![]() Kobo doesn’t offer anything as fancy as X-Ray on Kindle. ![]() You can adjust this to a different number in Reading Settings.įor a product that’s being pushed as premium it’s surprising that the design doesn’t have more premium elements.Īs for extra features, what’s here is pretty basic: dictionary lookup, translation dictionary, notes, highlights, bookmarks, search in book, and sharing passages on social networks. When taps and swipes do register, the page changes quickly with no flashing (when the screen goes black for a second) except every six pages. That means even if you have small hands, you won’t have to stretch your thumbs. If you want to just use your left hand, for instance, you can expand the area where it registers a tap or swipe for paging forward. This is useful if you tend to hold your e-reader in one hand. Tapping was the best way to advance the page, and it’s possible to change the tapping/swiping zones. The Aura has a difficult time consistently registering swipes and, to a lesser extent, taps, which is a problem we haven’t had with other Kobo products we’ve reviewed lately. Tapping and swiping to flip pages is still possible with one hand even though the 6.8-inch screen is a little larger than most. ![]() The ComfortLight is even and consistent across the screen and doesn’t suffer from the weird lighting issues that plague the Kindle and, to a lesser extent, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. In very dark rooms you’re better off keeping the slider set at the midpoint. The Aura HD’s light is harsher than the Kindle’s, even when you bring it down to a comparable setting. At 100 percent, it’s brighter than the Kindle Paperwhite’s brightest setting, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. Luckily, you don’t need to turn the light all the way to 100 percent, even in dark rooms – it’s very bright on medium settings. It’s less evident on heavier fonts but is more pronounced when the brightness is turned up. Kobo dubs the screen illumination “ComfortLight.” Just as on the Glo, turning it on washes out the text a little. Just as with Kobo’s other e-readers, the Aura has 10 font faces with 24 sizes, and offers control over line spacing, margins, and justification so you can tweak everything until you find the perfect balance. Smaller fonts mean fitting more text on the page, and more text means less flipping and a more immersive, engaging reading experience. Readability of small fonts was one of the few criticisms we had of the Glo and a big reason why the Aura HD will appeal to some. The 1440 x 1080 pixel resolution increases the readability of small font sizes by keeping them crisp. The bold and dark letters stand out from the background and make reading easy. Reading ExperienceĪs with the Kobo Glo, the Aura HD’s Pearl E Ink screen has a great contrast ratio that’s very close to the Kindle Paperwhite. And the red power slider up top is just weird and doesn’t blend well with the overall look. The Aura doesn’t need to be aluminum or glass to impress, but a less plasticky feel would help. The Aura is noticeably heavier than the Paperwhite and the Kobo Glo, though it’s not heavy enough to feel uncomfortable after a long reading session.įor a product that’s being pushed as premium it’s surprising that the design doesn’t have more premium design elements. Still, we prefer the contours on the Nook. The seemingly random angles and peaks are actually designed to make holding the Aura comfortable, and they do fit nicely under the fingers. Here, the plastic just gets a matte finish. Turn it around and the first thing you notice is the geometric angles and design – a departure from Kobo’s usual pillowed, soft-touch back. Neither of those e-readers have a high-resolution screen, but is that enough to justify the extra cash? Look and feelįrom the front, the Aura HD looks almost like every other Kobo e-reader we’ve seen lately. Thought that’s is not a lot of money for a good e-reader, it may be a hard sell given that the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight is $120 and the Kindle Paperwhite is $140 (without ads). For this extra pixel density, the e-book seller hopes you’ll cough up $170. The Kobo Aura HD boasts a screen that is larger than average with an HD resolution of 1440 x 1080. What more do we need? According to Kobo: higher resolution. In the last two years, touch and integrated front lights made their debut, doing away with most buttons and reading lights. E Ink screens – chosen because of how much battery life they get and because they mimic the look of ink on paper – have gotten faster and lost their most annoying qualities over the last five years. Text washes out when light is at full brightnessįor the past few years, e-reader innovation focused mainly on adding cool features on top of a pretty settled technology.
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