Introduction & a "Thank you MobileRead" note
It may only be for a few more days that I'm eligible to post in the Aura 1 owners thread so I'll do this right now.
Coming from a Kindle Paperwhite I was hoping for some experience enhancement and being a friend of openness I went for a Kobo Aura 1. It arrived yesterday and instead of getting the amount of sleep I need(ed) I went for an extensive test drive - means read.
I was well prepared to transfer books to the device using Calibre thanks to MobileRead and its members - everything was set up before the device got here . This forum was a really helpful place for me (long before I did register) - so thanks a lot for that.
Impressions
Preparing to transfer the books to the Aura went quite smoothly. All it took was copying the Kindle collections I used to a new custom column for the Aura shelves-to-be. I usually have .mobi formatted books so initially I hoped this would be enough.
When I got past the registration hassle (the bypassing just wouldn't work but I was impatient enough to skip trouble shooting and synced with a newly created Kobo account) - including some firmware update Kobo wanted me to have - and had transfered almost all items to the new reader that's what I thought:
- That welcome / home screen is kinda not what I want (a little minus).
- Hmm, the "Read" list, when set to "Collection" is nice. Looks better than on the Paperwhite.
- Oops. There's now WOW effect yet.
(feels like a big minus)
- Opening the first book: those font doesn't look like I will like it. It's also not what I thought it should be.
So I tried to find a font / reading / margin setting I'd like and while I noticed that the additional screen estate compared to my PW really was nice and didn't seem to add any weight things started to go bad. The touch display took on hating my fingers (not that I have particularly clumsy ones) and the control elements were not as responsive as I did expect them to be. At times it was just not possible to get a reaction from the device or it was not the desired one - like while being sure to pointing at the "navigation" arrow but landing in "font settings". This turned out to become a big minus.
While fighting with the erratic responses I got from the touch screen it occured to me that probably .epubs might help to get the font experience I want so I put testing on hold, converted a few .mobi items to .epub in Calibre (while making sure my prefered font was embedded
) and went on reading.
It was dark by now and that turned out to be another minus: natural light settings (up to this point I hadn't changed anything in this regard and it was on automatic) were nice only from far away. Within reading distance the display was smeared greenish (especially from the left bottom corner) and looked somehow sick (Found out today it may be a "
feature"). After playing around with the light settings I finally set this natural thingy to off. At least now the display was evenly lit and reading could go on. "My" fonts were there so all good. Or not? Not really: adjusting something was still fidgety and while it didn't actually spoil the reading I didn't feel as happy as I should. I went to sleep.
After some morning reading (now without backlight or wherever the light comes from on those devices) and a few screen comparisons with my old PW I made a final list:
- There is no WOW effect here - for me.
- The screen size is nice.
- Natural light would have been nice (I like f.lux) but it isn't on my Aura.
- Interacting with the touch screen is erratic. I expect better.
- That thing was not cheap. Not at all.
Decision
I don't want to check out possible firmware candidates which may work better or go through a device exchange process (to get rid of a possible manufacturing deficit ... greenish smear instead of Natural candle light...). I've applied for a return tracking number at Kobo. This was not the run for the money.
Maybe - when I have the money back - I'll check out a newer Kindle.
PS: For a take-it-with-you device I missed the lock feature from my PW, too. But it was not the deal breaker...