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Old 11-14-2012, 05:05 PM   #209
xendula
eBookworm
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Posts: 2,300
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: East Coast *brrrrr*
Device: Kindle 4B/K ~ Nexus 7 ~ Kindle Paperwhite 1&2 ~ iPad Air
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kolenka View Post
So, I got my Kobo Glo from Powell's last night, and got some time to play with both. The first impressions I had:

- The brightness range in the Glo is really weird. It can get a lot brighter than the Kindle, but the minimum brightness is about the same as the Kindle's "11" setting. I read at night with the Kindle set at 0-2, which is a shame.
- The Glo's light is somewhere in between the Nook and the Paperwhite, ignoring defective light guides on Paperwhites. It's obvious that the page is being lit with a light, versus the Paperwhite's look of it simply being lit. But it is nice and consistent minus shadows at the bottom.
- Kobo's fonts try to replicate print books, and do it pretty well. The higher resolution helps, but it still has some aliasing. The Paperwhite's fonts try to make for a book-like experience while looking good on a computer-like display. It seems like a matter of taste.
- The Glo still has some interesting kepub rendering issues of simple stuff like centering paragraphs, not using line breaks to split paragraphs and white space. At least with the books I tried. These same books in ePub worked fine on my T2, and were even slightly better on the Paperwhite in KF8 since it supports drop-caps. I need to test a side-loaded version of the ePub to see if there are rendering differences between the two engines.
- The Glo has a deeper bezel and is thicker. I like the Kindle's thinner form factor and shallow bezel. But this is pretty subjective.
- The Glo eats up more screen space with header and footer stuff than the Kindle does. But some folks do like having page numbers and the book/chapter title always on display.
- With the Glo's light on minimum, and the Kindle on 11, the text on the Kindle was darker. There was more of a washout effect on the Glo than the Kindle.

I actually have to exchange my Glo since there appears to be a dead IR emitter which is creating a dead spot on the bottom part of the display. It's preventing me from really playing around since it means I can't enter my wifi password.

So far though, other than the rendering issues, I wouldn't have too much trouble recommending it. Things have gotten polished enough there that the device itself does the job. Although I do find the weird rendering quirks bothersome enough that I wouldn't make it my own personal primary device.

I still need to get word back from Powell's CS folks to setup the exchange.
Are you keeping a Paperwhite and a Glo? For youself? That's what I call splurging!!
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