the largest Kindle font and will be good for readers with visual impairments. There are nine different font styles to choose from. Books can be read in landscape with either one or two pages displayed, but there are no page turning animations if you are into that.
Other reading tools include a slider to quickly navigate through the book, an icon to take one to the table of contents, an info icon that brings up an overview of the book, and an icon to view your notes and highlights. One thing I don’t like is that you cannot make multiple bookmarks anywhere you like — a bookmark is automatically placed at your last-read page. I also am not a big fan of Kobo’s system of chapter-centric pagination. The Kobo for Android app does not currently support PDF files, but you can download a number of apps for that. Neither does the app have a built-in dictionary — getting a definition requires closing down the Kobo reading app and opening the standalone Merriam Webster app that comes preloaded on the Vox.
For digital newspapers and magazines the Vox comes preloaded with PressReader and Zinio. Some of the other apps that come preloaded onto the Vox (like Rdio, Globe2Go, etc.) may be unwanted but it appears one is stuck with them as they seem to be unremovable.
The app store for the Kobo Vox is Getjar, but the selection of apps you have access to there is tailored for the Vox. For example, Getjar does have the Kindle for Android app, but if you sign in with the Vox you will not see it. The Nook app is available at Getjar and can be installed on the Vox.
Getting the Kindle Android app onto the Vox is not difficult. You can use the browser to search for “Kindle APK” (you will probably have to go into the settings and under Applications allow installation of non-Market applications before you can install this).
Or you can simply point the browser to Amazon.com where you should be greeted with a button to “Get Amazon Apps for Android” (this is on Amazon’s mobile site which should open by default on the Vox’s browser) which will enable you to download and install the Kindle app, Amazon Appstore for Android as well as Amazon’s other mobile apps. Other app stores can also be installed on the Vox to give you access to even more apps. The Vox, like other tablets that run versions of Android intended for phones (Android v2.3 in the case of the Vox), cannot access the Android Market.
The fact that you can install ereading apps from multiple ebook sellers does give the Kobo Vox a leg up over both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet in terms of being able to access ebooks from all three of the major ebooksellers in North America from one device. With access to Amazon’s Appstore, Getjar and other app stores the Vox will have access to 
more apps as well. Now obviously these tablets will get rooted and probably thereby gain access to the Android Market — I’m just talking about what’s available for them out of the box.
The OverDrive Media Console can be installed for borrowing library ebooks. You can download it here (you have to agree to the license to start the download). Adobe Digital Editions unfortunately does not yet recognize the Kobo Vox.
The most recent Netflix APK does not seem to want to install on the Vox. I have also tried a couple of older versions without success. The closest I could get was to be able to sign into my Netflix account and see my queue, but when I tried to play a video the app would force close. Hopefully the Vox will have access to Netflix and Hulu in the future or it will be a major mark against it when compared to the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet. Video I’ve played on the Vox has worked fine, both when encountered on the Internet and that which I’ve sideloaded.
My impressions of the Kobo Vox so far are so-so. Kobo is good about continuously improving its ereaders with firmware updates and presumably will be doing the same with the Vox. Once I have been able to use the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire I’ll be able to do some side-by-side comparisons and it will be interesting to see how the Vox holds up. My Kindle Fire arrived last night while I was finishing this up and, while I only have been able to use it for a few minutes, my first impression is that it blows the Vox out of the water.
The one major advantage the Vox does seem to have over the Fire and Nook is that you can get reading apps from all three stores onto it and it will have access to more apps. A few reading apps from Kobo, Wattpad, Aldiko and others are available in the Amazon Appstore for Android, and I was hoping that these would be installable on the Fire. That, unfortunately, is not the case.
The Vox is available now for $199.99 direct from Kobo,or from Best Buy and Fry’s in the US. In Canada the Vox is available from Chapters Indigo Coles, Future Shop, Best Buy and Kobo.
Below is my video review of the Kobo Vox. While I was working on it my Kindle Fire arrived, so it also makes a brief appearance at the end.
Covers and Cases for the Kobo Vox
There are not many covers available yet for the Vox. A couple to look at are the Leather Executive Folio ($20) and the Leather Executive SRX Series Case ($25), both by Kiwi Cases.
