[MariusMasalar]

Hey MGlitch,

Thanks very much for the thoughtful reply.

The review does lean heavily on comparisons, and specifically Kindle ones at that. When people are making a decision about which e-reader to buy, my assumption is that they're going to be weighing their options, not necessarily just the directly comparable ones.

For me, the purpose of a review is not to describe a device as if it were the only solution to a given problem. That's what the press releases are for. It's to help people make a purchasing decision. Evaluating it on its own merits is only part of the equation; the other half is seeing how it measures up to the alternatives.

So yes, clearly the Aura One is more or less in its own class with respect to size, but chances are good that if someone wants to buy one, the main alternative they'll consider is a Kindle. And in that price range, The Oasis and Voyage are the ones they'll be looking at. I specifically included a comparison shot with the H2O to make sure that potential alternative was mentioned and discussed my recommendations from the perspective of existing Kobo users as well.

The comparison to physical book weights is accurate, but also somewhat irrelevant in this discussion, don't you think? Of course all e-readers will be more compact than a physical novel, or a stack of them. That's not really the comparison that's going to be going through someone's head if they're buying a flagship e-reading device. I would think we long ago left behind the need to compare e-readers to their physical counterparts in terms of bulk—that battle was won years ago.

You're right about reviews though.

They certainly invite criticism, but I look at it like a healthy app store. The more successful you get, the more crap gets in. Managing the signal to noise ratio is a difficult problem, but having a lot of signal to filter in the first place is a good sign. In the case of reviews I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to people's ability to survey and critically interpret reviews for themselves, ignoring the dubious ones. The simple fact that they have an assortment to choose from is an improvement, and that was the core of my point.

I also have to apologize for that line you quoted as I absolutely was not trying to imply that Kobo is in any danger of going away. It wasn't meant to read as Kobo not having a long term future; I'm confident that they'll be just fine. It's more that things like the Lending Library, Family Sharing, Prime, etc. may offer additional value to people beyond the life of one individual device. I was also quick to point out immediately after that line that if the entire ecosystem aspect isn't relevant to you, the Aura One is the clearly superior device.

Hopefully that clarifies my intent a bit!