I love my Kobo Aura. It’s the best reader I’ve owned and well worth the price. The Aura has many innovations to make it best of breed. The screen gets all the attention so I’ll add my praise.
For me, the way Kobo is using the bigger, brighter, cleaner screen to implement the features of ePub3 make attractive book design a part of the reading experience for the first time in a book reader. This is something I’ve longed for. Amazon’s KF8 formatting has good potential but the Kindles lack the screen to implement it the way Kobo has on the Aura.
I had some trouble with slipperiness at first until I put a clear skin on it. I got a Skinami from Amazon for around $17USD*. It eliminates the slipperiness and protects the surface at the same time (I didn’t put it on the screen though). Now I hold my Aura eReader nakked and I’m enjoying the lighter weight. Even though it has a bigger screen it ends up being lighter than my old Kindle Paperwhite with the added weight of its special cover. I’ve gotten so used to the shape of the back that holding a flat backed reader feels awkward to me now.
I’m happy I got a brown one. It almost seems like Apple has signature white, Sony has silver, Amazon has black and Kobo has brown. Of course, this is my only Kobo and the Aura might be their first brown one, so I may be alone on this but that rich brown color makes me feel like I’m holding a book like no other does.
I really appreciate how Kobo included an SD card. I put my Delphi Classics on the SD card (they don’t have DRM) because they are all complete works of classic writers and the files are huge. Nevertheless, with an SD card I don’t need to worry about running out of space even with a thousand classics on my reader.
I have to say, I have no complaints about the Kobo Aura. None.
*This is the skin I’m using if you’re interested:
http://www.amazon.com/Skinomi-TechSk.../dp/B00CDB315K