Kobo- First Impressions

[dwoolley]

I've been using the wifi kobo for a few days now and have some opinions on its capabilities.

Screen

Not bad, better I think than the Sony PRS-505 but I've heard not as good as the pearl e-ink...since I can't compare...a good enough upgrade.

Speed

Page to page is fine. Other things such as navigating menus can have response issues. I've learned to wait for the device to catch up. Could be better.

Book Navigation

Extremely basic. Remembers last position but no history, go to page or bookmarking. Definitely a shortcoming compared to other ebook readers....and just books in general. Needs work.

Desktop

Pretty basic...sync all kobo store only books to reader and can't display books which are currently on the reader. Displays the Kobo store for purchasing.

No auto-update as far as I can tell so somehow you have to know to download latest version.

Recommended to use Calibre or Adobe Digital Editions instead if you want to selectively manage ebooks but then no Kobo store for instant gratification purposes. Oh well....

News/Magazines

No real problems other than download daily setting seems to be hit and miss. Not sure when the reader checks but nothing was downloaded today until I selected update library.

In general the device and related support environment just seems somewhat unfinished....however the recent firmware update worked well (there will probably be a few more coming) and kobo support team here seems to be responsive.

Maybe things were rushed to market to compete against the onslaught of Kindle and iPads....however no buyers remorse yet for me at least.