Kobo Glo review

Kobo has done staggeringly well since it launched in 2010, providing the main competition to Amazon with its excellent hardware, store and smartphone apps. The great Kobo eReader Touch kept pace with the Amazon Kindle Touch last year, and Kobo has done the same this year with its Kobo Glo.

SCREEN

As the name suggests, this model has integrated LEDs (called the ComfortLight) to light up the screen in a similar way to the light used on the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. Not only that, but Kobo has also opted for the same touchscreen E Ink Pearl screen as Amazon with a 1,024×768 resolution, up from the 800×600 screen of last year’s models.

Spec-for-spec, then, the two devices seem pretty well matched. In isolation, the Kobo’s screen looks fantastic. The higher resolution makes text that little bit sharper than before, letting you use the smaller font sizes without straining your eyes. We really like the built-in light, too, which means that you can read under any lighting condition.

Compared side-by-side with the Kindle Paperwhite and we have to say that Amazon’s device is slightly better. We found the contrast better and the text that little bit darker. The lights may use similar technology but they don’t work the same way. While the Paperwhite’s light is always on (you can adjust the intensity but not turn it off) and helps boost contrast, by making the background look brighter; the Kobo Glo’s version is more of a traditional reading light, designed for when it’s too dark to read normally.

The Glo’s light is certainly bright

Next to the Paperwhite, the Glo’s light is definitely brighter, but it’s not as well distributed and there’s a clear strip of light at the top where the LEDs are. With the light turned on the Glo’s screen is easy to read, but the text looks a little more washed out.

You can turn the light off using the dedicated button on top, next to the power slider

Kobo has fitted a dedicated button to turn the ComfortLight on and off, and there’s an on-screen slider to change the brightness. There’s no information on-screen to show you the level that you’ve set it at, as with the Paperwhite, so you have to judge the setting by eye.

INTERFACE

Kobo’s interface is, for the most part, a pleasure to use thanks to the touchscreen, which is as responsive as you’ll get from an E Ink device. From the front page you can quickly select the book you want and tap it to open it. You can also buy books directly from your device, provided it’s connected to Wi-Fi, but the experience isn’t quite as slick as Amazon’s devices.

The Discover tab, which shows you books you might be interested in, displays a carousel of book covers, but this isn’t particular easy to navigate on an E Ink device, as it takes a relatively long time for the page to refresh.

The store is merely a search box that you type into, missing out on Amazon’s trick of letting you view lists of books and browse through everything. If you’re buying books it’s generally better to use the Kobo website and have the book delivered to your device. Pretty much every book available on the Amazon Kindle bestseller’s list is available from Kobo with a couple of minor exceptions. This is much closer than it was even a year ago and Kindle doesn’t quite have the lead for content that it once did.

The touchscreen is responsive and makes it easy to navigate through the menus and turn pages

Once you’re in a book, you can turn pages into two ways: tap (left-hand side of the screen to go back and right-hand side to go forwards) or swipe (right-to-left to go forwards and left-to-right to go back). Page turns are smooth and quick, with the default setting only fully refreshing the page every six page turns. When the screen isn’t fully refreshed you can make out a bit of ghosting from the previous page, although this generally isn’t too bad within the same book; it’s more noticeable when moving from one book to another – but most people rarely do this. You can adjust this setting and choose the number of pages before a full refresh, with a range from one to six.

Tap the screen once and you get a menu of options, including one option for in-book navigation, where you can search inside the book, look up words and get a table of contents. There’s full control over how each book looks with a choice of nine fonts (Amasis, Avenir, Caecilia, Georgia, Gill Sans, kobo Nickel, Malabar, Gothic MB101, Ryumin and OpenDyslexic). The latter is designed to make text easier to read for people with dyslexia. In addition, you can also change the font size, line spacing, margins and, something the Kindle doesn’t have, the text justification. Basically, you can make each book look the way you want it.

BATTERY LIFE

Kobo quotes the battery life at 70 hours of continuous reading with the ComfortLight turn on and set to a brightness of around 15 to 20 per cent. It makes it hard to directly compare to the Kindle Paperwhite, as Amazon’s figures are quoted at a higher brightness level. However, in our tests, we wouldn’t have thought that you’d need to charge either device more than once every couple of weeks.

As with most modern devices, the Kobo Glo is charged via its Micro USB port on the bottom

FORMAT SUPPORT

One of the key reasons to buy a Kobo is for its format support and the fact that you’re not locked into a particular store. While it’s easier and more convenient to buy a lot of books through Kobo, you can buy from anywhere and add encrypted PDF and ePUB files to your reader via a USB connection and Adobe Digital Editions. It’s this freedom that appeals to a lot of people and if you don’t want to be tied to Amazon, Kobo’s got an excellent alternative.

We have to say that the Kobo Glo’s PDF support isn’t particularly good. You can zoom in to a page and use your finger to slide round pages, but it’s slow to update and fiddly to use. We struggled to get it to display our PDF book properly and you’re better off with ePUB files, which have reflowable text.

STORAGE

A Micro SD card slot lets you expand the eReader’s storage, should the 2GB onboard prove to be too small

As seems the norm for eReaders, the Kobo Glo has 2GB of RAM, although there’s a Micro SD card slot, which will take up to 32GB cards. Given that you should be able to fit around 1,000 books into the standard memory, you probably won’t need to add a memory card, but it’s still a nice option just in case.

WIRELESS

There’s no 3G version of the Kobo Glo, but it does have built-in 802.11n wireless. For most people Wi-Fi is good enough, as you can load your eReader with books before you go away or simply use a hotspot if you’re away and need a new book.

BUILD QUALITY

We like the quilted back, and the Glo feels well made and comfortable to hold

Build quality is excellent. We like the soft-touch quilted back and the plastic case feels tough and well-built. At 185g it’s 28g lighter than the Wi-Fi only Kindle Paperwhite, although it’s 0.9mm thicker. In truth there’s not much in it and both devices are comfortable and easy to carry around everywhere.

CONCLUSION

We really like the Kobo Glo. It’s fast, easy to use and the shop and apps gives you a similar experience to Amazon, but there’s the added benefit that you can buy your eBooks from anywhere. That said, we prefer the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, as its light is more even and helps boost contrast. We’re also happy with the Amazon store, which is still the best stocked, and don’t mind not being able to buy books from other places. However, if you want freedom to buy books from where you want, the Kobo Glo is an excellent alternative and well-priced. It wins a Best Buy award.