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Rakuten to acquire Kobo no comments
Yesterday it was announced that Rakuten and Kobo have entered into an agreement that will see all of Kobo’s outstanding shares purchased by the Japanese e-commerce giant for $315 million in cash.
Once the deal is closed (subject to approval by the appropriate Canadian regulatory agencies), Kobo’s headquarters, management team and employees will continue to be based in Toronto, Ontario.
Hiroshi Mikitani, Chairman and CEO of Rakuten, commented on the acquisition, “We are very excited about this next step. Kobo provides one of the world’s most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunities to extend its reach through some of the world’s largest regional e-commerce companies, including Buy.com in the US, Tradoria in Germany, Rakuten Brazil, Rakuten Taiwan, Lekutian in China, TARAD in Thailand, and Rakuten Belanja Online in Indonesia, and of course, Rakuten Ichiba in Japan.”
“From a business and cultural perspective this is a perfect match,” commented Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis. “We share a common vision of creating a content experience that is both global and social. Rakuten is already one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, while Kobo is the most social eBook service on the market and one of the world’s largest eBook stores with over 2.5 million titles. This transaction will greatly strengthen our position in our current markets and allow us to diversify quickly into other countries and e-commerce categories.”
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Kobo unveils Vox tablet no comments
Not to be outdone by Barnes & Noble and Amazon, Kobo today announced a 7-inch Android tablet of its own. Dubbed the Vox — as in Vox Populi; voice of the people — Kobo’s new tablet will retail for $199.99, about the same price as the Kindle Fire.
The Vox will run on Android 2.3 and features an AFFS+ LCD display. AFFS (Advanced fringe field switching) is the LCD technology developed and licensed by Hydis, a division of E Ink Holdings. The AFFS+ version of the technology is supposed to have improved outdoor readability, and the Vox also has an anti-glare coating to help with this.
The Vox will, of course, feature the Kobo ereading app. Kobo also says that the Vox will have access to an app store containing over 15,000 free apps. It will be interesting to see if the Kindle app is there, as Kobo’s reading app is available at Amazon’s Appstore for Android.
Kobo is beefing up its selection of color ebooks, and the Vox will come with three of these free. Digital Magazines will be via Zinio and a PressReader app will be onboard for newspapers. Unlimited music can be streamed to the Vox from RDIO.
Some of the other features of the Vox:
- Dimensions: 7.57 x 5.06 x .53 inches (192.4 x 128.4 x 13.4 mm).
- Screen resolution 1024 x 600 (same as the Kindle Fire).
- Battery life up to 7 hours.
- Built-in email client; contacts, calendar, music player, photo gallery, video player.
- 8GB internal memory;micro SD card slot.
There will be four colors of Vox tablets to choose from — Hot Pink, Lime Green, Ice Blue and Jet Black — and the Vox will come with the familiar Kobo quilted back.
The Vox is available for pre-order today in the US and Canada, and will be available elsewhere on the planet in the future. In Canada, Kobo’s new tablet will be available from Indigo Books & Music, Future Shop and Best Buy. In the US the Vox will be offered by Kobo, Best Buy and Fry’s.
To promote the launch of the Vox, Kobo is having another contest. Each ebook purchased between today and Oct 31, 2011 counts as an entry into a drawing giving away 10 Vox eReaders. There is as usual a non-purchase route of entry as well — see Kobo for details.
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Kobo Touch firmware update no comments
Kobo has released an update for the Kobo Touch Edition eReader. Some of the changes included in v1.9.11 include the ability to search for words within a book, an enhanced battery icon, and books in the ereader’s library will now show the percentage read. Kobo has also beefed up the already strong social ereading features of the Touch Edition with enhanced Facebook integration.
The Kobo Desktop app has also been updated and now allows for searching for words within a book and has a faster syncing time on Windows.
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Kobo Touch Edition eReader Review no comments
Kobo has updated its line of ereaders with the Kobo Touch Edition which, as the name implies, features a touchscreen. The zForce touchscreen from Neonode that it uses is the same as that of the Nook Simple Touch and the current generation of Sony ereaders.
