Kobo Glo HD

[GeoffR]

The Glo HD seems to be aimed at people new to ereading, which is what the concierge service is about. From the Press release:

Kobo Glo HD is the perfect device for the booklover who hasn’t made the jump to digital. Our surveys show there is a huge contingent of avid readers who simply haven’t tried digital because they love the print experience.

I guess the idea is that the 300dpi screen is the closest thing to print, and Kobo has the cheapest ereader with that screen. Someone who is already entangled in the Amazon ecosystem will probably go for the Voyage even if it costs a lot more, but for those buying their first ereader the price is a big factor.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Probably price. The Glo HD is designed to be a Voyage killer. They want to keep the price down. Re: the flush bevel, yes I like it, but only so I could have text going from edge to edge without an elevated bevel blocking the text. With the Voyage, they added buttons to get round the potential problem of accidental page turns (if it is a problem). Personally, I would have liked the flush bevel for the reason I stated. Though that only works if you can reduce the margins to zero. But I think the Kobo can run Coolreader, so that would work.

You don't need to run Coolreader in order to get the text to have a margin of 0. RMDSK can do that as long as the margins in CSS are set to 0. Then you just set the margins in the slider all the way to 0.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Anak

Noticed it too. Kindle font Only Bold and Bold Italic.

Have you tried these files? They work fine on my Kobo Glo. Including TypeGenius (if the firmware is properly patched) if TTF flavour is used.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...&postcount=148

These fonts are not based on the Kindle fonts as they had quite a few errors. Fixing (renaming the font name and style internally) didn't really work. Instead of investigating what caused these issues I chose to generate the font myself using the font supplied with Windows and made all fonts a little bolder (+9) to mimic the Kindle fonts which were a bit bolder.

Generating the fonts (ttf and otf) gave some error messages. The Windows had only 'kerning' issues. The Kindle font had kerning and language issues. Note I didn't fix the kerning errors.

[FATAL] <Constantia> GPOS feature 'kern' causes overflow of offset to a subtable (0x18940)

[WARNING] <Constantia-Bold> [internal] Feature block seen before any language system statement.  You should place languagesystem statements before any feature definition [E:/Documents/FontLab/Studio 5/fontlab.fea 214]
[FATAL] <Constantia-Bold> GPOS feature 'kern' causes overflow of offset to a subtable (0x22e1e)

I took the OTF fonts and resaved them as TTF. Then I added hinting to the TTF version and loaded them on my H2O. I did not get the bold versions when I should have gotten the regular versions. Also, with the TTF, I can use the advanced font control to up the weight a little.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shootist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTz3apOFyro

Glo hd versus Voyage

One major issue I have with this comparison is that they set the Glo HD to sort of match the look of the Voyage. The idea is to show off each device in the best light. So setting the Glo HD to match the Voyage means we don't get to see how good the Glo HD can look in comparison. Also, they have the Voyage on the second settings which is awful. Also they have the Glo HD left justified instead of full so we cannot see any possible hyphenation. Also, they never mentioned that the image in the PDF was not rendered as well. It was darker and had less detail. And then the front light was never compared.

Yet another botched review brought to you by the folks at GoodEReader.

[Nick_1964]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One major issue I have with this comparison is that they set the Glo HD to sort of match the look of the Voyage. The idea is to show off each device in the best light. So setting the Glo HD to match the Voyage means we don't get to see how good the Glo HD can look in comparison. Also, they have the Voyage on the second settings which is awful. Also they have the Glo HD left justified instead of full so we cannot see any possible hyphenation. Also, they never mentioned that the image in the PDF was not rendered as well. It was darker and had less detail. And then the front light was never compared.

Yet another botched review brought to you by the folks at GoodEReader.

And with all these "comparisations" they don't even bother to load the same book on both and display the same page left (kobo) and right (kindle) so u can really see the difference,because that is what you want to know.
Bring up the same book,set it on the same page,equal fonts and compare.
Now it is the same as walking into a big tvshop and compare all the tv's but they are all on different channels.
It is nice to see page turns,it is nice to see different options,but the main thing I want to know is what can I get when I turn it into reading.

I can have all those beautiful options but if the screen isn't that right,it bothers me soon enough and I want to trade them all for a good view.
They only ,in this "review" take the same PDF,but only because they are difficult to display.
In the beginning they make the mistake, the Kindle use it's own format, the Kobo is for epub's.
WRONG. Both can display a lot more and Kobo has also his own format, the Kepub.
I can only say that the menu bar on the kindle with all the options is ugly,that is the only thing they display all the time.

[JSWolf]

And there is one other comparison issue with the review. Because they are not using the same book, they cannot accurately compare load times for each book. A larger book will load slower than a smaller book. So that part of the review is worthless.

Playing Nice is the book used on the Vyage and it's 975KB. On the Glo HD they used Unbroken and it's 10923KB. So how is that a fair load time comparison? It's not.

[Nick_1964]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And there is one other comparison issue with the review. Because they are not using the same book, they cannot accurately compare load times for each book. A larger book will load slower than a smaller book. So that part of the review is worthless.

