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I've had my new Kobo Aura for almost a week now and I've been reading with it quite a bit since I got it. I guess it's time to give my opinion. Be warned, though, I also have a Paperwhite so that's what I'm comparing it with.
First, and this is why I bought it, I love the idea of the screen flush with the bezel and I really do like the small size and low weight. After holding this my Paperwhite feels like a rather large brick in my hand. Even with a cheap case on it it's lighter than my paperwhite without a case. This is what I wanted and this is what I got and I'm very happy about it.
Comparing the screens, while both screens are very good, the Paperwhite is the clear winner. It looks great. The Kobo is merely excellent. The Paperwhite screen is whiter and the text is darker and that means better contrast.
The font controls on the Kobo don't all seem to work with side-loaded books and that's a definite minus. I'm probably going to have to learn how to fix that in Calibre, an areas I'm not eager to get into but I guess I'm going to.
I've also found that the font controls don't work at all with mobi books. At least not with the 2 or 3 I tried. It's easy enough to make epubs whiich do let me control at least a few features of the fonts.
Even in books purchased from Kobo the additional font controls don't seem to be able to make the text look as good as the Paperwhite's defaults. That's not to say they look bad. They're more than acceptable. The Paperwhite is better.
With the Paperwhite I can manually sync after a reading session on my phone by using the text search. Either the Kobo doesn't have a text search or I haven't found it yet. It's easy to get to the right chapter and then find my place but not nearly as easy as with a text search. This is a problem I can live with but I promise to grumble about it a lot.
The big difference; where the Kobo is a big loser, is the store. And the company. I spent ten days trying to buy this thing because their website wouldn't take my credit card and I couldn't find a way to get through to Kobo's customer service. I already had an account with them because I've had a Kobo Mini for a year or two and my card was on file so I shouldn't even have needed to enter it. But I had to and I did and it reject it.
I was finally able to get through to their support people after posting a question in a forum somewhere and getting a reply that led me to their badly defective page that, asked me to put in my phone number and then rejected it because it didn't like the format. Of course there was no clue to the correct format. I spent an hour googling formats of Canadian phone numbers (I'm in the USA) to no avail. Finally I entered it with no format whatever, just the digits and that worked. It said I'd receive a call within 20 minutes.
Two hours later they finally called me an the guy I talked with was eager to help but he couldn't make it work either. He finally suggested I open a new account with a different email and try that. I did it and it worked. After about 10 more days I got my Kobo.
Every time I've gone on their site to find a book and found something I'd go to Amazon to compare prices and without fail Amazon is 50% to 100% cheaper. That's a huge difference. I've all but decided to buy Amazon books and convert them with Calibre.
So, which do I prefer? I wish I could decide. The Kobo is nice but it has a lot of problems. The Paperwhite is less nice with not many problems. It's a hard choice but the good thing is I don't really have to choose. I'll enjoy them both.
But Kobo, in case you're listening, if the new Kindle is the size and shape of the Kobo Aura, as some of the rumors say it might be, you guys are in trouble. You need to polish this thing a little more.
Barry
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