Kobo Clara BW

I own a Kindle Paperwhite (last gen, relative to this new one) and a Kobo Clara BW (purchase in the last 6 months). IMO, the Kindle is the premium e-reader when it comes to look and feel. It's just a fantastic experience. The issue is Amazon and how even if you want to put your own purchased ebooks on it, you have it send it through their servers. That tied with a few other privacy issues over the years led me to also get a Kobo. The Kobo can run in a fully offline mode (called "side-load mode" or something like that) and I can transfer my ebooks directly via USB. I use the Kobo most of the time now since most of my reading lately has been independently published ebooks, but I still use the Kindle for books I purchase via Amazon directly. With all that said, I personally think the Kindle Paperwhite is already the perfect size. It fits snuggly in my back pocket and strikes the perfect balance between screen size being large, but not too large to hold for my average male hands. I'd be a bit concerned about the size increase for my personal use case, but Amazon does a great job with the Kindle in general so I'd like to see some reviews. As for the new Colorsoft, I'd really like to see some reviews. The color Kobos that came out earlier this year got some mixed reviews for colors, but I'm not sure if that's just the nature of color e-ink or not.

I have a color eInk Android tablet and I greatly prefer my Kobo Clara BW for general readability. I ended up disabling color in the accessibility settings. The contrast is terrible compared to b/w eInk. The front light is necessary under anything but bright sunlight. But the front light washes out the colors, so much so that it’s a readability problem. So I only take it out of black and white mode when I’m using it outdoors. It sounds like this new version of color eInk might be better. But I think it really would have to be an enormous difference for me to prefer it over B&W eInk.

I got a kobo clara bw and a xteink x4 that I gave to my kid. Im quite happy with the kobo, it’s a much better experience for reading imo despite not having buttons. The touch screen is usable after all. I started dumping things into epub format, for example lyrics/chords, things that I want to read, etc. chatgpt is quite helpful with formatting epub files.

I got X3 because it was on the ads all over my internet. My idea was that I can stick it to my phone when I go out or commute and don’t want to bring my standard Kobo reader, so I can read more instead of doomscrolling So far, my impression: - it’s a fun piece of tech, but it’s also a super simple one. Idk the price of a eink screen like that, but it’s basically a screen + esp32 + battery, so $70 might be a bit too much, and just includes all the ads budget, which is clearly huge - CrossPoint firmware is neat and OSS, so you can for and DIY whatever you can imagine - it’s still so much more convenient to read on a bit bigger reader. Even my Kobo Clara BW with Koreader, which is still quite portable, has way better UX. And it’s just about x2 more expensive - magnet is not strong enough to sit firmly on my phone - I got a epub rendering issue with one of my books - I don’t read a lot on it and still prefer my Kobo, so it failed the main objective for me personally - it’s still fun how much esp32 in such a tiny enclosure can do :)

I love that Kobos can still be set up completely offline. At the setup screen you can mount the device, set a flag in the config file, unmount/reboot, and boom, it's ready for your books. My Clara BW is my daily driver. As much as I'd like to use an open reader, their rendering and screen quality are still not quite as polished as the corpo options.

Yep, this is the reason I chose a Kobo.

I own the Clara BW (C) and the Libra Colour (L). The C is sharper but the L looks more like a real book/paper. I believe as an artifact of the colour screen and it’s called “screenshot effect”. In the end, once you use either for 10 minutes it becomes “the new normal”.

Yes. I had color Kobo, left it in the airport lounge, and bought BW one as a replacement. It is much better.

I encounter freezes mostly when I enable Bluetooth/wifi. Haven't tried on a multi-core kobo but I imagine the UI thread can keep running there. When reading, agree on it being more than sufficient. My recommendation is partially because the price can be identical when they have a sale. That was the case when I got a BW--it was the same price as the color. I should also mention I run quite a few things on my kobo: boringtun to connect to my home network, a fetcher to sync my books and feeds, Plato and its article fetcher whenever I update my Wallabag articles. I'm beyond pleased with my reader experience. The extra processing power would just be icing on the cake.

My experience with battery life seems to be the opposite of yours. I'm using it on a Kobo Clara BW and my battery just lasts and lasts, even with an hour or more a day of reading. I don't have any firm data on it, but I know that right now I'm at 52% battery and it's been at least a week and a half since I plugged it in anywhere.