Playing Nice is the book used on the Vyage and it's 975KB. On the Glo HD they used Unbroken and it's 10923KB. So how is that a fair load time comparison? It's not.

Like I said, you must use same books,but i can't recall when I saw such a comparisation, it doesn't matter if the Kindle performs better or not, you can only judge when you use the same books under same circumstances, if then the outcome is that the Kindle is better, ok with me, it is more expensive to, but this comparisation is like many others,the work of amateurs,it does more harm then good.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ryuji35

Can they really do this when the Voyage is not even a year-old? I don't think Amazon will succumb to this. Voyage is Amazon's premium product. Even if they do slash the price off, they can't lessen it to Glo HD level without sacrificing the Paperwhite's price too.

What I can see here is that Amazon will retain Voyage as their premium product (and its price) and maybe respond this year by making the Paperwhite 300 PPI as well and, who knows what "surprise" we'll get with 2nd Gen Voyage.

But the unique selling point for the Voyage was its 300 ppi display. Now that Kobo has come out with the same display for $70 cheaper, I doubt the Voyage will stay at $199. I'm guessing it will drop $20 or $25 -- to put it in the same range as Kobo's top of the line H2O. You're probably right about the Paperwhite, however, I'm guessing the next one will have the higher resolution -- which, again, is another reason to drop the Voyage's price $20 or so. it won't have as big of a feature advantage over the Paperwhite once this happens. Kobo is not the only company who subsidizes their Readers, Amazon does this also.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by shootist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTz3apOFyro

Glo hd versus Voyage

I thought it a tad biased towards the Voyage. It lauds the Voyage's xray, goodread integration and the translation feature, and dismisses or doesn't mention the Glo's font and formatting options. Also it makes no mention of the Glo's comparatively open software that allow for added functionality, and ignores the Voyage's removal of support for things like games and notepad that were available in previous versions.

It ignores the front-lights. Duh. That site is pretty crap anyway, and often posts non-stories and old news repackaged as new.

It does make the point that with the current exchange rate of $US and $CDN, the Glo is half the price of the Voyage. That's pretty shocking. Mind you, it fails to mention to shipping.

[robko]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I thought it a tad biased towards the Voyage. It lauds the Voyage's xray, goodread integration and the translation feature, and dismisses or doesn't mention the Glo's font and formatting options. Also it makes no mention of the Glo's comparatively open software that allow for added functionality, and ignores the Voyage's removal of support for things like games and notepad that were available in previous versions.

Well put. The more I thought about it after the fact and with what Jon said above about he 10X difference in book size it really comes across like they were schilling for Amazon (this review seems to go beyond their usual incompetence). This really seemed like a review of the Voyage with the Glo HD as the "old" product they were comparing with. Even at the end when they are saying which is better, they seem to not want to say the Glo HD is a good option in any way.

[Rizla]

It actually states the Kobo font options are too complicated (for them, perhaps?).

It doesn't mention page formatting at all. I guess it was too hard for them to work out.

They were also unable to turn off the light and turn on the front-lights. How do these people get past puberty, never mind run a web-site?

But it does make the shocking point about the price. Half the price! Though, again, obviously, they don't mention shipping, which you might able to get free in the US, or about $15 CDN, so it's not much.

I think that's the killer right there. Wow

[MGlitch]

They mention the price, but then they label the Voyage as a premium ereader, and the Glo HD as an entry level device.

Remind me again how these two ereaders differ in hardware, aside from a small resolution difference?

Software features are hit and miss, since both devices have features the other lacks. Though you wouldn't know it from GoodEreader.

[mathil]

They also did a comparison with the H2O, pity they forgot to update their unit to the latest firmware available. They spent a good two minutes talking about software differences that actually do not exist.

The Glo HD looks pretty fast with PDFs, I wonder if it's mounting a firmware version that hasn't been released yet?

[pdurrant]

The 300dpi is good, but the glass backplane still means I'm not going to be getting one.

[ryuji35]

Originally Posted by rcentros

But the unique selling point for the Voyage was its 300 ppi display. Now that Kobo has come out with the same display for $70 cheaper, I doubt the Voyage will stay at $199. I'm guessing it will drop $20 or $25 -- to put it in the same range as Kobo's top of the line H2O. You're probably right about the Paperwhite, however, I'm guessing the next one will have the higher resolution -- which, again, is another reason to drop the Voyage's price $20 or so. it won't have as big of a feature advantage over the Paperwhite once this happens. Kobo is not the only company who subsidizes their Readers, Amazon does this also.

What I can't think of is how bold Amazon can be when they made the Voyage $199 if the 300 ppi screen can be replicated easily (If this is really its unique selling point.) I mean, when I bought the Voyage, I thought the high price tag is maybe because of how "pricey" the screen might have been to produce. The fact that Kobo was able to do it and offer it in their "midrange" product means, the screen is not that expensive at all. Were they able to foresee this? Or they intend to make the Voyage a cash cow for just a few months?