Aura HD Kobo Aura HD Impressions Thread

[Dr. Drib]

Images - above - have been put in a spoiler, since they mess up MobileRead's horizontal scrolling.


Don
(Moderator)

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Images - above - have been put in a spoiler, since they mess up MobileRead's horizontal scrolling.


Don
(Moderator)

Oops. They look fine on my 1366x768 monitor. What kind of monitors are people still using that it messes up the h-scroll?

[samhy]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

Oops. They look fine on my 1366x768 monitor. What kind of monitors are people still using that it messes up the h-scroll?

If that helps, mine is 1366x768 too - but only 11.6" - and I had to scroll left and right to see the pictures properly

[lkodk]

OK. When I first read about the Aura, I kind of decided not to go for it. After all I do have a perfectly working Glo that I really like in every aspect.

But I decided to ask in one of the other Aura threads about Glo owners opinions about their new Aura. I had hoped to get some responses saying that there was no need to upgrade, but "unfortunately" everybody loved their new Aura over their Glo. (Thanks to all who responded)
So I just couldn't resist it anymore, and monday I ordered an Onyx Aura from a Danish webshop. I had thought I would receive it yesterday with overnight domestic postal service, but it just got in today, because for some reason it was shipped from somewhere in the southern part of Germany with TNT.

Let me begin by saying: Overall I also really like the Aura better than the Glo.

It is a slippery bugger. Even though many of you had warned about it, it managed to slip out of my hand when I took it out of the box. Fortunately no harm done.
But due to the curved back, it feels good to hold, and once I hold it for reading I am not afraid to drop it.
The curved back had been one of my concerns, but it is definately a plus in my book.

One of the other concerns were the added weight. On paper it is much more, but in real life I do not really feel the added weight when holding the Aura and the Glo in each hand.

Even though I found the light on the Glo to be very even and good looking (didn't really notice the blue tint), I must admit the Aura just raises the bar.
Now the light on the Glo looks muddy and uneven to me Also there is almost no shadow visible from the leds on the Aura.

The text also just looks great on the Aura. It is really really good on the Glo, almost perfect. But again, on the Aura it is just perfect.
The added screen real estate also a really big plus for me even though I only read textbooks. No PDFs or comics etc.

What I do not like about the Aura after playing around with it for a little while is the homescreen.
It is just awful! I don't know what the people at Kobo have been thinking. It is so crowded. I don't care to see all the last finished books on the homescreen. Especially not when they a mixed with just added books, reading stats, awards and what have you...
I kind of makes me miss the homescreen on the Glo. I wish there was a way to modify it. (Please tell me I overlooked that feature )

Also I was a bit disappointed when I synced the Aura with my Kobo account. The two books I had purchased from Kobo and read on the Glo were synced to the Aura as unread. Also the reading stats from the Glo were not transferred either. The awards were (which I do not care about) but e.g. total reading time was not, which I find interesting to keep track of.

That's it for now. Better get on with some reading on the new gadget

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by lkodk

What I do not like about the Aura after playing around with it for a little while is the homescreen.
It is just awful! I don't know what the people at Kobo have been thinking. It is so crowded. I don't care to see all the last finished books on the homescreen. Especially not when they a mixed with just added books, reading stats, awards and what have you...
I kind of makes me miss the homescreen on the Glo. I wish there was a way to modify it. (Please tell me I overlooked that feature )

I find myself holding a finger on the finished books until the popup and then selecting dismiss to get them off the screen. Also work for most of the other junk as well.

At least adding new books does not wipe your current reads off the screen anymore.

Regards,
David

[samhy]

Originally Posted by lkodk

So I just couldn't resist it anymore, and monday I ordered an Onyx Aura from a Danish webshop. I had thought I would receive it yesterday with overnight domestic postal service, but it just got in today, because for some reason it was shipped from somewhere in the southern part of Germany with TNT.

Wait! You're in Europe and you already have one of those? I thought it was limited to the UK at the moment. Lucky you
Oh, and thank you for your feedback. I'm still torn between a Glo and an Aura, but little by little it seems to go the Aura way.

[jiminrussell]

Originally Posted by lkodk

What I do not like about the Aura after playing around with it for a little while is the homescreen.
It is just awful! I don't know what the people at Kobo have been thinking. It is so crowded. I don't care to see all the last finished books on the homescreen. Especially not when they a mixed with just added books, reading stats, awards and what have you...
I kind of makes me miss the homescreen on the Glo. I wish there was a way to modify it. (Please tell me I overlooked that feature )

Did you try long press on things you don't want on the home screen? Long Press should give you a pop-up menu that allows you to dismiss things from the home screen.
My only complaint with the new home screen on the Aura is that some of the cover thumbnails are too small to tell what the book is (most are okay but some have small text on the covers and I can't read the title), there is room for them to include some text to show the name of the book so hopefully they add that in a future FW release.

Originally Posted by lkodk

Also I was a bit disappointed when I synced the Aura with my Kobo account. The two books I had purchased from Kobo and read on the Glo were synced to the Aura as unread. Also the reading stats from the Glo were not transferred either. The awards were (which I do not care about) but e.g. total reading time was not, which I find interesting to keep track of.

