Kobo - Clara Color | eReader | 6" E Ink Kaleido 3 Color Display with ComfortLight PRO | Waterproof | 16GB - 2024 - Black

I love the size and weight of the Kobo Clara Color and it provides an excellent reading experience. Design The design is simple, but good! It's very light weight - much lighter and comfortable to hold than a phone. The bezel is a good size to easily hold without having your finger on or over the screen. There's a power button on the back, in the upper right corner, when you're reading. The screen is a touch screen. I like the controls and have found them both helpful and easy to learn. The back has dimples over about 75% of it, giving some texture for a better grip. It's water proof, which I was glad for when walking outside with it in my hand. My first thought was that I need to cover it so that it doesn't get wet, then I remember it's waterproof! It would be great for all sorts of outdoor use. There's one USB C port as well as WiFi (for syncing books, updates, etc) and Bluetooth connectivity (for listening to audio books). It does not have a 1/8" headphone jack. I don't think there's an internal speaker and searching make it look like audio books are only supported from the Kobo store. A USB A to USB C cable is included, but no wall plug. It's also advertised on the box as repairable. I didn't look into that but love the idea. It has 16 GB of storage which will hold a ton of eBooks! See the attached picture showing the size on an 8" x 11" sheet of paper. Display The display works great for reading, as it should! I've found that I like having the backlight on pretty much any time it's inside. Outdoors the screen looks very good without the backlight. The backlight works very well and lights the screen evenly. I changed the background to an off-white. I also recommend playing with the font settings. I liked the default but ended up preferring it with a slightly larger font size, serif instead of sans-serif, and smaller margins that I think still look great but allow a bit more text on the screen at a time. I like the wide (compared to a phone) size of the display. I almost forgot, it's a color screen. It's interesting, it's probably normal for an E-ink display, but the screen resolution is different for color and for black and white. It's 300 pixels per inch in black and white and 150 pixels per inch in color. Both look very good on the device to me. Almost none of my books have pictures but I like the color for 2 reasons...1. it does bring the book covers to life. And 2. you can choose different colors when highlighting. That works very well and I think is a helpful feature and reason to have the color. Controls and Features The slightly concave button, on the back upper right as you hold it, is very easy to reach, feel, and press. Pressing it will suspend the Clara Color, which will turn off the backlight and show the cover of the last book you were reading. Press it again to go back to where you were on the device - whether that's the "Home" screen or the page you were last reading. The touch screen also provides many helpful controls. You can slide your finger up or down the left side of the screen when in a book to change the brightness of the backlight, up or down respectively. If you tap the right or left side of the page it will turn to the next or previous page in the book. If you tap the top right corner of the page it will fold the corner over to mark it, so you can find easily later. Tap it again to undo the folded corner. If you tap in the middle of a page you will get. There's a reading progress bar at the very bottom of the screen all the time. Tap the middle of the screen and you get a slider to move around in the book, an arrow at the top left that takes you back to "My Books", a brightness control (I prefer the left side mentioned before) font and spacing settings, book progress stats, a settings page and an overflow menu that includes a dictionary. Tapping the middle also gives you chapter selection at the bottom left, Annotations (highlights and boookmarks) at the bottom right, and a search that works for the dictionary, book you're reading, and more. If you tap and hold on a word it will select the word and show a definition at the bottom of the screen. You can also swipe down from the top while reading to see a list of the last three opened books which you can switch too. Transferring eBooks It connects to the Kobo Store or OverDrive/Libby (service to borrow ebooks through your local library). Some Kobo Readers will connect to Google Drive to add content like, ePub and PDF files, but the Clara Color does not. The Kobo Store seems to have a great selection of books to buy. I looked for a number of random books and almost all of them were there. If you get a Kobo Plus subscription you can listen to or read all you want for $7.99 a month. I have a lot of books that I want to read in either ePub or PDF format. I was able to copy them to the Clara Color from my PC using a free program called Calibre and the included USB A to USB C cable. I was surprised that even PDF books I imported worked very nicely, even showing the book cover. You can also link the Clara Color to Instapaper. That's a service that lets you capture and save content from web pages that you would like to read later. It will sync to your Clara Color and you can read it at your leisure. I did test the Overdrive connection too and that works well, but it didn't work with their audio books. I have 23 books on it right now and it has 12.3 GB out of 16 GB total. Almost all of what's used is probably the operating system because the books I have on it only take about 60 MB. Battery Life The battery life is excellent as far as I can tell. After 5 days of using it, mostly with the backlight on, it's at 62%. I think that's excellent especially since that included just playing around and figuring it out. As I mentioned above, if you're using it outside during the day, you may not need the backlight at all, so that would increase battery life dramatically. It's also very easy to turn the WiFi and Bluetooth off. I generally have them both off. Summary The Kobo Clara Color provides great controls, a nice screen, and a much more book like experience, than my phone does, without distractions, and gives me access to far more books than I could take with me if I was using physical books. The light weight and easy to hold design makes it comfortable to use but it's still small enough to store almost anywhere. The Clara Color

