I have 4 different Kobo eBook readers. Mini, Touch, Aura and H2O. Unfortunately I also have an
oyo thalia (nice looking unit utilizing a touch screen and some buttons, but slow, sw is faulty and needs a reset at 80% of the switch on attempts). I also have a kindle paperwhite 2, had a paperwhite 1 and a kindle 4 for some days.
Well, the look and production quality of the kobo units are well made.
Kobo
mini is a bit slow but you can live with it, especially having that nice small 5" display. It would definitely help if the software would display in landscape view as well. Unfortunately it does not, and no picture zoom either. It is long time out of production, so probably you won't have an opportunity to
buy it. It is a nice toy still.
Touch is almost the same as the mini, except the display being 6". Faults are the same, but touch has newer firmware (the same revision as its bigger brothers).
Aura is the nicest of all kobos I own. It feels definitely faster, but sometimes it just don't turn the page.
H2O was the 1st water resistant eReader. Congratulation!
The software has the same flaws as the others, but as the price tag is higher it hurts more. You can highlight parts of the text. At least in case of epub files. Or cannot. Some texts retain the highlighted status, some others don't. You can try repeating: they won't, unless you change the text to highlight. Or still not. It was working some revisions before.
You search for a text. You get some results. After selecting one of them and quitting search mode the top row of the search dialog remains visible, hiding that line, so you cannot read it. Experiencing it you would want to get the menu then exit the menu, so you regain the top area.
I repeat: this is the flagship of kobo eReaders, after a year of being on sale. This is not the 1st version, pre-production device, it had some firmware updates already. Still not capable of rotating the text or zooming pictures. And I have not even mentioned the comfort extras, like the lack of sending a book just in an email attachment, wireless, or doing the same from a web browser. Well, there is Pocket, at it plays nicely with kobo, but you can select text fractions for dictionary lookup - from epub files. And Pocket is not epub.
The very sad part is that kobo is the 2nd biggest brand, from a big distance following Amazon's Kindle. It has (had?) the biggest market share in Canada. I don't even dare to think about the others.
Kobo uses open formats (epub) and hackable. These are clear advantages. Maybe I should apply as a developer or a tester, I see a big potential there...