Kobo is utilizing the Digitizer stack, which supports robust stylus integration. How does this affect the overall user experience? The background will have more gradients of grey and the black fonts will really pop. The stylus also has less latency, shaving off precious milliseconds when drawing on the screen. The screen is completely flush with the bezel and protected by a layer of glass.
It has a series of white and amber LED lights which provide a nice candlelight effect when the two are blended together. Of course, the amber LED lights can be totally turned off and you can enjoy a vibrantly white screen. There are physical page turn buttons on the right side, which can be used on their own, or you can simply swipe and gesture with the touchscreen.
The responsiveness of the page buttons is lighting fast, quicker than tapping on the screen. Underneath the hood is a massive 1. You can connect up to the internet using the web-browser via WIFI It is powered by a slightly underwhelming 1, mAh battery, which should provide around three weeks of ebook reading and less if you listen to audiobooks. The dimensions are It is also rated IPX 8, so it can be totally submerged in fresh water for up to 60 minutes and a depth of 2 meters.
This should be a boon to anyone who wants to read it in the bath or the beach, or are clumsy like me, and often spill things. You can easily run it under tap water to clean it off, this is especially useful when you are eating and reading at the same time.
Kobo is using an active stylus for the Sage. It is powered by a AAA battery. The Kobo stylus is made of a aluminum and inside the stylus is metal. There are two buttons on the side of the stylus, this is mapped to erase and make highlights, two things that people will normally do when editing an ebook, manga book or a PDF.
The stylus is compatible with sideloaded PDF files, but right now, it does not really work with sideloaded books or manga, these have to be purchased through Kobo for it to work. The smooth tip permits flawless writing and it can be replaced to make sure of prolonged use. Kobo also sells replacement nibs and replacement stylus, in case you loose it. The Kobo Stylus is only compatible with the Sage and Elipsa. Drawing inside books or PDF files is really good.
You can easily make highlights, on specific words or a body of text. When highlights are made, the word or phrase can be looked up in the dictionary, translated from one language to another or looked up in Wikipedia or Google, these last two things utilize the internet browser. It is quite excellent to draw inside of books, you can make little notes, underline things and get access to different drawing types, such as pens, pencils, calligraphy and others.
There is also various thickness settings that are available. Kobo told me that the Elipsa and Sage are not going to be the last e-notes that the company makes, they will release more devices over time and they have a special engineering team that is responsible for adding in new features, adding in more functionality to the drawing experience and solving bugs, as they arise.
I think the Sage is the perfect e-reader. It is elegant, using new e-paper technology, the optional stylus is perfect for people who want to draw, but you can get a lot of value, without needing the stylus at all. Overdrive, is also one of the big reasons to purchase this device, you can easily attach your library card, browse your local branches collection of books, manga, magazines and read them, without needing a computer.
The web browser is fast, overall performance is really impressive, thanks to the quad-core processor. It comes with a with a day free trial period. Customers will get one credit a month with their subscription and they can be redeemed for any audiobook title on the platform. You can also purchase Kobo Audiobooks individually and shop with confidence with their Price Match Guarantee. Their apps for Android and iOS were quickly updated with an audiobook player.
A couple of weeks ago, before the Sage was officially announced, I spoke at length with Ramesh Mantha, the VP of products and devices at Kobo. He stated that providing support for audiobooks was not expressivity done to compete with Audible, who has provided audiobook support on Kindle e-readers for the past four years.
Although the Kindle had first mover advantage, Audible is only available in a few select countries, where Kobo operates worldwide. The decision for Kobo to introduce audiobook support was done right away.
Since they have been asking their Kobo Insiders , a private, invite only group where the most hardcore talk about books and e-readers, various questions about future e-readers.
There was overwhelming support about the inclusion of audio. Kobo conducted focus groups, talked to users individually and looked at the market. The end result will be impressive, users will be able to enjoy the same benefits of the apps, such as adjusting the speed of the playback and a nighttime mode to automatically shut playback off. The inclusion of audio on the Sage and Libra 2 was about timing, stars aligned. When users open up their Sage out of the box and either create an account or login with an existing one, clicking on the shop is a gateway of digital content.
The first thing that people will see is the ebook store, with a carefully crafted selection. There is a brand new audiobook tab, next to ebooks. The selection is also curated by real humans and there are all sorts of categories to refine your purchases.
When you download a sample or outright buy an audiobook, it will appear in your library. There are all sorts of sorting options by format, author name, series or collection. It is important to note that you cannot sideload in audiobooks, the audio player is only compatible with things you download directly from Kobo.
The audiobook selection is similar to most other platforms, they have the same audiobooks as Audible, Apple or Google. You will find all of the latest big titles, with really professional narrators. They basically have over , titles right now, and most of them are fairly recent. You will find content from Canadian books, but also American ones too. Prices for audiobooks are on the expensive side, if you are buying them individually.
On a side note, Kobo also has its own separate e-bookstore, as well its own iPhone, iPad, and Android apps for smartphones and tablets. Just a bit. The Kobo is fairly plain-looking, but it has a nice "quilted" back. At a hair under 8 ounces, it's relatively compact and lightweight and can be held in one hand for reading. We found the script on the screen to be a little lighter on this e-reader than on some competing models and the text was not as sharply defined as it should be.
Like other e-ink e-readers, there's some lag when you turn pages and go back and forth between books and the home menu. But it's worth noting that the lag is much more pronounced on this Kobo than on the latest-generation Kindle or Nook e-ink e-readers.
Navigating the device is fairly straightforward--you use a combination of the four-way directional pad with a center select button and the four buttons on the side of the device "Home," "Menu," "Shop," and "Back". To put it bluntly, the whole experience feels sluggish compared with the Kindle or the Nook, and it's also worth mentioning that we discovered errors in the e-bookstore when we accessed it from the device.
For example, e-books that were marked "free" were priced at 99 cents even though they were indeed free. You can download all your books from the Kobo book store with it, including free ebooks, or add your own ebooks via computer. Ergonomically, it has good balance and is comfortable to hold. The back panel and navigation wheel have a nice textured, rubbery feel to them.
I do wish it had some page turn buttons on the right side of the screen though, to make it easier to hold one-handed. There are four buttons that run along the left edge for Home, Menu, Shop, and Back.
While reading you can press the center of the navigation button to bring up the Menu, and press the up and down buttons on the nav controller to change font size. You can even borrow ebooks from local libraries to read on the Kobo WiFi using a desktop application called Adobe Digital Editions to transfer the ebooks to the Reader. From the menu you can jump to the next and previous chapters and move between chapters using the table of contents.
For ebooks downloaded from the Kobo ebook store there are a couple of added features that aren't available for side-loaded ebooks.
One, there's a dictionary. Two, there's an option to force justification left. Aside from that, there aren't any advanced features like adding notes or highlights, no search, no jump to page, and no margin or spacing adjustments. It doesn't have bookmarks, but that's something expected to be coming via firmware update sometime soon.
For now it remembers the last page read. For organization, the Kobo WiFi has different sections for books, newspapers and magazines, and documents. Those sections are further broken down alphabetically by title, author, and last read. You can jump between letters or pages and view the ebooks as a list, by covers, or by both.
Overall, the reading experience on the Kobo WiFi is its best quality.
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