Say hello to the Kobo Libra Colour and the Kobo Clara Colour
Color ereaders aren’t new – brands like Onyx and PocketBook have been making them for a while – but I’ve been waiting a long time to see a color-screen Kindle or Kobo. It’s finally happened with the Japanese-Canadian brand today (April 10) announcing not one, but two new color ereaders at the same time!
Called the Kobo Libra Colour and Kobo Clara Colour, both tablets are upgraded versions of the existing Libra 2 and Clara 2E ereaders, now using a different screen technology called E Ink Kaleido 3 in place of the monochrome Carta 1200 in the previous models.
The Kaleido 3 display is currently the best color e-paper technology available for ereaders, supporting 4,096 hues, but the colors appear a little muted when compared to what you’d see on an LCD display.
Despite this little niggle, Kobo has beaten Amazon in the race to make a mainstream color ereader and, more importantly, I think they’re competitively priced.Balancing features and price
The first new ereader from Kobo is the Libra Colour, an updated version of what we think is the best ereader overall – the Kobo Libra 2 – and it’s the one that has me most excited. While it retains the 7-inch screen size from the previous generations, the important update here is that it can now display over 4,000 colors and has writing capabilities. Yes, that’s right – Kobo’s best ereader just got better!
To handle the extra work, Kobo has improved the processing power, using a 2GHz CPU as opposed to the 1GHz chip we saw in the Libra 2. The battery, too, is bigger, now using a 2,050mAh capacity pack where the older model had a 1,500mAh battery.
The other features on the Libra Colour have been inherited from its predecessor, and that’s not a bad thing at all. Our Kobo Libra 2 review scored a full five stars and an Editor’s Choice Award for offering an excellent all-rounder at a decent price point. The page-turn buttons that I like have been brought over, plus there’s 32GB of internal storage and Bluetooth support so you can listen to audiobooks.
