Kobo Libra Colour review: A new e-reader era in full bloom

For too long, e-reader users have seen the world in black and white — literally. E-ink started as an emulator of words on paper — black and white. But what about books with beautiful covers? Books with gorgeous maps, photographic prints, and vibrant illustrations? What about forms of media that rely on pictures to tell their story, like comic books?

E ink tablet manufacturers are finally seeing the world in color. We’re excited for what’s in store from the Libra Colour and the Clara Colour, Kobo’s first two-color e-readers hitting shelves this month. These new tablets promise the same interface that Kobo readers are used to and a familiar form factor, plus the addition of 4,000+ E ink colors.

Even being the new kid on the block, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better color E ink value than Kobo’s fresh Libra, the Colour.

Price, availability, and specs

The Kobo Libra Colour is very affordable, retailing for $220. It comes in a black or white model and is currently available for preorder on Kobo’s website, with fulfillment expected to begin April 30. After the e-reader becomes widely available, it should also be offered through retailers where you’d find older Kobos, like Amazon and Best Buy.

What’s good about the Kobo Libra Colour?

Let’s talk about the most important part first — the color. The Libra Colour features 4,096 color shades on a Kaleido 3 E ink screen. It’s very important here that users keep their expectations of the Libra Colour in check. If you decide to switch to this tablet from, say, a Kindle Fire because you want to minimize eye strain and streamline your reading experience, the color experience is not going to blow you away. However, whether highlighting in color or reading a comic book, Kobo’s new e-reader stands toe-to-toe with competing color E ink devices, of which there are very few.

After spending a few minutes reading outside on a sunny day, I discovered that the already pastel-like color does go a little bit soft in harsh lighting settings. Still, outside of reading with full, unfiltered sun coming down directly on the tablet, the display stays vibrant and sharp. Easily the weakest colors to view on Kobo’s new color E ink screen are warm, bright colors; the books pictured in this review are good examples.

The reds on the River Sing Me Home book cover are supposed to be a sharp scarlet red, and the yellows on the Ghost Forest: A Novel book cover appear a more canary yellow on LCD screens. But you wouldn’t bring a tricycle to a Formula 1 race, so don’t expect the Libra to go the same speed as a Kindle Fire or something similar.

A huge strength of the Libra in generations past and present is its form factor. It’s a very lightweight device, making it easy to handle when reading, writing, or traveling. My writing experience on the Kobo Libra Colour can be best described as meeting expectations. It’s too smooth and slippery to emulate an authentic paper experience, but the technical performance, including the screen’s response time and palm rejection, performs reliably, surely thanks to Kobo doubling the processing power compared to the Libra 2.

The Libra Colour’s battery is about 25% larger than the Libra 2’s. Like with most E ink devices, we are promised “weeks” of battery life with the Kobo Libra Colour, but this is a huge roll of the dice, depending on the heaviness of your daily use.

Starting on a full battery and with automatic front light adjustments turned on, I read on the Libra Colour for three to four hours per day, taking plenty of opportunities to highlight and annotate with Kobo’s stylus. I read some plain, colorless text, and a handful of comic books where every page was full color. After five days, the battery had only dropped to about 85%.

What’s bad about the Kobo Libra Colour?

Honestly, hardly anything has been bad about my experience with the Libra Colour. You have to go through the hassle of making a second purchase if you want a stylus, but for $220, I feel wrong in complaining that this e-reader doesn’t come with Kobo’s dedicated pen. Most color E ink competition so far costs well over $300. The Kobo Stylus is an additional $70; for less than $300, you’re still spending less on several competing e-tablet + stylus duos.

While the wide ambidextrous bezel makes the Libra Colour comfortable to hold while using the stylus, some users may want a little more real estate than the 7-inch display offers. You won’t feel cramped writing short annotations on books and articles or highlighting important passages, but more full-fledged handwriting may feel a bit tight.

There are a few quirks in the overall Kobo experience to be aware of, especially for first-time Kobo users. I maintain my gripe from checking out the Kobo Nia that a list of recently finished books is a strange choice for the swipe-down menu you access while mid-book. Like with the Libra 2, there’s no 3.5mm jack for personal headsets, and like with any Kobo model, E ink ghosting is minimal, only cropping up in settings sliders and fast typing.

One last thing that isn’t a direct fault of the Libra Colour itself is that the included origami Sleep Cover is supposed to automatically put the e-reader to sleep upon closing. Applying a natural amount of pressure to close the case doesn’t create a strong enough magnetic connection to trigger the auto-sleep function. This could be a fluke specific to this case.

Should you buy it?

If you are a dedicated consumer of illustration- and photograph-based media and don’t want to spend $350+ for a color E ink tablet — as you would with the Libra Colour’s closest competitor, the Boox Tab Mini C — then you should buy (or preorder) the new Libra right now. If things like color manga and comic books are anything less than 90% of the literature you choose, then the answer is still yes — but in due time.

I don’t think adding color or even stylus compatibility is enough to throw an old model out the window. You don’t need to kick your current Kobo E ink device to the curb for the Libra Colour, but keep it in the cart for when your upgrade time comes.

It’s tough to recommend a new e-reader to users outside the brand family — come to the Socs, Ponyboy! — but if you’re looking for the perfect opportunity to explore something outside the Amazon Kindle or B&N Nook lines, it doesn’t get any better than right now.

Kobo is currently the only of these three to give us a color E ink tablet, and while Boox offers color competition, Boox’s devices live in a different price tier. There’s a chance we will see color E ink from Kindle this year, but for now, Kobo is the only major e-reader brand in the US that offers us color options. And they’re excellent options at that.