For lots of people today there is only a single maker of book audience in town. But which is not the circumstance, and Kobo has been in the marketplace for a while. The newest addition is the entry-degree Nia, a six-inch system that fees £89.ninety nine (inc. VAT)/$ninety nine.ninety six. Best of Kobo’s reasonably considerable vary is the Forma, which fees £239.ninety nine/$249.ninety nine.

There is a devoted Kobo book store which is not as effectively populated as Amazon’s ebook store. Nevertheless, if new titles and very best-sellers are your matter, you’ll likely find what you need to have. Compared with its rival, a Kobo book reader can also combine with your public library’s e-financial loans method, many thanks to the relationship in between Kobo and OverDrive, which is the company of public library ebooks. It is really uncomplicated to set up, and opens a full new globe of looking through opportunities — perfect ideal now, as public libraries keep on being mostly shut.

if you need to have much more looking through possibilities, Kobo also dovetails with Pocket, a internet browser increase-on that allows you mark material for looking through at a later day. Kobo can also share material with Dropbox (while this short article relates to the Kobo Forma, it applies to the Nia as well). In all, the Nia — like other Kobo units — can deal with fifteen file formats: EPUB, EPUB3, FlePub, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ and CBR.

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The Kobo Nia has a six-inch front-lit E-Ink screen with a resolution of 212ppi. The wi-fi-only system is driven by a one,000mAh battery and weighs 172g.


Impression: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet  

The Kobo Nia is a neat very little matter. At just 112.4mm huge by 159.3mm deep by 9.2mm thick and weighing just 172g, it’s tremendous-uncomplicated to drop it into your bag or backpack with no assumed for size or fat issues. It is really unashamedly plastic in build, but I have no trouble with that. I’ve been using Kobo book audience for decades, along with the other significant-brand name units, and I’ve not nonetheless cracked a casing or broken a system. The stippling on the again may possibly not attractiveness to all people, but arguably it can help with grip.

The six-inch E-Ink Carta exhibit has a resolution of one,024 by 758 pixels (212ppi). By comparison, its entry-degree rival the £69.ninety nine/$89.ninety nine Kindle also has a six-inch screen but only manages 167ppi (Amazon would not even mention the resolution in the Kindle’s spec sheet). Does that issue? Nicely, the higher pixel density of the Nia does imply textual content is that little bit sharper, even though frankly if you never have the two units side by side the comparison is just not that significant. Suffice to say, I was completely pleased looking through on the Nia.

There is a front-mild that lets you to read even in confined ambient mild. Kobo phone calls it the ComfortLight, and you regulate it by working your finger up and down the still left edge of the screen so there is no need to have to drop your looking through circulation when you need to have a little bit much more brightness. This is just an everyday mild, not a blue mild filter, but I identified it good.

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The Kogo Nia has an available consumer interface and features loads of configuration possibilities.


Photos: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet

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The Kindle consumer interface used to be uncomplicated to get around, but around time it has grow to be sophisticated and some find it puzzling and unfriendly to do the job with. By contrast, Kobo keeps issues straightforward, with the property screen just displaying your guides library divided from individuals in development, and giving one-way links to procuring, your wishlist and other options on a tap-to-open up menu.

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The vary of looking through options on offer is thorough. You can change font and font size, there is a dictionary, and a rather intelligent quick-forward/again method that you use by extensive pressing the base still left or ideal of the screen. This, in conjunction with the means to use a slider to go to any website page and preview it to start with, lookup for words or phrases, go to specific website page figures and set bookmarks, implies there are loads of means to navigate a textual content.

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The MicroSD charging/relationship port is on the base, upcoming to the power button.


Impression: Sandra Vogel / ZDNet  

With 8GB of storage on board, the Nia can deal with six,000 ebooks at a time (the entry-degree Kindle has 4GB). That is a ridiculously massive variety of guides and significantly much more than anybody is probable to want to carry around with them. The realistic advantage of this significantly storage is that you can hold incorporating material to your library devoid of at any time worrying about owning to need to have to make house for it. 

The one,000mAh battery is rated for ‘weeks’ of life. That is not really specific, and what you get will be impacted by how often you use the Kobo and whether or not you have Wi-Fi on or not (there is no SIM listed here). I turned Wi-Fi off when I did not need to have it to conserve power, and the battery has driven a minimal of an hour’s looking through a working day for 6 days with the battery not nonetheless twenty{36a394957233d72e39ae9c6059652940c987f134ee85c6741bc5f1e7246491e6} depleted. So the battery is fairly excellent for an prolonged spell. That is excellent news as the legacy Micro-USB charge cable could be a headache to try to remember to carry when you happen to be away for a number of days.

Kobo would make a protective circumstance, the SleepCover, which arrives in blue, yellow and black and fees just £19.ninety nine/$19.ninety nine. It is really not particularly made of high quality components, but it does the position of preserving the Nia’s screen and, as its identify implies, it routinely wakes the Nia up when opened, and places it into slumber manner when shut. 

If you happen to be hunting for an option to the usual entry-degree suspect, and you want a huge vary of file support, which include uncomplicated linking to public library book financial loans, the Kobo Nia is certainly well worth taking into consideration.

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