I’ve been using my Kobo Touch for about six weeks now. I’m a bit late getting my review out, but I’ve had time to read a couple of ebooks on the ereader and to see three software updates already. Each of the updates from Kobo has brought new features — not all of which are documented, like the new drawing program I found while making the video. While I have found the Kobo Touch to be a relatively basic ereader in terms of its present features, I expect it will evolve rapidly if Kobo continues to release updates this aggressively.
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The packaging of the Kobo Touch Edition, while not as stylish as the boxing of the Nook Simple Touch, is practical and easy to open. The ereader exposed by the unboxing looks good, though it is a more squarish design and somewhat less elegant looking than the Nook Touch. 
The batteries arrived with about an 85 percent charge. There is no AC adaptor, so you need to charge it over the USB cable with your computer. The manual says you can use a generic USB wall charger as well.
To register and set up the Kobo Touch you need to use the USB to connect it to a computer that has the Kobo desktop application installed on it. I don’t much like this “feature” — setup should be accomplishable from the ereader itself. It does have Wi-Fi, after all. This requirement means more software to load onto one’s computer and it will make the ereader less suitable for those who are not computer savvy.
The Kobo PC application installed easily enough and I got my new ereader connected and set up with no glitches to report.
The Kobo Touch does feel good in my hands. I really like the way the quilted back feels and it is even a tad lighter than the new Nook ereader. Construction seems to be pretty good. The front and back are covered with the by now familiar nonslip rubberized coating. This makes the ereader more comfortable to hold, but it does collect dust.
There are no hard page turning buttons — only swiping or tapping the touchscreen is used for turning pages. The bezel is also rather narrow and it took me a while to find a comfortable position in which to hold this ereader one-handed without inadvertently touching the screen with my thumb and causing unwanted page turns. As I got used to the Kobo Touch this became a non-problem, but I prefer the presence of page-turning buttons as it does help to find a more comfortable way in which to hold and operate an ereader with one hand.
Other than the power slider switch at the top edge, the only hard button on the Kobo Touch is a chromed button on the bezel below the screen. This takes you to the Home screen.
The Home screen displays the five most recently read and added ebooks. 
At the bottom of the Home screen are virtual buttons to access the settings of the ereader and to sync to your Kobo account (and other Kobo apps). If you are reading a book and want to change settings, including turning Wi-Fi on or off, you will have to close your book and do so from here. The web browser is also accessed via the settings page.
At the top of the Home page are status icons for the battery and Wi-Fi connection. Battery life seems to be mediocre for an e-ink based ereader. With Wi-Fi on I only got about 10 days. With the Wi-Fi mostly turned off the battery lasted approximately 2 1/2 weeks before needing recharging.
Also at the top of the Home screen are buttons to take you to your library, shop at Kobo or go to the Reading Life page. Reading Life is Kobo’s social ereading platform. You will notice whilst reading that there will be an occasional message at the bottom of the page making you aware of a new award you have just earned. The Reading Life page lets you see your awards and various reading stats and share them with friends.
In your library you can choose to sort by Books, Periodicals, Previews or the Shortlist. The Shortlist is a kind of category you can place your favorite titles into to make them easier to get at. Of course, finding your ebooks would be easier if Kobo had thought to include the ability to create your own categories or bookshelves, but this feature is absent — at least as of yet. Books are added to the Shortlist by tapping on a heart icon beside the ebook’s thumbnail when viewing your library in List View. You can also add a title to the Shortlist while you are reading it.
Besides List View you can display a grid of book covers only or one cover per page. You can sort by Title, Author or Recent Reads. There is also a search tool, and you can delete titles from the device from within the library.
I’ve had the Kobo Touch Edition long enough to read a couple of ebooks on it and I’ve also opened and scanned through a few more. I have noticed some formatting inconsistencies that are rather worrisome.
Kobo’s approach to ereading seems overly chapter-centric to me. Kobo ebooks on the Kobo Touch display the page number in terms of your position within the chapter. For example, Chapter One – Page 7 of 29, where the same ebook on the Nook Touch might show Page 78 of 329. This is no big deal, but showing your position in relation to the total book would seem more useful to me.
