It has been eight years since Kobo released its first eBook reader. The original Kobo was an ambitious, but somewhat not adapted or realistic eBook reader.
It detects or catches the basics, like its six-inch E Ink display with a 170 DPI, as well as a big rubber navigation button.
What was not present although there was Wi-Fi or cellular connection— if people wanted to download a book, you’d need to plug the Kobo eBook reader into your laptop?
EBook reader technology has come a long way, but Amazon has claimed the space asking with its Kindle devices.
Kobo is still in the fight, though, its latest entry is the Kobo Clara HD, a budget eBook reader meant to directly compete against Amazon’s affordable Kindle Paperwhite as we provide here the complete Kobo Clara HD Review.
It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles you’ll find on more expensive eBook readers that you can purchase like the Kobo Aura One and Kindle Oasis, but this was expensive in the rate of $130.
Hardware features:
The features of Clara HD have E-ink Carat HD display with a 300 PPI display. The back of the Clara has a neat perforated design which makes it easy to hold and a high degree of grip.
Underneath the hood is a 1GHZ Free scale Solo Lite processor, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage.
Kobo has suspended expandable storage and there is no Micro SD card on the Clara HD. In order to conserve the memory, you have a number of options in the settings menu to automatically delete the books from the device when you have finished them from reading and you can do the same thing with Pocket articles.
Speaking of Pocket the Kobo experimental browser also has Pocket integration, so you can save Pocket directly on the e-reader, instead of primarily depend on the plugins for Chrome or Firefox.
The Clara HD has a front line display that might be one of the best ones Kobo has ever released as per Kobo Clara HD Review. It has even light distribution thanks to the 8 white LED’s and the Comfort light PRO system has 7 orange LED’s.
If you turn both the front-lit display and the Comfort light on, all of the LEDs work in concert and it provides a really bright and vibrant reading experience.
The comforting light has an automatic setting that does not use an ambient light sensor, as an alternative it depends on the time of day and your time zone to automatically configure itself.
Auto brightness is optional so you can turn it off when you don’t need to use it.
Software Features:
Kobo runs a customized version of Linux, instead of Google Android. This allows them to really tailor the user experience for a 300 PPI screen and to put emphasis on making it work well on an e-ink screen.
The Clara HD software experience is a little bit different than most of the company’s other e-readers. The cover art and text on the home screen has really high DPI, whereas the Kobo Aura Edition 2 and Glo HD seem antiquated and pixelated in contrast.
The home screen comprises of the last few books you have opened or have purchased and the rest is devoted to similar titles and various links to the Kobo online store.
When you click on the settings menu the main navigation bar is more condensed and the text is smaller and more streamlined than the company’s other e-readers, including the Kobo H2O Edition 2.
You will spend most of your time with the library menu. List and cover view are the two main options to display your content.
The list provides you with the full author name and title of the book and cover mode basically just show the eBook cover art. You can sort by author, date added or publisher.
You can also develop your own collections and pick the eBooks you want to add it. When you have done to read a book then you have the option of leaving a review is automatically entered into the Kobo bookstore.
There is also a new option in the library to browse the similar titles, which opens the bookstore. You can also improve the recommendation engine over time by abating your interest level in a particular author or genre of book.
Kobo has an exclusive pocket that allows you to push website and blog articles directly to your e-reader as you come to know by reading full Kobo Clara HD Review.
The easiest way to do this is to download the pocket browser extension for chrome, edge, Firefox and Safari.
Once you download the extension and log into the service you can begin to push out all of the stories you want to read your e-reader later and they will automatically be synced.
The articles will include any links, pictures or text.
But truncate shoot code and adverts. The kobo beta internet browser also has a new pocket plug-in that allows you to send any blog articles directly to the article menu.
There is an option to automatically delete all the pocket articles when you have finished reading them on your Clara.
Sometimes the kids pick up the Kobo and use it when the parents are not around and make purchases.
Kobo has a new PIN lock system where you can establish a password and whenever the device is in sleep mode the password has to be entered in order to wake it up.
E-reader practice:
Most e-readers and e-reading apps have a few different preset options to change the line spacing, margins or font size. You can check comparison between Kindle paperwhite and Kobo clara HD.
Kobo does things differently, they also have a bunch of sliders that allows unparalleled flexibility in determining how much weight you want your fonts to have and configure the margins and line spaces.
There is also an advanced option that allows you to see a before and after side by side, that shows you how all of your customizations will look, compared to the existing settings.
When you are reading a book, you have a number of options you can use.
Aside from font and customization options you can also long press on a word to get an instant definition of it. If you speak another language you can look the word up in Japanese, Italian, German, Dutch and many more.
When long pressing a word, you get an anchor that will allow you to select a single word, sentence or an entire paragraph. You can add a note or can highlight it.
When you add a note a virtual keyboard appears that allows you to manually add one.
Pros:
- Comfort light PRO
- Great build quality
- Advanced reading features
- Security Features
- Solid Price
- excellent battery life
Cons:
- Not water resistant
- Lacks overdrive integration found on other kobo models
The main goal is to empower people to read more, whenever and wherever they want. With that, they challenge print-loyal book lovers, and their friends, to try digital reading for just one week.
The technology of any kind can take a moment to get used to, but they have made e-reading easy and are convinced they will find they can fit reading into even more parts of their day, whether it is waiting for the kids at soccer practice, during the lunch break or during the daily commute.
