Picked up mine from JB HiFi just over a week ago when I was in Sydney (nobody sells Kobo stuff where I live). I would have happily bought it online but I wanted to be able to easily return it if it was flaky.
I must say, JB really aren't trying to sell the things. The display models were tucked away out of site. They consisted of a broken Aura One, an Aura Edition 2 stuck on the registration screen and a working first generation H2O with a price tag/information sheet that said it was an Edition 2
. This was in the Pitt St store in the CBD.
Anyway, they had the new H2O in stock, I bought one, and I'm happy with it. I'm coming from a Kindle 3 (Keyboard) so I guess I'm easy to please
. Actually I was quite happy with the Kindle, I just wanted a reader with a light for night reading.
The larger screen and font options on the H2O have spoilt me now and I could never go back. It took me a while to figure out the Calibre dance (all my books are sideloaded) to get the page layout just right but it looks good now.
No real-world battery numbers yet, but extrapolating from what I've seen I think I'll get at least two weeks. That's similar to my six-year-old Kindle, so good enough for me.
I even like the touch screen, which I expected to be annoying after using real page turn buttons for so long
.
The only things I think the Kindle did better are:
- In-book search. It's very slow on the Kobo. It seems to be scanning the text each time rather than using an index.
- Dictionaries. The dictionary is just another book on the Kindle, so while you're viewing a definition it's easy to highlight a word within the definition and get a definition for
that word. There is no limit to the rabbit hole
.
I guess these may have changed on modern Kindles anyway.
H2O mk2 gets a
from me.