Kobo Mini review

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.

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.

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 the text justification. Basically, you can make each book look the way you want it.

BATTERY LIFE

Kobo quotes the battery life at more than one month with Wi-Fi turned off. This seems pretty standard for an eBook reader without a built-in screen and means that you won’t need to charge your eReader very often, via the Micro USB port at the bottom.

As you’d expect, the Micro USB port is for charging, although you can use it to load books directly from your PC

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 from one company 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 Mini’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, particularly on the small screen size here. We struggled to get it to display our PDF book properly and you’re better off with ePUB files, which have reflowable text.

STORAGE

As seems the norm for eReaders, the Kobo Glo has 2GB of storage. This model has no Micro SD card slot, but as the built in storage will hold around 1,000 books we don’t think that you’ll miss this too much.

WIRELESS

There’s no 3G version of the Kobo Mini, 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.

CONCLUSION

It’s always nice to see something different and the small size of the Mini certainly gives you another option if size is everything. It’s hard to knock the price, too, which is excellent, especially for a touchscreen device. It’s not all good news, though, as the relatively-poor screen quality is quite off-putting. We’d rather spend that little bit more to get the Amazon Kindle. If you don’t fancy getting locked into Amazon’s store, the excellent 6in Kobo Touch is still available for around £80. If you fancy better quality devices all round, the Kobo Glo and Amazon Kindle Paperwhite are both worth a look.