French was definitely worse, but English was not perfect either. I read a few chapters of the Lord of the Rings with hyphens and it was okayish, but I eventually went back to no-hyphens.
One thing I noticed is that all the english hyphens dict that I could find were much longer than french ones. So maybe the english ones are more complete, I don't know.
Here are some things you can try:
- Increase the minimum number of characters before and after hyphens, so that the system only hyphens long words that would lead to visibly stretched lines.
- Activate landscape mode. You'll get longer lines, and the kobo won't need to stetch spaces as much.
- Try using an alternate reader like Koreader or Plato.