|
I went to Indigo books to look at the new readers in person. I have a L2 and while I like the water resistance and Carta 1200 screen, I have had issues with the slow speed and the weight is a bit heavy after holding it in one hand for several hours.
For me, I really liked the colours and speed on the LC. Nice and snappy refreshes. Honestly the fastest e-reader I've ever tried. However, I couldn't get past how the B&W reading experience was a step backwards to the Aura/PW1 or 2 days where the contrast is much lower and the "grey" white background is much darker than the B&W e-ink displays from the past couple of years. To mitigate this, I tried to adjust the light brightness and found that to match my L2 at 0%, the light level on the LC had to be greater than 35% at minimum. When I had my L2 at a comfortable 30% light level, I had to put the LC at 85% to match. At the higher brightness levels, the moire screen door effect was apparent even on dark mode. Honestly it wasn't bad and if the purpose of the device was to read comics or pdfs with coloured diagrams/pics, then the LC would have been a good choice. Yes the covers in colour are a nice perk, but since I read B&W for hours at a time every day, the colour models were not an upgrade in experience except for the huge improvement in speed. I want to specify that I am not putting the colour models down - I think they are a very good iteration of e-ink technology and Kobo has managed to produce relatively inexpensive devices that have maximized what the current colour screens can do.
I then compared the CBW against the L2. The contrast and screen is improved on the CBW but the improvement is quite small - maybe 10% better. However, the speed is a significant step up - the menus were snappy and the changes and refreshes much faster compared to the L2. When using dark mode on the CBW, the blacks are blacker and the contrast is improved with less ghosting per page change. It is so much lighter in weight and I personally found the smaller screen size and lack of buttons ok, however, I realize that is a very personal opinion. I also found the recycled plastic is more matte and this decreases fingerprints as well.
|