Which Kobo device is most similar/analogous to the Kindle 11th gen?

[Dal Bhat]

The Mrs. has a Kindle that is still working just fine, but it is 12-13 years old. Given that age, she's starting to think ahead about something not-Amazon after I told her about sideloading going away in their newest line of Kindles. (Edit to clarify, after the reply below: yes, Amazon content.)

I have an 11th gen Kindle and she wonders if there is something like that in the Kobo line. Smaller in the hand, decent lighting, good battery life, fairly simple device overall.

She also prefers to side load books after downloading them, rather than connecting the device by wifi.

Kobo users, what do you suggest and why? Thanks much.

[Sirtel]

Firstly, sideloading as such is not going away, at least not yet. What went away for the newest Kindles was the ability to download your Amazon purchases to your computer for USB transfer, and that feature is mostly used for DRM removal these days. You can still sideload any non-Amazon content via USB to the newest Kindles. If it's the Amazon content your wife wants to sideload, then yes, you can no longer do that with the new models.

As to Kobos, all current black and white Kobo models use the same software (except for the note-taking ability on the Sage and Elipsa), so in this regard there's not much difference. Kobo has no black-and-white 7'' device at the moment, unfortunately, so it would probably have to be the 6'' Clara BW. Which is small, with decent lighting (including warm tone), waterproof and I haven't heard anything bad about its battery life. The storage is 16GB.