More troublesome is that when you turn the last page of a given chapter there is a small spinning whirligig at the top of the page with a loading message. The last page turn of a chapter takes slightly longer than a normal page turn as the ereader launches the next chapter in your ebook. This is not a good thing.
Even less of a good thing is the occasional dropping of a line of text I experienced when reading a Kobo book. This probably happened 10-15 times
while reading an ebook of almost 400 pages. The missing line of text could be induced to give up its game of hide and seek by resizing the font — but this is definitely something that needs to be fixed. This appears to be a problem with the Kobo Touch ereader itself — the same Kobo ebook, when sideloaded to the Nook Touch did not suffer any dropped lines of text. The photo shows the line of text on the Nook Simple Touch (left) that is missing on the Kobo Touch. I have occasionally noticed dropped words when reading ebooks on other ereaders, but this was a bit excessive.
The second ebook I read on the Kobo TE was a library ebook that I sideloaded onto the ereader with Adobe DE. This ebook displayed the page numbers in the more conventional manner and didn’t suffer from the dropped line of text syndrome.
Hyperlinks to other locations within a book do not seem to be supported by the Kobo Touch Edition, even with an ebook purchased from Kobo. The hyperlinks worked fine when the same ebook was read on the Nook Touch or the Sony Touch ereaders.
One thing that bugs me about the Kobo Touch is that only automatic bookmarking is available at the moment. Unlike other touchscreen ereaders you cannot tap the upper right corner to set your own bookmarks whenever you want. The lack of this common feature is exacerbated by the lack of an effective ‘Back’ function and is going to be very frustrating if you are reading a title with endnotes or a bibliography you need to refer to while reading the text. You are going to have to manually find your way back and forth between the notes and your current reading position.
Tapping the center of the page while reading brings up a status bar at the top of the screen with a battery indicator and a toolbar at the bottom with a Home button (which is a waste, since there is a physical home button) and buttons for Menu, Navigation and Font selection.
The Menu button lets you go to the TOC, add the book to your Shortlist, Mark as Finished, open a Dictionary search page where you can type in a word to look up and a link to the Advanced Settings. I like Kobo’s Mark as Finished feature. This gives you the option of closing an ebook when you get to the end so that next time you open it you will start at the front rather than at the end page of the book.
The Advanced Settings page contains two items currently. First is a control that lets you set how often the e-ink screen does a complete refresh. The settings are from every page turn to every sixth page turn. This control would be appreciated on the Nook Touch, where occasional ghosting is evident. On the Kobo Touch Edition I never experienced any ghosting until I took the ereader outdoors and read in the sunlight for awhile.
After reading in the sun for 20-30 minutes I noticed not only artifacts of lines of text from previous pages, but a few dark black lines extending across the margins from the text to the edge of the screen began appearing. Changing the refresh rate made these effects go away, but this made me suspect that the Kobo Touch Edition has some heat dissipation issues.
A second Advanced Setting that was added in Kobo’s most recent software update (v1.9.6) gives you the ability to remove those annoying (to me anyway) page numbers that you sometimes see in the side margins of some ePub books.
Update 10/16/2011: Software update v1.9.12 has added an additional Advanced Setting: The ability to change where on the screen you tap to page forward or back. This update also brings the ability to make notes and highlights to the Kobo Touch.
The Navigation button gives you a slider to quickly navigate through the pages of the book, as well as arrow keys that will take you one page at a time in either direction or to the beginning or end of the current chapter. There is also an attempt at a Back function here. A recurved arrow icon (Kobo calls it the Snap Back icon) is supposed to return you to your original place, but in my experience it works very erratically and is not to be trusted. There is no Go To Page function.
The font button lets you choose between seven font styles, and you can easily add your own fonts as well. There are sliders to adjust font size, line spacing and margin width. You can also fiddle with the justification here.
Tapping and holding brings up the study tools, which at the moment consist of highlighting and dictionary lookup for Kobo ebooks, and a dictionary search page (and sometimes lookup) for sideloaded ebooks. Highlighting works for some sideloaded ebooks.
