Kobo Aura One First Impressions

[MRC01]

I'm new here so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong place.
http://mclements.net/blogWP/index.ph...t-impressions/

The eInk reader bug recently bit me again and I tried a Kobo Glo HD. Nice, but too small so I bought a Kobo Aura One. It just arrived yesterday – these are my first impressions.

That screen. is. so. gorgeous. The 7.8″ size complements the great contrast and resolution, and the excellent font rendering algorithm. This is the best eInk screen I have ever seen. I could read this for hours. The bigger size screen is perfect for reading technical documents having charts & pictures.

It’s lighter and thinner than my 8″ tablet, easier to hold with a grippy back texture, and the screen is matte not glossy reducing reflections.

It synchronizes beautifully with Calibre, just like the Glo HD – topics become collections, syncing annotations, etc. And the software is open – you can side-load your own fonts and it renders them beautifully, and there are hacks available to open some closed features.

The touch screen sucks. There’s no other way to describe it. Too frequently it fails to register my touches. I don’t have this problem with phones, tablets, or the Kobo Glo HD. I’ve been trying to use it slower, but that’s a real pain when typing notes into my books.

The auto-dimming backlight is mysteriously broken. It’s fine in a dark room – evenly lit. Then when you turn on the room lights, the backlight gets brighter!? Just when you need less backlight, it gives you more? I set it for 2-3% in a dark room, then when I turn on the lights it goes up to 10%. If I hold it up close to the light it goes up to 30%. Also, when I put it to sleep, the backlight stays on! This is completely backward and wastes battery. And the auto-illumination level is unstable. As I read, every few moments the backlight subtly and slowly pulses dimmer & brighter. This is a distracting waste of battery.

The backlight hue is a nice feature and works OK, but not great. At full brightness, the colors are even. But I never use full brightness. Below about 30% brightness, which is still pretty bright, the colors are uneven. As the color shifts red, a distracting greenish shard appears in the lower left of the screen and grows toward the center. All that said, it’s nice to be able to set it to a neutral color between blue & red, and leave it there.

I have not yet tested the water-proof-ness. I should, while it’s still under warranty!

So it’s an imperfect device. Is it worth keeping? I need more time with it to decide. Kobo’s terms give 30 days.

[robko]

Originally Posted by MRC01

The auto-dimming backlight is mysteriously broken. It’s fine in a dark room – evenly lit. Then when you turn on the room lights, the backlight gets brighter!? Just when you need less backlight, it gives you more?

That is completely normal (brightens in brighter light). The reason is to increase the contrast on the screen. You will find every e-reader does the same and/or recommends a higher level of frontlight in brighter lighting. And it's a frontlight, not a backlight by the way.

Originally Posted by MRC01

Also, when I put it to sleep, the backlight stays on! This is completely backward and wastes battery.

Does it stay on briefly or just never goes off at all? If it's working properly it will stay on briefly while the device goes to sleep, but it should be turning off beyond that. Are you using a sleep cover? There have been reports of the light not going off properly with sleep covers.

Originally Posted by MRC01

And the auto-illumination level is unstable. As I read, every few moments the backlight subtly and slowly pulses dimmer & brighter. This is a distracting waste of battery.

That's a known issue that should be fixed or improved with a firmware update.

Originally Posted by MRC01

The backlight hue is a nice feature and works OK, but not great. At full brightness, the colors are even. But I never use full brightness. Below about 30% brightness, which is still pretty bright, the colors are uneven. As the color shifts red, a distracting greenish shard appears in the lower left of the screen and grows toward the center. All that said, it’s nice to be able to set it to a neutral color between blue & red, and leave it there.

There seems to be a fair bit of variation in the natural light implementation (and of course individual perceptions on top of that). IMHO it wasn't quite ready for prime time yet. They need to work on it, but that's likely a hardware fix and likely will be the next device before they improve it.

[MRC01]

Originally Posted by robko

That is completely normal (brightens in brighter light). The reason is to increase the contrast on the screen. You will find every e-reader does the same and/or recommends a higher level of frontlight in brighter lighting.

I get it, but that's weird. In normal room light I can read the screen just fine without any frontlight. I don't want it to waste battery giving illumination I don't need. I suppose that means I'll just not use this feature.

Originally Posted by robko

Does it stay on briefly or just never goes off at all? If it's working properly it will stay on briefly while the device goes to sleep, but it should be turning off beyond that. Are you using a sleep cover? There have been reports of the light not going off properly with sleep covers.

I waited a full minute and it didn't go off. So I woke it up, disabled auto-illumination, turned illumination off, and put it back to sleep.

