Review: Kobo E-Reader Touch Edition

With touchscreens making their way into the e-reader market, the timing is right for the arrival of Kobo's touch-equipped device.

But the Kobo Touch remains an also-ran to Barnes & Noble's Nook and Amazon's Kindle, both of which are much more popular. Still, the Kobo Touch is a legitimate contender for the hearts and minds of people wanting a dedicated e-reader. Apples-to-apples, the Kobo Touch has enough going for it to recommend it as an alternative to the Nook and Kindle.

The device is a bit rough around the edges compared to its more high-profile cousins, but it does boast two big differentiating features that won me over.

First, the e-reader's native file format is the same one offered by Kobo's storefront, the relatively open EPUB format, which uses Adobe's DRM. It's important to note that you can not load books you've purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Apple onto the Kobo Touch (even though it has a USB port and an SD card slot). All of those booksellers use different proprietary formats which keep you indentured to their readers and apps. However, the books you buy for the Kobo Touch can be sideloaded onto other readers and reader apps on tablets. And that's a great thing if you ever want to change your brand of reader, since your investment isn't held hostage to a particular device from a single company.

Second, Kobo has also come up with a formula to make what is a very solitary pursuit into a truly social activity. All the manufacturers are doing it, but social integration on an e-reader isn't just about incorporating the ability to share on Twitter, Facebook and via e-mail. Kobo gets this, and so it has added a social game-like twist with its Read On campaign (there are even stickers in the box). Read On gives you achievement-based rewards and feedback on your reading prowess. You earn badges and unlock goodies as you reach certain plateaus.

Sure, this is corny. But so is every video game. And let me remind you of the success enjoyed by both Foursquare and the Reading is Fundamental campaign.

Read On is having a "one trillion minutes read" contest (on the Kobo, natch), and is giving away thousands of dollars worth of e-books to schools and community organizations for every 10 million minutes read. Kobo tracks metrics about how much you have read, how quickly you are reading, and the dent you are (or are not) making in your library.

At this writing, I'm about halfway through "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (yup, I'm way behind the meme) but have unlocked the "Happy Hour," "Kill the Commute" and (ahem) "Better in Bed" awards.

Feedback in any pursuit is a huge motivator, and Kobo's stats are the stuff a good cycling computer or running app are made of. They encourage (or shame) you into pushing on. Let's face it: most of us buy more books than we read, and don't finish every book we'd like to. Reading books is not a sport or a competition, but knowing your reading cadence and leveling up when you improve it can't possibly be bad things.

For all of the credit Kobo gets for tracking progress, it whiffs in the end by not serving up this data while you are actually in the book. You have to put the book down to access your stats. Adding insult to injury, Kobo tells you where you are in the current chapter, which is pretty worthless, but not much of the book overall you have read, in percentage or pages.

Another software nicety: there are good discovery options for finding new books. In addition to the usual lists, Kobo also throws out some eye-catchers like "Dazzling Debuts," "Books with Bite," and "Famous Faces." There's a section for free books, but it's not discreetly searchable. You have to scroll through dozens of pages to see what's available – a tedious prospect even outside a latency-prone e-ink environment.

The device itself is light and comfortable to use. It's about 24 grams lighter than the Nook a whopping 57 grams lighter than the Kindle.

Kobo eschews the hardware keyboard like the one on the Kindle. Good riddance, I say – it's like a vestigial limb. Kobo's reader is a tad smaller than the Nook, and it also makes use of a similar, on-demand software keyboard.

But Kobo lacks the ambidextrous page turning buttons the Nook and Kindle both have, and this makes reading with one hand difficult at best. The pillowed back makes it easier to comfortably grip with one hand than the Kindle, but both devices taper near the edges. The most comfortable e-reader to grip is still the Nook, which has an indentation in the middle of the back so you can "cup" it.

The other bad news is Kobo's dependence on a computer, at least for initial setup. This is just so, so 2007. And you can only buy newspapers and magazine via the Kobo web site. Like everything but the Kindle, Kobo is Wi-Fi only, but you can easily tether it to your smartphone to connect to the internet.

And, finally, battery life is about half the two months claimed by Amazon and B&N for their readers. The default settings do not put the device to sleep, and my review copy died in my briefcase after a few days of neglect. I guess reading isn't the only thing the Kobo should be nagging me about.

WIRED $10 less than comparable Kindle and Nook, making it the cheapest, smallest and lightest e-reading in the pack. Nicely motivates by projecting both the fun and sport of reading.

TIRED Faux-quilted plastic back sacrifices ergonomics. Touch screen is sometimes slow. Main page is utilitarian, illustrating only the books you are currently reading offering boring links to your library, the store and "Reading Life." Weak battery performance. Kobo does not come with an AC adapter, increasing dependence on a computer – take the $10 you saved and spend it on a charger.

Photos by Jon Snyder/Wired

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