Kobo wifi reader review

You will find all of the latest big titles, with really professional narrators. They basically have over , titles right now, and most of them are fairly recent.

You will find content from Canadian books, but also American ones too. Prices for audiobooks are on the expensive side, if you are buying them individually. You can signup for a Kobo Plus subscription and use credits to buy audiobooks, which if you are a casual listener, might be the way to go.

The audiobook player is fairly standard, if you have ever used Audible or Apple Books before. There is cover that is displayed on the screen, along with a bar, that shows how far you are, in a specific chapter.

There are around 10 different speed settings that increase by. This is useful for people who like to increase the speed of the narration, to get through audiobooks quicker. There is a Bluetooth status bar in the corner, that shows the name of the device you are connected to. During our testing, I tried my Apple Airpods Max and an external Sonos speaker, and everything sounded really good. It would be nice if Kobo introduced a higher quality audiobook system, with higher bitrate, for people who have Dolby Atmos sound bars or headphones, for a more immersive experience.

Still, the audiobook player is solid, and responsive. One of the big reasons why are you would buy the Sage, aside from the big screen to read ebooks, is the drawing experience. You can use the accompanied stylus to draw on ebooks that are purchased from Kobo or sideloaded books. You can click on the highlight button on the stylus and highlight a specific word or a body of text.

You can then make a note on this highlight. If you highlight a single word, a dictionary will popup, giving you an instant definition, as well as provide links to Wikipedia. If you write on ebooks that you borrowed from the Library or bought from Kobo, you cannot save them to Dropbox or transfer them to your PC, since they have digital rights management DRM. Viewing and editing PDF files is also one of the flagship functionalities. You can freehand draw anywhere on the document, although you cannot highlight a specific word or body of text in a conventional manner.

You basically need to press down on the highlight button and paint the highlight, think of it as just scribbling. I have found that Remarkable does it the best, as they give you their same UI for drawing on PDF files, as they give you when freehand drawing on their dedicated drawing app.

If you want to freehand draw, there are two different types of notebooks. With a Basic notebook, you can write anywhere on the page like you would on a sketchbook. If you tend to draw and want more freedom while jotting notes, a Basic notebook may be more suitable.

A Basic notebook has an arrow icon at the top-right corner of the screen to hide the onscreen menu. This removes distractions from the screen so that you can focus on note-taking and drawing. An Advanced notebook has a scrollbar on the side of the page. This lets you move up and down the page as you write your notes. This lets you have quick access to adjust your notebook settings. This notebook provides such options has being able to draw shapes and automatically being able to free transform them, invert or just make them bigger or smaller.

You can write down math equations and the Sage will automatically solve them, this is a really handy feature for students or working professionals. There is also a handwriting to text conversion engine. You can draw geometric shapes and import them into your notebook.

Each notebook has a uniform set of options. You can establish a background, such as college rules and dozens of others. There is a orientation lock option, so you can do everything in landscape or portrait mode, without triggering the g-sensor. There are different pens, such as ballpoint, calligraphy, brush and highlighter. There are 5 different thickness settings for each type and five shades, ranging from a deep black, to greys and finally white.

There are various types of erasers, such as Object and brush eraser, of which you can establish the eraser size, like you would a brush. There is a more button on each notebook. The basic one has fewer options, such as changing background, refresh page, clear all, export and hints. The advanced has insert freeform, insert diagram, insert math equation, and export. One of the best new hardware features is the new Wireless connectivity with WiFi It will allow you to shop or update their library on the go, and receive wireless deliveries of newspapers.

Kobo includes wireless support for home networks, free networks and commercial hotspots, like those in public places or coffee shops. If your wireless network is encrypted with WEP you can enter numbers and letters via the on-screen keyboard. If you have Wireless turned off, it will last around 2 weeks, or over 10, page turns. In order to start purchasing eBooks from Kobo, you first need to register an account.

You cannot register an account on the device itself, so you will need access to a computer, laptop etc. Once you register your account and enter it into your Kobo, you can begin to access ebooks and magazines. The Kobo version of their store on the Kobo Wireless is very simple to use, they have various genre categories to let you browse for content. They have their top 50 list, as well as browse by categories and bestsellers.

One of the great leaps forwards is being about to subscribe to have your local newspaper be delivered by your Kobo. You can take out a free subscription at first to get a feel for how the media is presented.

Overall, the reading experience on the Kobo WiFi is its best quality. Despite the fact that it doesn't have the new higher-contrast Pearl display like the Kindles and Sony Readers, the contrast and darkness of the text on the Vizplex screen is still worthy of respect here's a close-up picture. The Pearl screens are nice but they are slightly overrated. There also seems to be some kind of optical illusion that makes the text appear darker when the Reader is black.

The Kobo can connect to the Kobo ebook store for downloading ebooks and periodicals via WiFi, but not to any other sources. Periodicals will download automatically on dates they are delivered with auto-delivery enabled. Browsing the Kobo ebook store is easy and relatively fast loading. The ebook store has a nice clean layout with lots of categories and searching options.

There's even a section of free ebooks—and the device comes with free classics pre-installed. Once you download an ebook, it becomes apart of your Kobo library so that you can download it to other Kobo-supported devices and Kobo applications and sync the ebooks across platforms.

My main complaint about the WiFi is that you have to go through the whole process of turning the wireless on, having it scan for access points, selecting a router, and then joining the network each time you want to use it, instead of just automatically connecting when you turn the wireless on like with the Kindle 3 and Sony PRS Hopefully they'll improve that with a firmware update.

Once zoomed in there are on-screen arrows that indicate where to pan around the page and when to turn the page. What's nice is that it shows results as you type. A new feature with the Kobo Touch is the ability to set how often you want full-page refresh, the black flash when turning pages.

Like the Nook Touch, it is set to update the entire page once every six page-turns by default. With the Kobo you can set it to update every 1 to 6 pages. When reading ebooks, there are seven font types to choose from, and a whopping 17 font sizes. Shortly after writing this review, I found out that it is easy to add additional fonts to the Kobo Touch. For navigating there's single level table of contents support, a page slider, and arrows for jumping back and forth between chapters.

Holding down on a word brings up options for highlighting and accessing the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. The Kobo Touch has the ability to adjust line spacing, margins, and justification thanks to a firmware update issued shortly after launch. On the downside, it doesn't have bookmarks or notes. The bookmarks it does have just keep track of the last page read. It doesn't have landscape mode either, except for PDF files.