Here's another problem I found: yesterday morning it had been on the charger all night and was at 100%. I unplugged it from the charger and left it asleep. When I got home from work 11 hours later it was at 35% battery. It ate 70% of the battery being asleep all day?!

I don't think the battery is weak or broken cuz it drops 6-8% per hour while reading - as expected.

To further test this, I disabled auto-sync last night. This morning it had charged all night and was at 100% again. When I get home tonight if the battery is good I'll know that auto-sync was the culprit.

[chrisridd]

Have you updated the firmware? If not, run (do not walk) to the Kobo servers and update your firmware.

:-)

[petercreasey]

Is the latest firmware update now available at kobo.com?

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by MRC01

I get it, but that's weird. In normal room light I can read the screen just fine without any frontlight. I don't want it to waste battery giving illumination I don't need. I suppose that means I'll just not use this feature.

Likewise. As I wrote yesterday in the owners' lounge, one of the key features of electronic paper is that, like paper, it doesn't need to be self-illuminated.

Here's another problem I found: yesterday morning it had been on the charger all night and was at 100%. I unplugged it from the charger and left it asleep. When I got home from work 11 hours later it was at 35% battery. It ate 70% of the battery being asleep all day?!

Known issue, fixed in firmware 4.1.7729. You may need to perform a factory reset before installing it but definitely install it.

[MRC01]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Known issue, fixed in firmware 4.1.7729. You may need to perform a factory reset before installing it but definitely install it.

When I got my KA1, the very first thing it did when I turned it on, was download & install 4.1.7729, then rebooted itself. It's had 4.1.7729 since I first touched a menu or pushed a book to it.

Are you saying that was not sufficient, I also need to do a factory reset?

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by MRC01

When I got my KA1, the very first thing it did when I turned it on, was download & install 4.1.7729, then rebooted itself. It's had 4.1.7729 since I first touched a menu or pushed a book to it.

Are you saying that was not sufficient, I also need to do a factory reset?

Perhaps. Mine shipped with 3.something (I think) and immediately pulled down 4.0 (4.1 was not yet released) which has the battery drain problem. I mucked around with it a bit, couldn't fix the problem, installed 4.1 manually almost immediately after it was released, still had the problem. Did a factory reset, let it download 4.0, then immediately installed 4.1 manually. It's been fine since.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

Is the latest firmware update now available at kobo.com?

Yes, see this thread.

[MRC01]

Alright, test failed. Today the KA1 drained again from 100% to 31% battery in 11 hours of sleep. I had auto-sync, auto-illumination, auto-sleep all disabled. Firmware 4.1.7729.

It's a beautiful screen but having issues with the touch screen, auto-illumination, uneven hue, and battery consumption. All combined, it's just too much for an expensive "premium" device. The Glo HD I picked up new for less than half the price didn't have any of these issues.

Last chance before it goes back to Kobo: full factory reset then try again. Will report results.

[petercreasey]

Sorry, but I briefly scanned the referenced the thread and didn't see anything that suggests that kobo.com now has the new firmware update.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Perhaps. Mine shipped with 3.something (I think) and immediately pulled down 4.0 (4.1 was not yet released) which has the battery drain problem. I mucked around with it a bit, couldn't fix the problem, installed 4.1 manually almost immediately after it was released, still had the problem. Did a factory reset, let it download 4.0, then immediately installed 4.1 manually. It's been fine since.

All Aura ONEs come with 3.20.xxxx. They will all update the firmware to the latest available during the setup. That is be 4.1.7729, but I'm not sure if Kobo have rolled this out to everyone yet.

Edit: I have just had confirmation from Kobo that 4.1.7729 is available to everyone.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by petercreasey

Sorry, but I briefly scanned the referenced the thread and didn't see anything that suggests that kobo.com now has the new firmware update.

Do a sync. If there is an update available to you, it will be downloaded. If there isn't, then it will continue with the other steps in the sync. And you can check what firmware version you have in the "Device information" page of the settings. The latest release is 4.1.7729.

[MRC01]

Last night after I did the full factory reset, it rebooted, updated itself to 4.1.7729, rebooted again. Then I re-configured it (Kobo account, Pocket account, etc.), pushed my books back to the reader from Calibre, enabled auto-illumination, auto-sync nightly.
It seemed to be working better. Consumed about 5% per hour of battery while reading with auto-illumination turned on. That's less than before; if linear it's about 20 hours of reading on a charge. Also, when I put it to sleep the light turned off - it wasn't doing that before.
This morning it had charged all night and was at 100%. I unplugged it and left it asleep. When I get home from work this evening I'll know whether it's fixed.

[MRC01]

The verdict: 100% battery after sleeping for 11 hours - less than 1% drain!
That was with wireless, auto-sync and auto-brightness enabled. It burns 4-5% per hour while reading - still good.