My reading stats were synced from my glo to my Aura, not sure why it didn't work for you, (books finished, total hours read etc all move over to my Aura)
I have had issues with bookmarks not syncing some times from one device to another but can't recall seeing the issue with reading stats before, moved from a wifi, to touch then to glo and now Aura and my stats came over each time, if it is important to you, you should consider a reset and try setup of the Aura again and see if the stats come over on your second try.

[aceflor]

Originally Posted by lkodk

OK. When I first read about the Aura, I kind of decided not to go for it. After all I do have a perfectly working Glo that I really like in every aspect.

But I decided to ask in one of the other Aura threads about Glo owners opinions about their new Aura. I had hoped to get some responses saying that there was no need to upgrade, but "unfortunately" everybody loved their new Aura over their Glo. (Thanks to all who responded)
So I just couldn't resist it anymore, and monday I ordered an Onyx Aura from a Danish webshop. I had thought I would receive it yesterday with overnight domestic postal service, but it just got in today, because for some reason it was shipped from somewhere in the southern part of Germany with TNT.

Let me begin by saying: Overall I also really like the Aura better than the Glo.

It is a slippery bugger. Even though many of you had warned about it, it managed to slip out of my hand when I took it out of the box. Fortunately no harm done.
But due to the curved back, it feels good to hold, and once I hold it for reading I am not afraid to drop it.
The curved back had been one of my concerns, but it is definately a plus in my book.

One of the other concerns were the added weight. On paper it is much more, but in real life I do not really feel the added weight when holding the Aura and the Glo in each hand.

Even though I found the light on the Glo to be very even and good looking (didn't really notice the blue tint), I must admit the Aura just raises the bar.
Now the light on the Glo looks muddy and uneven to me Also there is almost no shadow visible from the leds on the Aura.

The text also just looks great on the Aura. It is really really good on the Glo, almost perfect. But again, on the Aura it is just perfect.
The added screen real estate also a really big plus for me even though I only read textbooks. No PDFs or comics etc.

What I do not like about the Aura after playing around with it for a little while is the homescreen.
It is just awful! I don't know what the people at Kobo have been thinking. It is so crowded. I don't care to see all the last finished books on the homescreen. Especially not when they a mixed with just added books, reading stats, awards and what have you...
I kind of makes me miss the homescreen on the Glo. I wish there was a way to modify it. (Please tell me I overlooked that feature )

Also I was a bit disappointed when I synced the Aura with my Kobo account. The two books I had purchased from Kobo and read on the Glo were synced to the Aura as unread. Also the reading stats from the Glo were not transferred either. The awards were (which I do not care about) but e.g. total reading time was not, which I find interesting to keep track of.

That's it for now. Better get on with some reading on the new gadget

Wait a sec... Onyx Aura or Kobo Aura ? And can you link to the shop please ?

[samhy]

Originally Posted by aceflor

Wait a sec... Onyx Aura or Kobo Aura ? And can you link to the shop please ?

Maybe Onyx, the colour.

[ottdmk]

One of the colours the Kobo Aura HD comes in is Onyx, aka Black.

[aceflor]

true, sorry, my mistake. It is indeed available in many online shops throughout Germany, and also on amazon marketplace.

samhy: you have a PM

[lkodk]

Originally Posted by aceflor

Wait a sec... Onyx Aura or Kobo Aura ? And can you link to the shop please ?

Sorry. It is indeed the Kobo Aura in black which Kobo for some reason call Onyx.
The white they call Ivory and the brown Espresso
The webshop is techhaus.dk. But they do not ship outside Denmark, even though some of their goods apparantly are shipped from outside the country

[Nil Einne]

Originally Posted by samhy

If that helps, mine is 1366x768 too - but only 11.6" - and I had to scroll left and right to see the pictures properly

It will depend on windows size, not everyone always has their windows sized to maximum. And perhaps more importantly browser zoom level, which may be influence by OS DPI. For example I'm using a 1080P TV, but my zoom level is fairly high since it's a TV and I'm not that close. I just tested and found I started to get horizontal scrolling at 130% zoom which is not that high, I'm usually 150% at least. The spoiler tag extended the picture slightly to the left so it's slightly possible it will be fine at 130% without it but either way, it's not much before horizontal scrolling come in to it. The picture may be only 1000 pixels across but the forum design means there's a fair amount of white space (well not white) to the left (intentional I presume otherwise the text will generally be too long to be comfortable to read). Of course this does mean even with the horizontal scroll bar you can adjust the display area so you don't have to scroll to read, but horizontal+vertical scrolling is generally undesirable on a PC or similar. Anyway no big deal but the spoiler tag is definitely advisable.

[aceflor]

snogard.de ships outside of Germany, and apparently has white AND black available.

[zessie]

Does anybody know if there are several dictionaries installed on the Aura HD or can they be added? Are they good?
I'm from Belgium and read in several languages, so that's really important.
Not only monolingual dictionaries, but also translating ones from for example german to dutch, or english>french?

I've heard Sony is really good at it, but I'm so eager to buy the Aura HD ...
Oh and do they already sell them in Europe? When is the official date?

A newbie would appreciate your info!!