The Clara is a great eReader that is easy to use, compact, and has some great features. The color e-ink screen is a nice addition to anyone that has been using a black and white eReader in the past. Opening the door to comics and graphic novels. The software experience from Kobo has been great as well. Offering the ability to easily check out books from a library, purchase from their store, or use their Kobo plus program. It seems like many of the books I was interested in were available in Kobo plus as well. -- Setup & Software Getting started with the Kobo was very easy. Creating my account, and even signing into the Overdrive app, so I could check out books from my local library was all easy and a great experience overall. I did run into a couple of hiccups while trying to use the store one day, as it seems there was some sort of issue. But otherwise, my experience has been great. It surprising how easy it is to check out books from the library as well. Which isn't something that is so easily done with other eReaders. They have great features too, like syncing your progress, so you can continue reading on your phone or elsewhere. The ability to look up words while you're reading, which is very helpful. The Clare boots quickly, and I haven't had any issues with performance while I am reading. Pages turn very quickly. And the screen updates just as fast as any other eReader I have used. -- Hardware The Clara is a pretty minimalist design. Which is not to say that it is unattractive. It looks great and has just a single physical button on the back to turn on/off. It has a good amount of a bezel too, which is just right for holding while reading. Battery life, as you might expect from an eReader, is exceptional. The touchscreen works well too. Of course, it's not the same as using your phone or tablet, but it is responsive and accurate. I haven't had any missed touches, or incorrect presses. The color screen itself is nice as well. It looks especially nice as you're using it in natural lighting. While not as contrast, or bright as a phone or tablet, it is great for reading. And the backlight works well too, when needed. I also appreciate the auto-night mode on it too that shifts the backlight from a typical blue color to a red. Making it easier on your eyes at night. The Clara Colour is a reasonably priced eReader with a color screen and excellent features. Very easy to recommend if you're looking for a nicely designed, minimal eReader with a color screen. Pros: Nice screen, great battery life, easy to use, good store, and the great option to easily check out books from your local library Cons: Some books may be restricted to other stores that may not be available on the Kobo. However, the option to check those books out from your local library is still an option.

Great Color Display, Simple a Better eReader tldr; simple a better and the best eReader, color is good but manage your expectations, and integrations with overdrive make accessing your library super easy. Definitely worth buying. I haven't upgraded my old eReader in forever (see the photo). It worked and I mostly used it for library books. Then this year, support ended and I really needed to get something new. I've known of Kobo for a while and have used the Kobo store on my phone because they have competitive pricing. So was kind of keen to try a different eReader and the Kobo Clara Color is a smart upgrade from my previous device. Plus, if you didn't know, Kobo eReaders have built in Overdrive support, so you connect directly to your public library - giving you easy fast subscription free access to almost an infinite amount of books. Win-Win What's in the box. Kobo Clara Color, a USB A to USB C cable, and some instructions. The power button is on the rear which is a weird design choice and kind of makes it look like it has a camera (it does not) but otherwise, setup was easy, you connect to your WiFI, download software updates, then there's a QR code you scan and do the rest of the setup on your phone. Setup is kind of like how Smart TV setup is done, super easy. I was able to get setup and reading from my most recent purchase in under a minute. In terms of use and color, I'll do color first because that's what most people will care about. The color is nice. It's not vibrant like a phone or iPad, it's more like news print. I think it's fine for book covers and maybe if you're into graphic novels or comics. The color makes the user interface easier and finding that book in your library a LOT easier. What's more useful though is the backlight, you can customize the brightness and warmth which I recommend you do as I found the defaults a little too bright for my liking and it felt too blue until I adjusted it. I would also take the time to adjust the fonts. I was able to get the 'perfect' setting for my eyes. Kobo should make tuning the brightness, warmth and font part of the first time setup. Touchscreen is responsive and entire user experience is very good and intuitive. One of the things I didn't know about Kobo is that it integrated direct with Instapaper. This requires an Instapaper account, which I haven't used for years - but you can just clip articles direct to your Clara. I'm now thinking of vibe coding something that could send the main news stories from my favorite websites straight to my Kobo Clara each morning to help me cut back on screen time. Overall, love the Kobo Clara, if you're coming from another eReader or upgrading the Kobo is better, faster, easier to use, and the color is a nice plus. Get it, you will be happy.

So my I have been wanting to get back into reading and this kobo Clara colour was a great way to nudge me to start back up again. Setup was super simple... Charged it for a few hours and powered it up. Connected to WiFi. It went through an update. That took about 10 mins to do. After that I created an account scanned the QR code and followed the step by step guide. Browsed around the selection that they had and downloaded a book. I like spy novels so that was my go to genre. Also you can use your library card to get free title too. Anyway back to the usage. Size is pretty good. Fits in my hand decently. Eye fatigue isn't bad. I can bump up text size with punch and zoom. Swiping between pages is nice and easy. Screen feel has texture so it is less likely to have finger prints and smudges. So pretty good. Night time ready is nice. Backlight is good. Not too bright. Battery life is pretty good. Been reading for a few hours and it didn't make a dent in the percent. I am really happy with this ereader.

I did my research on what would be a great e-reader for the money. I was willing to spend a little more and it really just came down to this one. Super comfortable screen to read and great color content on the screen. Batter life lasts a long time and the device itself is light and compact which is great for travel.