Reading PDF files on the Kobo Touch Edition is actually somewhat better than I anticipated. You can switch to landscape mode and you can zoom with a slider or by double tapping. Panning works pretty smoothly for an e-ink based device. Generally tablets work better for PDFs that you need to do a lot of panning and zooming with, while an e-ink display will be easier on the eyes and probably better for reading text-only ebooks in PDF format. The Kobo Touch ereader does not yet provide any annotation tools for PDF files — at least none where available in the PDFs I tried. You can open the dictionary search tool to type in a word for definition in PDFs.
To launch the Web browser on the Kobo Touch you have to go to the Home screen and then tap the settings icon and then Wi-Fi Connection and finally the Launch Browser button. The web browser on e-ink devices is never a first choice for me, but it is nice to have it if you don’t have another better suited device handy. The browser on the Kobo Touch seems very basic and I found it very frustrating to use. I could not find a way to get the browser to display in landscape, which would improve the experience. The keyboard is too small for me to use in portrait mode for entering addresses and other information without lots of frustrating mistakes.
The zForce touchscreen on the Kobo Touch does not seem quite as responsive as it is on the Nook Touch, and it really does not work well when using the browser. At times I had to tap a button a number of times to get a response. The touch screen also does not seem very accurate in the browser, which makes using the small keyboard in the browser make you want to bang your head on the wall.
Kobo Touch Edition vs Kindle 3 vs Nook Simple Touch
The Kobo Touch Edition is not a bad ereader, but it is overshadowed by the Nook Touch and the Kindle 3. I do expect it will get better, as Kobo has already released several updates that have brought improvements.
Compared to last year’s Kindle 3 the Kobo Touch Edition still seems rather basic and its feature set is relatively sparse. The Kindle 3 is thinner and more comfortable to hold and use one-handed. The Kindle 3 also seems faster to me, except when performing tasks where the touchscreen has obvious advantages over the hard keyboard and five-way controller. The Kobo Touch also, of course, does not give you access to the Kindle Store.
Neither is the Kobo Touch enticing when compared to the Nook Touch. The Kobo TE is not as pleasing to either the eye or the hand as the newest Nook. The Nook Touch is faster and features a better designed navigational system that is more intuitive to learn and more friendly to use. And while the Nook Touch may not have quite as many features and capabilities as the Kindle 3, it does have most of the features most readers will need and definitely more than the Kobo Touch Edition ereader.
Another thing to consider is that the Nook Touch will allow you to buy and read ebooks from Kobo and other ePub bookstores. While the Kobo Touch will let you read ebooks purchased from other ebookstores like the Sony Reader Store, you cannot read Nook Books on it because B&N uses their own variation of Adobe DRM. This will mean access to fewer titles with the Kobo ereader.
One advantage the Kobo Touch Edition does enjoy over the Nook Touch is that it is available internationally. Kobo is also opening new international ebookstores with local content.
I like the Kobo ebookstore as they often have coupons and discounts. In spite of the agency model fixing most ebook pricing you can sometimes find a better deal at Kobo. But I would recommend the Nook Touch (see my review) or the Kindle 3 (review) ereader as my first choice. Perhaps if the Kobo were priced at less than $100 it would be more appealing. But the Kindle Wi-Fi with Special Offers is only $114, so I’m not sure how much below $100 Kobo would have to go.
The Kobo Touch Edition eReader is currently priced at $129.99 and is available at Best Buy and Fry’s in the US. In Canada it is sold by Chapters Indigo Coles, Future Shop, Best Buy, Walmart, Sears (in stores only) and online only at Staples.
Kobo Touch Edition covers & cases
CaseCrown makes a variety of covers and cases for the Kobo Touch Edition that are under $20.
The Verso ereader covers from Lightwedge are marketed primarily for the Kindle 3 ereader at Amazon, but Lightwedge designed these covers to fit any ereader that is 4.5 – 4.9 inches x 6.7 – 7.7 inches. These covers are compatible with the Kobo eReaders and range in price from $39.99 to $49.99. I have one of these — see my review.
DecalGirlmakes skins to fit the Kobo Touch Edition, with currently just over 100 designs to choose from.
£149.00
£109