Nickel, the stock firmware on Kobo, is pretty decent. KOReader is better, though. The Kobo is a pretty hackable device. I pair my Kobo Clara BW with BookFusion, which gives me portability between any KOReader device, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.

They even kind of admit that themselves and offer a remote page turning accessory with buttons for Kobo readers)

I don't like swiping, but kobo supports just a single touch on the right and left edges of the screen for switching pages, and I don't mind that.

Looks nice. Personally I don't know I can go back to 220ppi, but if I did I would definitely pay for the touchscreen and light over the X4! Maybe you already have this, but I'd encourage you to put a "pure" reading mode in there, with no status bars top or bottom. That would probably allow for an extra line. I wonder if there's also room in the case spec to slot in a magnet here or there. Could make for some creative solutions for covers or stands. Personally I use a Clara BW with a folding cover-stand and it's incredibly convenient.

As someone who has resisted buying an e-reader for years because I "prefer real books", I finally purchased a Kobo Clara BW and love it. Even though I usually only read one book at a time, having my whole library in a small form factor is really wonderful.

Sharing my experience as a tinkerer, sideloader, and recent Kobo owner. I used a Kindle for ages, always in airplane mode and only sideloading content. Honestly, it was a pretty good setup.[1] But it seemed like it would be harder to setup this way on newer devices, so when mine finally failed, I got a Kobo Clara BW. I was thrilled I could boot it up in "sideloader mode" and not even register it or enable wifi. I noticed poor typography on my epubs, learned about converting to kepub so I did that (which helped). It was a familiar flow to what I was used to converting to azw3 for the Kindle. My remaining typography gripe with kepubs is that it treats a word+em-dash as a word for inserting space in full justification. Em-dashes generally don't have spaces on either side, this often looks like a space has been inserted only to the right of the em-dash. I went down the rabbit hole of NickelMenu and other readers including KOReader and Plato, and even tried (and mostly failed) to vibecode my own opds client app. (because KOReader which has one built-in felt overwhelming) My current sense is the device feels so much more like it is mine. I have much more flexibility to tinker with it. It is not as polished as the Kindle and the Adobe rendering feels stupid, but that's also a sharp edge that only the side-loading community will hit, most of whom use Calibre which can auto convert to kepub for them. Everyone else is buying books from the Kobo store and getting them delivered a…

Either I've gotten so used to lagginess on the Kobo that I don't notice it anymore, or it no longer is a problem. It seems to turn pages just fine, which is the only place I'm concerned about performance. I've got a Clara BW, so no page turn buttons (they make the device bigger than I liked).

Other commenters gave good reasons, and here are a few more: - If you like long books, an e-reader is much lighter than a tome. Not only more portable, but also easier to hold when reading. - When lying down you don't have to fight the cover 50% of the time. Easy to read one-handed too. - The new ones are water-resistant. - You can have multiple books available, in case you switch it up or just finish them quickly. - Search feature. - Built-in bookmark. - Time estimates until end-of-chapter and end-of-book. - The e-ink screen doesn't feel like a screen. Not really a plus on top of paper books, but just because you mentioned. I still read physical books when they're gifted or the medium requires it (House of Leaves being the latest example), but otherwise I'm 100% on e-readers. Previously Kindle Paperwhite 6th Gen, and since a few weeks, Kobo Clara BW.

I'll chime in - the Kindle Paperwhite I believe is the superior machine from a physical feeling and aesthetic perspective. The problem (for me) is who makes it. Amazon keeps locking it down so it's harder and harder to load your own DRM free books onto it, in addition to tracking everything you do on it (like sending all your reading statistics whenever you get online). I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine. Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.

I was going to say exactly the same! Got a Kobo Clara BW a while ago -- great lil device. Took a while to figure out Calibre, but now that I understand it, it's very convenient. Prior to choosing an e-reader, I took one glance at Amazon's DRM-laden offerings and noped out from that ecosystem completely.

It's interesting he has an iPad in the picture of his gear, but doesn't mention it in the article. I, too, waffle on which is best for minimalism, but if I had to choose I'd still go with my MacBook Air. An iPad is nice, but it's not a substitute for a laptop. I'd want an ereader as well, but when push comes to shove, I can read on my phone just fine. My Kobo Clara BW is small and light enough to be almost unnoticeable.