Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham44
Well tomorrow will be a week of owning my first Kobo, the Clara BW, after owning Kindles for many, many years, the last being the Kindle Paperwhite Signature edition, so I thought I would posts some thoughts - these are just my personal thoughts/ opinions (not facts!)
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I'm in a similar situation, having had my first Kobo for two or three weeks now. I was using a Kindle Voyage, now using a Kobo Clara Color. Here are my thoughts:
Size - the KCC is very similar in size to the KV, but slightly thicker and, I think, very slightly heavier. Like you, I find the more rounded corners more comfortable. I do prefer the KV's "flat" screen to the KCC's bezel though.
Home screen/reading - I much prefer the Kobo home screen. I love having Collections and Authors and Series all within easy reach. The sliding-finger to change screen brightness is handy, but can be fiddly - I find myself looking for a space without text to do it, because otherwise I often end up highlighting text instead. The pinch/spread to zoom text is, again, handy - but I do miss having the reading themes on the Kindle (I know KOReader offers similar functionality but I prefer using the standard Nickel UI). Dark mode on the KCC is nice, but interactions other than page-turns are still bright white. (Using day/night toggle with NickelMenu avoids this, but refreshes/flashes on every page turn, so no better for night-time reading.)
In a direct comparison, the Voyage is noticeably crisper, but the Voyage is, of course, the Best Kindle Ever. The difference is much less when I compare the Kobo to an older Paperwhite. And the Kobo is a colour device, so I was prepared for a bit of a trade-off. In real-life usage, when I'm not usually holding two devices side-by-side, I don't find myself noticing the difference at all.
Note on the colour: I do like having the book covers in colour. I also like highlighting in multiple colours (I just wish I could get the highlight colours into Calibre).
Bugginess: this is where the Kobo falls down for me. I've had it freeze/crash a number of times, something I think my Voyage has only ever done once in six or seven years. There's also an issue with page-turns: sometimes the page doesn't turn when I tap, and then when I tap again, it turns two pages. I've found lots of reports of this problem with Kobos, going back ten years of more.
Battery life - I've not noticed any difference, but I'm not someone who lets a device get very low on battery before charging (too afraid of running out in the middle of reading a good bit lol).
Using with Calibre - the Kobo wins in every way, and this is probably the main reason I'm keeping it, despite my above complaints about page-turns and highlighting. It connects faster, it sideloads books faster, the conversion to kepub is automatic, more information is shared to & from the Kobo, the stats are great if you're even a teensy bit nerdy, managing collections is so, so easy, and importing annotations is substantially faster than with any of the Kindles I've owned.