Quote:
Originally Posted by lkmiller
No muddy waters as far as I can see. Kobo has 5 ereaders in their current lineup. Amazon has 3. As seen on their main ereader store pages. US list prices w/o special offers:
Aura $120
Clara $130
H2O $180
Aura One $230
Forma $280
Kindle $100
Paperwhite $150
Oasis $270
Yes, the basic Kindle is often on sale. It needs to be -- it's last decade's model! (800x600 Pearl 167ppi screen, no front light)  |
It's obvious that the Aura will be discontinued once they run out of stock; this is the flip side of what happened when they introduced the Aura for $10 less than the Glo HD. The Aura was never worth only $10 less than either the Glo HD or the Clara. I can't imagine that even Walmart's $99 price on the Aura will get rid of them. On the other hand, I can't get what's going on with the Aura One and the Forma. They seem in direct competition to me and the Aura One is significantly cheaper. At two years old with no update, that one has to be the next for the chopper and then Kobo will have one top-of-the-line product similarly priced to the smaller Oasis.
The single device that jumps out at me from this list is the H2O. It has no direct competition at Amazon price-wise and at virtually the same size as the Oasis which costs $90 more, I think it's a tremendous value.
When you line up the two product lines it seems like Kobo all the way to me, but I may be biased.
The reality is that most Americans, if they've got a Kindle, won't switch to Kobo even for more specs at a similar outlay. I think the Walmart association is disastrous to Kobo's attempts to penetrate the American market.